What Made Jazz Music Popular In The 1920s

Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of Sources This investigation will focus on answering the question: what were the essential factors that lead to the creation and popularity of Jazz music in the 1920s? The years 1918-1929 will be the primary years of investigation. The investigation will not focus prior to 1918 because jazz music had not evolved out of Rag time yet and because the year marked the end of World War one, and ultimately a revival in America’s culture. The investigation will not look past 1929 because Jazz music started to evolve into Big Band music and the decade in exploration had ended. The first source used in the investigation is Henry Martin and Keith Water’s Jazz: The First 100 Years. The authors of this book are
Collier is an American history professor, with a focus on the early twentieth century, at the University of Connecticut. This source is valuable since it provides information on how different groups felt about jazz music, including multiple perspectives, during the twentieth century which helped evaluate what made jazz music popular in the 1920s.Yet, the source is limited in that it does not explain the popularity of jazz music in relation to other forms of music in the years of investigation. Thus, other sources were necessary to determine what made jazz more popular than other
For example, the Juvenile Protection Agency an organization meant to teach morality to teenagers) was humiliated after the organization established a backfiring code. The agency pushed for moral respectability by urging fast tempo music in order to eliminate “immoral” slow dances, such as the toddle and the shimmy. Jazz musicians conformed and music added faster tempos. As a result, Jazz music became more versatile and popular. (Martin and Waters 57) The progressives were again humiliated when Jazz music influenced the Charleston dance, which many conservatives viewed to be more immoral than the previous slower dances. (Martin and Waters 103) Also, racists despised the growing popularity of jazz music in America. With the Klu Klux Klan at its peak in the 1920s, the country regained an obsession with racial purity. As a result, racists hated the intermingling of African-Americans and Whites associated with jazz culture. (Collier 85) Also, since jazz music spread to cities faster than rural lands, it reached Russia before all Americans were exposed to the genre. And as a result of the red scare, some Americans despised jazz because the growing popularity in Russia and some Russian “communist” musicians. (Peretti 28) Yet, historians who believe that jazz music was despised or even unpopular in the 1920s are persuaded by the myths developed by extremist