The Jazz Age

Hallmarks of the Jazz Age 1920s

Black migration from the South to Northern

cities
Harlem Renaissance
Optimism
Construction and growth
Prohibition
The Lost Generation (Gertrude Stein)
 Prohibition 1920-1933
18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture
and sale of alcoholnot drinking.
Wets vs. Drys
People found ways around the law
Bootlegging
Medicine
Rise in underground crime
 The Harlem Renaissance
The New Negro Movement (Alain Locke)
Numerous Black magazines that focused on art and social
issues.
African-American churches and businesses bought up large
amounts of real estate in Harlem
The South was still a place of inequality for Blacks.
Jim Crow laws said that the races were separate but equal.
Many black men had been treated with equality while serving
overseas in Europe but came home to racism.
There was competition for jobs after the War.
Also, people of African descent from the Caribbean migrated
to Harlem.
Marcus Garvey: Back to Africa movement
 W.E.B. DuBois
Believed all people of African descent should
unite.
1st African American to get a doctorate
Opposed to Black leaders who advocated
working with Whites in a compromising
fashion. (Booker T. Washington/Atlanta
Compromise)
Editor of NAACP magazine
The Souls of Black Folk
African Americans have an issue of
double conscience.
 If We Must Die
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American
writer
Black soldiers were not treated equally in the
War, and were given lower rung jobs. Often,
it was difficult for them to become officers.
Buffalo Soldier
The poem was used in WWII, but Churchill
probably did not know the original meaning
of the poem.
 Langston Hughes
Jazz poetry is inspired by the form and rhythms of jazz.
Hughes, and many other artists and writers had spent
time in Paris.
A Raisin in the Sun
The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

--My People" in Crisis (October 1923)[

 Zora Neale Hurston
Lived in Eatonville
The only black student at Columbia
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Criticized for her use of dialect
Established drama school at Bethune
Cookman
Zora! Festival is held in Eatonville each year
 Jazz
Fitzgerald referred to the 20s as the Jazz
Age
Originated in New Orleans, and it a uniquely
American music form.
Inspired by Ragtime and Blues, African and
European music
Syncopated rhythms and improvisation
Contains elements of African drum music
and clapping (slaves were not allowed to
have drums.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whN5PXs
rP6E
 Blues
Blues:
Blue Note is flat and scoops

Ma Rainey
Bessie Smith
Often describes being downtrodden or
lovesick
Call and Response
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRwXVNt0i
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 Dixieland
Trumpets and clarinets join the banjo and
drums
Scat
Call and response
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFpI97C
3as0
 Swing
The Cotton Club opened in Harlem
The new format of radio brought music into
homes
Big Bands with a large horn section
Duke Ellington
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQpZT3
GhDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmfeKUN
DDYs
Vocalists
 Visual arts
Combine rhythms found in music, folk art,
African style, and story telling.
Aaron Douglas
 Art Deco

Influenced by Art Nouveau, cubism, Egyptian

art, futurism, modernism, and even Aztec
We had found Tuts tomb.
Steel, chrome, lacquer
Cantilevers and sunbursts
Wood inlay
 Architecture
Louis Sullivan developed the skyscraper in
Chicago
Made possible by new materials and
technology.
Form follows function.
They continually tried to make the largest
and tallest buildings.
Enabled migrations to cities.
Represent power through height
New York Skyscrapers
Empire State Building (originally had a
mooring for dirigibles)
1931
Chrysler Building (1930)
Frank Lloyd Wright: Falling
Water
 Frnak Lloyd Wright
Organic architecture that incorporates nature
and the outdoors, instead of separating from
the indoors.
Open, communal living spaces.
Buildings should reflect their owners
originality
 American Novels
Great Gatsby-F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Glorifies the Roaring 20s, flappers, and the
American Dream of wealth
 Ernest Hemingway

Celebrates masculinity, the romance of war, hard

drinking, and the community of expatriates.
He had been an ambulance driver in WWI where he
was wounded
Part of Parisian artistic community
Hemingway was a reporter in the Spanish Civil War
and WWII.
Was in TWO plane crashes while on safari in Africa
The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old
Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms.
Committed suicide
Georgia OKeeffe
 Silent Film

Movie people moved to Hollywoodland

Attracted a large Jewish population
The weather in CA was good, land was cheap,
and they were far away from technology
monopolies in the East.
The monopolies tried to restrict the use,
distribution, and content of film.
California had lax enforcement of patent laws.
 Studio system and stars
Fox, MGM, RKO, Warner Bros., Paramount,
Universal, Columbia, United Artists
Studios put actors under contract and paid
them a flat rate.
Arrangements with distributors overseas
spread American culture through the
medium of film.
Horror, Westerns, Romance, Comedies,
Slapstick, Gangsters
Eventually, studios bought movie theaters
also, so they could control the price of
tickets.
 Stars

At first, actors names were not listed.

Mary Pickford was the first star, and made
$10,000 a week. Eventually, she helps to
found UA.
Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Greta
Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney.
City Lights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cq82T
wdDEg
 Avant Garde in film
German Expressionism
Surrealism
Metropolis Fritz Lang 1927
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSExdX0
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