Jazz Age Research Paper

THE JAZZ AGE DEFINITION The period that in the U.S. extended roughly from the Armistice of 1918 to the stock-market crash of 1929 and was notable for increased prosperity, liberated or hedonistic social behavior, Prohibition and the concomitant rise in production and consumption of bootleg liquor, and the development and dissemination of jazz and ragtime and associated ballroom dances JAZZ DEFINITION Jazz is a musical tradition and style of music that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American
popular music. Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note. The word "jazz" (in early years also spelled "jass") began as a West Coast slang term and was first used to refer to music in Chicago in about 1915. WHY THE 1920S WAS CALLED THE JAZZ AGE?
It relates to Jazz music which symbolically represents the changing cultural structure of the jazz age. Jazz is a lively and improvisational style of music which relates to the jazz age in which socially society became more lively itself. Jazz was introduced by African Americans which also suggest that the jazz age is an era of cultural acceptance. FLAPPERS "Flapper" in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. Flappers had their origins in the period of liberalism, social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of the First World War, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe. END OF THE FLAPPER ERA: Despite its popularity, the flapper lifestyle and look could not survive the Wall Street Crash and the following Great END OF Depression. The high-spirited attitude and hedonism simply could not find a place amid the economic hardships of the
1930s. PROHIBITION Prohibition was the political forbiddance of producing, transporting and selling alcoholic beverages. The Eighteenth Amendment was imposed in 1917 and was abolished in 1933. It was known as the National Prohibition Act. This act was enforced by the government assuming that it would help reduce criminal actions like homicide, assault and battery. Furthermore they hoped to reduce poverty and to improve economy and the quality of life. GREAT MIGRATION The Great Migration refers to the widespread migration of African Americans in the 20th century from rural communities in the South to large cities in the North and West. At the turn of the 20th century, the vast majority of black Americans lived in the Southern states. From 1916 to 1970, during this Great Migration, it is estimated that some 6 million black Southerners relocated to urban areas in the North and West. African Americans moved north to escape the rural poverty and racial prejudice of the Jim Crow South, and to find better work opportunities in northern industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York City.