Jazz music between world wars (Europe)

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Jazz Music between World Wars

The jazz craze in music during the 1920s reflected a general spirit of the times for many commentators like Seldes that this decade became known as the Jazz Age . Following World War I , jazz music certainly captured the popular imagination . The rapid popularity of jazz music led to its equally rapid spread among musicians . No other style up to this time in American popular music so quickly came to dominate popular performance . The

American vernacular , which had already made significant inroads into the commercial popular music market , had captured popular tastes at an unprecedented level , seemingly sweeping aside the old standards ' And just as ragtime and syncopated dance music became part of earlier commercial popular music , the dominance of jazz in the 1920s also represented a major triumph of the black vernacular in American popular music

The jazz craze began through the influence of non-professional musicians . While still marginal to most legitimate venues non-professional musicians performing the jazz vernacular were attracting audiences to clubs , theaters , restaurants , and were popular in the speakeasies of the 1920s . They also had opportunities for their music to reach a broader audience in a booming record market following World War I . Professional musicians , however , quickly adopted jazz music in their orchestras and smaller bands . They co-opted the jazz fever while simultaneously distancing themselves from non-professionals (Charters , 39-43 ) By occupying the most lucrative jobs in theaters dance halls , hotels , and other venues , professional musicians positioned themselves as the premier interpreters of this new vernacular idiom in commercial popular music . The common defense of jazz as good music during the Jazz Age embraced the professional musicians and professional composers who performed and created jazz music , not the non-professional musicians who first introduced it

In adopting jazz idioms , professional musicians were simply continuing the process of cultivating the American vernacular . Black professional musicians were already adopting black vernacular idioms in their music making in earlier syncopated society orchestras and simply adopted jazz idioms as well as the name in their jazz ' orchestras (Bushell 72-75 ) White professional musicians had performed rags as part of their repertoire in the past , but with the jazz craze , many were quick to adopt syncopated dance and jazz practices in some form as the defining style of their profession . White professional musicians also quickly followed black professional musicians in transforming their bands into jazz orchestras , and just as quickly claimed to be the modern proponents of this new American popular music . Black and white professional jazz orchestras in the 1920s established the basic instrumentation arrangement , and techniques of the big band dance orchestras that dominated American popular music until the 1950s

In the 1920s , an emerging new ideal of good music involved a balancing of the previous cultivated practices and cultivated music of professional musicians with popular vernacular idioms . The proper balance , however , was hotly debated . Professional musicians would constantly distance themselves from the pure vernacular of non-professional...