The Roaring Twenties: The Jazz Age

The Jazz Age, also known as the Roaring Twenties, was a remarkable event that began to occur after World War I had ended. Jazz music came from the South and it became one of the most popular genres of music in America’s history. The rhythm in jazz music helped many people compose new cultural ideals about the American life. As jazz was making its way into the music business, people became inspired by this new genre. After most people observed jazz music’s increasing popularity, for the first time in history, the twenties were a period when both black and white music achieved an equality between different skin colors. The Jazz Age did not officially begin until 1917. During this year, two events had transpired. These upcoming events involved a five-piece combo from New Orleans which had become known as the famous Original Dixieland Jazz Band, or ODJB. The band consisted of black musicians, who had the first “on-sale” disks of new music. The band’s record sold in …show more content…
A large number of white songwriters began producing pseudo-blues. Jerome Kern, a white film composer, started borrowing musical material from black songwriters such as Maceo Pinkard. When Kern wrote jazz music, he would place it in the films that he was in the progress of creating. Some of those songs included “Left All Alone Blues” which starred in Kern’s film The Night Boat and “Atlantic Blues” which starred in Kern’s film Lido Lady. But just as white songwriters responded to the blues, using flatted thirds and fifths and related harmonies in their melodies, black songwriters adapted their themes and tonality to the thirty-two-bar form. Black songwriters did not agree with white songwriters creating songs that involved jazz or the blues. These two genres of music were really important to black musicians because the songs they wrote represented their fight for