Chapter 23 Early Development of Jazz: 1890-1917: Essay Essay
Below, please summarize and explain the African-American influence on early jazz after
reading this chapter's passage, please cite evidence from the passage to support your
response (1-page minimum)!

For nearly the first half of the twentieth century, from about 1915 to 1955, jazz was the dominant form of popular dance music in the United States. Dance music and dance bands existed before jazz and, after the rise of jazz, there were still many dance bands that did not play jazz or used jazz elements only sparingly. And although for a certain period of its existence, jazz was dance music, jazz musicians were probably not attracted to this style of music primarily for this reason. From its earliest days, jazz seemed to have been music that, in part, musicians played for themselves, as a way to free themselves from the rigidity of standard dance or marching bands or other forms of commercial or popular music, which they found repetitive and unchallenging to play.

Jazz originated early in the century with small bands of five-to-seven players in a style that became known as New Orleans, named after the place where the music, in its first iteration, codified itself. That style is now called Dixieland. Jazz was propelled commercially mostly by 12-to-15 piece big bands, usually with both a male and female vocalist, in a style that became known as swing during the 1930s. Swing was built around highly rhythmic riffs with strong soloists providing “breaks” or moments of spirited improvisation against backdrops of arranged composition. With the rise of Jazz evolved from New Orleans style music, now called Dixieland, to more commercially successful swing music, which featured improvisation against a background of arranged composition.swing, band arrangers became as important as band soloists and it was much more necessary for musicians to know how to read a score than it was in the earlier days of jazz. Some swing bandleaders became noted celebrities during jazz’s heyday like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmie Lunceford, the Dorsey Brothers, Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, and a score of others. Jazz also produced its share of star soloists by the 1930s including trumpeter Louis Armstrong, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, clarinetist and saxophonist Sidney Bechet, saxophonist Lester Young, pianist Art Tatum, pianist and singer Fats Waller, drummer Gene Krupa, and trumpeters Harry James, Roy Eldridge, and Bix Beiderbecke. It is clear that despite its humble origins among the lower classes, immigrants, and African Americans, jazz was never really a folk music; it professionalized and standardized itself fairly quickly, becoming highly sophisticated show and stage music within a half-dozen years of its initial arrival on sound recording in 1917. By 1924, bandleader Paul Whiteman was sponsoring a history of jazz concert that featured the premiere of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” as an example of symphonic jazz.

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