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Jazz music
The origins of Jazz go back to the discovery of America in 1492. To build up a new existence, the white settlers began with the cruel enslavement of Africans. When black people were taken to the New World they took their traditions and also their music with them, which was very rhythmical and sounded different from the music Europeans and Americans were used to listening to, especially because of its complex harmonic pattern.
Black people sang their songs in groups, when working in the fields or going to church. As they learnt to play musical instruments, their songs were transformed into music.
Jazz songs reveal inner thoughts, expose hidden fears, lay all the emotions bare. They do talk about all aspects of life. It is a musical form of anger at discrimination and hardship. Out of black poverty and humiliation came a music of incredible richness, a cause for unlimited pride. Jazz was an expression of black desire for both freedom and satisfying personal relationships.
The term "Jazz" is said to have been created in 1914 in Chicago, where a certain band from New Orleans played in a bar - the unaccustomed sound was described as "peppy" and named "jass" by some musicians. By the 1920s, "jass" was softened to "jazz", and the name stuck.
The Jazz Age, which started in May 1918, brought about one of the most rapid and pervasive changes in manners and morals the world has ever seen, changes that we are still wrestling with today. It was a period when the younger generation - men and women alike - was rebelling against the values and customs of their parents and grandparents. After all, the older generation had led thousands of young men into the
most brutal and senseless war in human history, and when they came back, they were determined to have a good time.
Often regarded as scandalous by the rural, conservative America, jazz bands provided the soundtrack for the cultural revolution using for the first time an new and in a way critically regarded instrument - the saxophone.
This instrument has been called the zeitgeist of the post - war age, and it has also been known to provoke close intimate dancing. Then the shocking sound of the "sax" (coincidentally close in pronunciation to "sex") made it a focus for the growing body of puritanical moralists, blaming its sound for the increasingly rebellious younger generation.
With recording improvements and the help of national radio, the relatively new jazz sound quickly spread and it influenced America, realizing special prominence in the urban centres. Many of the most sophisticated clubs featured famous Jazz Bands. Jazz soon became synonymous with hooch, intimate dancing and other socially questionable activities.
Lifestyle
The "Roaring Twenties" - a time where the saxophone replaced the violin, a time where skirt hemlines went up and corsets came off. Women started smoking, and prohibition, which was supposed to stop drinking, only reshaped it into secret fun. The public saloon, now illegal, was replaced by the private cocktail party, and men and women began drinking together. Hoodlums became millionaires in a few months by controlling the bootleg liquor business, and glamorous parties were given everywhere.
Many wealthy Americans lived this period of Jazz and Fun as such. They rode down Fifth Avenue on the tops of taxis, they drank too much and passed out in corners, they drove recklessly and gave weekend parties, which were visited by parvenus as well as by descendants of rich families and lasted until the hours of Monday morning.
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