7Jazz and American Popular Culture

Abstract

Abstract The four books reviewed here deal with the role that jazz has played in the origins and evolution of American popular culture and society more generally. The common subtext is that jazz initiated a veritable cultural revolution, providing America with its first true musical art form, as well as igniting the slow process towards the acceptance of African Americans as artists and cultural innovators, becoming the musical voice of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The starting point of this revolution is the 1920s, appropriately named the Jazz Age, when it dawned on the young people of the era, who had embraced jazz as their own, that it was possible for all Americans to live and interact with each other on an equal footing, no matter their race, gender, or background. Jazz was rejected at first by the mainstream, denounced as disruptive of American values; but it eventually spread throughout the nation’s urban centers, providing the impetus for the emergence of a new and powerful form of culture, open to one and all—a culture that has shaped America ever since. As the books under review emphasize, albeit from different perspectives, a once condemned music ironically came forth to form the aesthetic backbone of American musical art. Moreover, there would be no distinctive American popular culture without jazz—both a musical and a social movement that continues to exert its influence to this day in America and, indeed, the world. This article is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction; 2. The Jazz Age; 3. Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement; 4. The Words of the Artists; 5. The Current State; 6. Conclusion.