Jazz Racial Prejudice

Through the years jazz became a widespread music genre enjoyed by whites and blacks alike, though not without injustice during the 1920s. Many jazz bands started to form in New Orleans, combining traditional jazz instruments, such as trumpets and saxophones, with traditionally upper class instruments, like piano and strings (Boundless). With this combination the bands were able to appeal to a wider range of people and begin to transcend the cultural prejudice the dominated american society of the times. Within jazz bands the musicians worked to develop their own personal sound and often improvise solos on the spot, making every performance of a song different from the next while keeping the often syncopated chorus lines the same (What Is Jazz). These predominantly black groups started performing in …show more content…
Paul Whiteman, a very popular white band leader, noticed this and began incorporating elements of jazz into his symphonic arrangements and as a result was named the “jazz king” to many, even though he was merely exploiting the works of many black musicians (Surging). Others, like Benny Goodman, started directing multiracial bands and hiring black musicians regularly (Verity). Due to the racial prejudice in most radio stations of the time however, white jazz groups, like Whiteman’s received more airtime than black jazz musicians, and thus more credit and fame for the culture they were appropriating. Stanley Crouch, a music critic, wrote that the rise of jazz “predicted the civil rights movement more then any art in America” (Verity) because “the music, which appealed to whites and blacks alike, provided a culture in which the collective and the individual were inextricable.” (Verity) It was a space where a person was judged by their ability alone, and not by race or any other irrelevant