How Did Jazz Music Affect African American Culture

Music can not only be something that people enjoy listening to it also can be therapeutic as well as resource to individuals such as expressing ones thoughts, struggles and accomplishments in life. African American’s found a sense of comfort and peace on their music especially in times of dealing with racism, discrimination, and segregation. Music has and continues to be a means by which the grief, compassion, anger and desire for change is transformed into positive energy for blacks (Dawson, 2001). Jazz music was created from Afro –American such as; spiritual music and work songs. In today’s music, the social conditions facing American popular music, especially rap, were those of the same that were faced by jazz music, and many musicians have similar experiences. Jazz music has created some positive social effects, it has also created more negative ones for black jazz musicians, such as exploitation and jazz appropriation, some of which are still occurring today. (Wheaton, 1994).
According to Dorsey (2001) he believes that black music stems from Africa, …show more content…
Though there has been great debate about a standard definition of jazz, Wheaton (1994) believes it “can be defined as a combination of improvisatory styles with western European form and harmony” (p. 90) In other words, despite jazz’s African roots, it withal has many European features such as, internal structure, composition, and harmony. (Dorsey, 2001). Jazz categories include Dixieland, swing, bop, cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, Third Stream, jazz-rock, and fusion (Wheaton, 1994). The first jazz-style to receive apperception as a fine art was bebop, which is mainly instrumental and was composed by solemn ebony jazz musicians who experimented with incipient conceptions in the tardy night jam sessions (Wheaton, 1994). Bebop evolved in the 1940s and was said to have been created by blacks in a way that whites could not copy (Gerard,