The jazz avant-garde in the American economy

Abstract

Jazz originated and evolved in a free market economy and complex mutual relations with unregulated social conjuncture. Coping with social challenges during the Progressive era (1890-1920) contributed to the partial emancipation of marginalized groups; however jazz, in its first decades, remained directed to the general need for mass entertainment (the "jazz era" in the 1920s). The artistic development of jazz was therefore temporarily delayed during the economic crisis, Great Depression and the new recession of the late 1930s (1929-1938). The first movement in jazz that could be considered to be an art for art's sake, while renouncing any populist elements, appeared in 1939 Coleman Hawkins' Body and Soul recording. Market and social conditions for the emergence of the avant-garde began to mature only during the years after 1945, within a new business cycle in the US economy. The prosperous and conformist decade of the 1950s stabilized the middle class and directed general social preferences towards the benefits of higher education. European immigration from the inter-war period, and a new wave of immigration at the end of the Second World War enabled the growth of American universities in terms of quality and social influence. Universities recruited the jazz avant-garde audience, and supported other progressive art movements in the 1960s "decade of turbulence, protest, and disillusionment". Thanks to market support, the jazz avant-garde managed to survive free of the influences of state institutions, as John Coltrane's Love Supreme, often listed amongst the greatest jazz albums of all time, was sold in about 500,000 copies by 1970. A similar development, with the emergence of the baby-boom generation in the late 1960s, has contributed to the maturing of European avant-garde audiences and markets (ECM, 1969). The study will also examine avant-garde movements in relation to historical changes in economic and social disparities, from the thirties to the early 1970s.