westeast | cover story
JAZZ
The
AGE
By Miguel Paolo Celestial
No other period approaches both
the greatness and the impermanence
of the Jazz Age as today, when
technology has reached another
peak, creativity flows freely from
unhampered individualism, and
society thrives on technological
developments. When all these
seem other than impermanent and
unstable.
New York—the Art Deco city of skyscrapers
and dazzling lobbies, theaters, jazz bars,
restaurants, and stylish gates and towers—
awakens slowly, deeply, from industrial and
mechanical dreams, or perhaps from vivid
fantasies of its dark and eclectic past.
It awakens, and the Empire State Building tantalizes
at dawn: a rousing giant, a beacon, which only a few
hours before was moored like a ship to the dark.
Perhaps New York, under its melting blanket of haze, was
dreaming of a great American ferment, way back between
the end of the first world war and the onset of the depression,
when the stock market soared, modernism captured every
remaining territory, and technology climbed like fresh sap through
industry.
Perhaps New York was remembering the beginning of one of the
great ages of its progress, when mornings like this emerged like
Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way”—against electric guitar and piano,
bass, and floating dreams: the sun of a smokeless skyline like the
face of a loved one gazing, singing softly with a voice still as the
ray of a single soprano sax.
THE ROARING TWENTIES AND THE JAZZ AGE
The years of the prosperous Roaring Twenties, or what is also
known as the golden Jazz Age, were bright with inventions,
discoveries, and innovations. Radio broadcasting gathered
audiences in living rooms and talking movies herded people into
theaters; mass-produced Ford Model T’s thronged the streets;
airline travel became the vogue; and mass communication through
the telephone was launched.
Technology and economic boom swept an America that was fast
outgrowing traditions. With evolutions in industry, the banners
of individualism, enjoyment, and pleasure were raised defiantly
against the wake of the misery, destruction, and decay of the
recent war.
Art and culture, revitalized by new possibilities of craft, grew the
flesh over girded glass and steel. Sinewy and sensual, the new
aesthetic called Art Deco was daring and calculated, with precise
design and spare ornament; was functional and beautiful, feisty
and tender.
Architecture, literature, cinema and theater, painting, dance,
fashion, and music thrived in this age, alongside the development
of sports, the expansion of civil rights and suffrage, and the
emancipation of women. But only one vein of gold ran from one
trend and crossed the rest. It was only the darkness of jazz—
shadow over stone, melancholy of the soul, rhythm of movement
and speech, shapes of emotions, and weave and pattern of courage
and hope—that held things together. Only jazz gave the verve of
identity to the lost post-war generation.
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SPIRITUALS AND THE BLUES
“I got stones in my passway
and all my roads seem dark at
night. I have pains in my heart...
I have a bird to whistle. I have a
bird to sing...”
(“Stones in My Passway” by Robert Johnson)
In the partial darkness of New York, the seat
of jazz bands, the limestone skyscraper of the
General Electric broods over green ponderings. At
its jagged setbacks, Art Deco style, night still sits.
Then at 749 Fifth Avenue, carefully, light caresses
the sharp and delicate designs at the façade of
Tiffany & Co.’s. shaped like silver suns. They are
peered into by the sunrise like gemstone mirrors.
Dim, the entrance to the Fred F. French Building
is still, but the classical figures at corner friezes
already glimmer.
The Art Deco structure and ornamentation of these
well-known New York buildings are as dark and
detailed before sunrise as the deep African musical
traditions before jazz, which include, among others,
spirituals and the blues.
Spirituals were the expressions of religious faith
of Christianized African slaves, who reinterpreted
the religion according to their own aspirations for
freedom, and combined this worship with their own
loud and lively musical and religious traditions of
communal shouts, chants, and field songs, producing
intricate harmonies of struggle, belief, forbearance,
overcoming, and hope.
Like spirituals, blues, in its early form, was comprised
of call-and-response shouts. As it is now known, the
blues is a combination of European musical structure
and the West African call-and-response tradition,
transformed into a conversation between voices and
instruments. Having “the blues” means having a fit of
the “blues devils”, or possessing “down” spirits. Thus,
the expression has referred to experiences of woe,
oppression, and sadness.
Robert Johnson, of whose song, “Stones in My
Passway”, was just quoted, was a (Mississippi) Delta
Blues musician considered to be the “Grandfather
of Rock and Roll”. Johnson sang and played with
painfully raw and spare emotion. His music was
simple and powerful, a dark naked cry for help:
“Standin’ at the crossroads…Didn’t nobody seem to
know me, everybody pass me by…the risin’ sun goin’
down I believe to my soul now…is sinkin’ down… Lord,
baby I’m sinkin’ down.” (Cross Road Blues).
“I gotta keep movin’. Blues fallin down like hail… And
the days keeps on worryin’ me, there’s a hellhound on
my trail.” (Hellhound On My Trail)
Only known through his records, Johnson was
surrounded by legend. Because he often referred to
the blues as “the devil”, the story was told that he
sold his soul to play sublime music. Another blues singer vulnerable as Robert
Johnson was 1930s vocalist Billie Holiday, considered among the greatest female
jazz singers, beside Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.
Her personal history scarred, her voice issues like wisps of weeping willow, like
strains of rain joining a flowing river. Slow ballads became Holiday’s signature.
Many called her voice lovingly sweet, weathered and experienced, sad and
sophisticated, as in her famous songs “Fine and Mellow” and “I Cover the
Waterfront”, which she could have sung about her difficult life “standing alone by
the desolate docks in the still and the chill of the night”.
RAGTIME
Above the marquee of the Radio City Music Hall, the heroes Theater, Dance,
and Music, depicted on plaques, shake out their magnificent garments in rich
blue, red, green, and gold coloring. The sun opens its eyes and their bodies
shine metallic.
The origins of jazz likewise trace to tinny European military band music, hillbilly
music, and other African musical traditions, including early twentieth century
ragtime.
Ragtime peaked in popularity between 1899-1918. Ahead of jazz, it is said to be
the first truly American musical genre. Like spirituals and the blues, it descended
from African-American music, originating from the jig and marches.
Scott Joplin was the “King of Ragtime”. He himself described the music “weird and
intoxicating”. His best known songs include “Maple Leaf Rag”, which is jumpy and
perky, debonair, with flair and ritz; and “Elite Syncopations”, a tirelessly playful
piece.
Already, before the genre even existed, Joplin used the word “swing” in describing
how to play ragtime. Hence, music that developed from it was categorized as
Swing.
SING, SWING, SING
As dark recedes from the peak of the Fuller Building, sunburst designs flash like
badges. New York enters day, leaving behind the sadness of Duke Ellington’s
“Sultry Sunset”. The city forsakes the desolation “Round Midnight”, when Miles
Davis’ trumpet conversed with John Coltrane’s sax: two lampposts at an empty
street.
The French Building sings as its bright bronze paneling and jaggedly geometric
terra-cotta decoration in Middle Eastern motifs dance in the light.
The Jazz Age danced its way into the Swing Era, which historians believe shimmied
from 1935-1946. The major characteristics of Swing are a strong rhythm, usually
with the double bass and drums, and fast, danceable tempo. Though swing music
had already been around since the twenties, it is asserted that the era began with
a specific performance of Benny Goodman’s band at the Palomar Ballroom on 21
August 1935, which brought swing to the rest of the country, and earning him the
recognition “King of Swing”.
Before this time, Paul Whiteman, the self-proclaimed “King of Jazz”, was the most
popular bandleader of the twenties, heading Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. He
was hugely responsible for revolutionizing the dance orchestra and dance music
after the war.
Whiteman’s Orchestra could be considered one of the first “Big Bands” made
popular in the Swing Era. Consisting approximately 12 to 19 musicians, big bands
contain saxophones, trumpets and trombones, drums, bass, the piano, and guitars.
Big bands were also referred to as jazz bands, stage bands, jazz orchestras, or
dance bands.
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Famous Big Band swing tunes include Benny Goodman’s definitive rendition of
“Sing, Sing, Sing”, which shines with energy, hot breath, sweat, booze, and smoke.
Goodman was also famous for the jazz pied piper of a song “In the Mood”.

Count Basie, jazz pianist, organist, and composer, also had his Count Basie
Orchestra, which by the middle of the 1950s became one of the leading big bands
for the finest jazz singers. Basie was famous for his teasing and sensual show tune
“One O’Clock Jump” and the youthfully vigorous “Jumpin’ at the Woodside”, touted
as one of Swing’s greatest.

Though also known for the succeeding jazz genre bebop, pianist and bandleader
Duke Ellington entered the scene at the beginning of the Big Band period. He is
regarded as one of the most important jazz composers in history.

Ellington is known for the swing standard “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got
That Swing”. The 1956 “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” likewise created a stir,
with straining trumpets, trilling saxophones, and a crashing piano.

Besides bandleaders, singers also rose to prominence in the Swing Era. Among
them was singer and trumpeter Louis Armstrong, a charismatic and innovative
performer, who had a major influence on jazz with his extensive improvisations
and scat singing—a kind of vocal improvisation where singers use nonsense
syllables to reproduce melodic lines. An example is “Heebie Jeebies”, which goes
something like: “Heebie, I mean the Jeebies...Don’t feel blue. Someone will teach
you… Keep-dap-doop..reep-beep-da-dood-a-roop.” Armstrong is also famous for
his memorable rendition of the gospel-song-turned-jazz-band-favorite “When the
Saints Go Marching In”.

Instrument players who honed their craft and perfected their personal styles drew
attention, especially when solo instrument parts began to gain more importance.

Sidney Bechet is said to have brought the saxophone to prominence. Bechet was
called “Le Dieu” (the god) in France. His “Petite Fleur” (Small Flower) is a piece
tender yet bitter, sultry with a hint of despair, like the lonely song of an estranged
lover in a deserted bar: the smoke of his cigarette filling out his sadness.

Another jazz player, Bix Beiderbecke, was a well-known cornet player, who brought
the influence of classical romanticism to jazz. His superb cornet playing was golden
and mellifluous, clean, heartfelt, and warm. In “Clarinet Marmalade”, Bix’s cornet is
sweet, and has a citrus and tangy tone perfect for a delicious dance. Elegant, the
song is slippery and bright as brass.

BEBOP

As the sun rises, heights are rebuilt by the light, floor by floor. Climbing the
old General Electric Tower, the sun grazes granite and glazed-brick figures
suggesting the power of electricity—silver detail of lightning bolts and birds
with long, sharp wings; lime green spires the color of patina; gold lining on
stone like electric currents; black rays surrounding grim headstones; and
windows like electrified honeycombs—until finally raised fists are grappled
with, extending to great lightning bolts raised against the sky.

The sun screams at the silver scale crescents of the Chrysler Building, at the
windows, at the chrome, steel, and nickel that challenge its prominence.

The rebellious bebop of the 1940s arose when several jazz musicians grew weary
of the sweet and ever-smiling Swing. In place of popular dance tunes, technical
improvisations were sought. Musicians harnessed new innovations, and returned
the rawness of jazz through complexity and unpredictability, even to the extent of
cantankerousness. Unlike Swing, bebop was nervous, fragmented, and sometimes
even furious.
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The word “bebop” is onomatopoeic of a characteristic jazz technique. It has the
same name as the swing-bebop crossover song by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. He
and saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker helped shift jazz from swing to the
more challenging bebop.
Some call Charles “Bird” Parker the “greatest saxophonist of all time”. Two of his
famous pieces are “Bird of Paradise” and “Ko-Ko”.
As with Parker, Dizzy Gillespie was a virtuoso musician. His piece “Groovin’ High”
is easy and jumpy, lighthearted as its composer. “Bebop”, on the other hand, is
unsteady, rapturous, and taut: the string of trumpet notes ready to break at any
moment. In comparison, Gillespie’s bebop standard “A Night in Tunisia” whistles
and dances around a bonfire with sparks flying, skirts twisting, and stars clapping
with brass hands.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, hard bop developed from bebop, incorporating
influences from R&B, the blues, and gospel music. Dizzy Gillespie’s music still
falls under hard bop, but the most prominent hard bopper is bandleader, pianist,
trumpeter, and composer John Coltrane.
Bebop standards falling under hard bop include John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”,
with smooth and volatile sax, and “Blue Train”, which is mainly about moods. Also
among these are the ragged “Impressions”, which is a storm of sensations melded
into a single trumpet–a mob of a song; and the confessional love testament
“I Want to Talk About You”.
Coltrane has other tender pieces, such as “Crescent”, which begins like an
epilogue of a long and memorable romance; “Naima”, which is tender and sweet,
unbeholden to any possessive desire; and “Aisha”, a piece perhaps about young
love, recalling faintly happy past days.
PROHIBITION
It is broad daylight. Inside the El Dorado Apartment Building are exceptional
murals with warm tones and rich illustrations of what can be playful nymphs,
Nereid, and a Bacchus.
“Stay away from me coz I’m in my sin.
If this joint is raided somebody give my gin.
Don’t try me nobody coz you will never
win... I’ll fight the army and navy.
Somebody give me my gin.”
(“Gin House Blues” by Nina Simone)
There is still one former speakeasy existing in New York City: Chumley’s at 86
Bedford Street. It retains its original decoration, with Art Deco inspired table
lamps. Typical of speakeasies, there are no signs outside to indicate that there is
a bar within. There is even a secret back door so that customers could easily exit
when police came.
Speakeasies became popular and numerous during the years of the Prohibition.
It is in such places that bootlegged liquor was served, jazz musicians entertained
and suffused the smoky air with Swing and the blues, and “flappers” danced the
Charleston and Breakaway.
It was in speakeasies that the Lost Generation, chronicled by F. Scott Fitzgerald
in his novels, asserted and flaunted their rebellion and scorn for tradition. These
rooms were heady with the seething atmosphere of continuous change and the
certainty of greater prosperity.
THE METROPOLIS
Sheltered from the sun, the interior of Chanin Building at 122 East 42nd Street
dazzles. At its lobby are finely and exquisitely designed light fixtures. Inspired
from French styles are fantastic bronze grilles and relief with zigzags and
spirals, windmill stars, filigree, sunrays, arms of smoke, and muscular human
figures of strength and vigor. Running above the storefront level is an amazing
bronze frieze of a simplified story of evolution: amoeba swimming to become
jellyfish, then fish, then geese: all of these rushing forth like the men and
women along Wall Street at rush hour.
“All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth
Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and
attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow’s length ahead
of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the
dazzling air before they reached his ear.”(“The Beautiful and Damned” by
F. Scott Fitzgerald)
With the economy surging in the Roaring Twenties, incomes increased and
consumerism became a culture. In “Smack Dab in the Middle”, Count Basie’s
Orchestra proclaims: “So I can rock and roll to satisfy my soul, with ten Cadillacs,
a diamond mill, ten suits of clothes to dress to kill, a ten room house, some
barbeque…”
In 1950, from the acute and angular music of hard bop, trumpeter, bandleader,
and composer Miles Davis released “Birth of the Cool”, a jazz album like a sleek
and fast car. It was still in the range of bebop, but without the sharp edges. Some
consider it to fall under the genre Cool Jazz.
“Birth of the Cool” tells the plot of the metropolis, is a collection of interesting
urban stories. Listening to the piece “Move” is like hearing a fast approaching
parade: the ray of trombone and strains of horn under Davis’ lively trumpet. “Moon
Dreams” glimmers in the light of the alto and baritone saxophones, surrounded by
trombone darkness and cymbal chill. “Deception” tells like a story of a middle-aged
woman in her fur and Art Deco print, eluding glances from the crowd of brasses
and percussion, confiding only to the tenor saxophone.
THROUGH TRAFFIC
At the entrance to the City Bank Towers Trust Company Building are several
bronze doors bearing sleek depictions of various forms of transportation:
locomotive trains, ships, and planes—centerpieces of octagons and squares
surrounded by crests, flowers, and small copper-colored studs.
“ ‘Oh it isn’t that I mind the glittering caste
system,’ admitted Amory. ‘I like having a bunch
of hot cats on top, but gosh, Kerry, I’ve got to be
one of them.’ ”
(“This Side of Paradise” by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
As the style of Art Deco imbibed the personality of industry and commerce,
paintings during the Jazz Age reflected the era’s values. Schools of art such as
Fauvism, Futurism, and Cubism influenced Deco visuals.
One remarkable painter of this period was Polish-born Tamara De Lempicka, who
lived in Paris during the Roaring Twenties as a bohemian.
She painted strong and sensual figures, including businessmen, scientists, and
royalty. In her “Auto-Portrait”, she depicted herself in the latest 20s fashion, with
steely eyes and driving a green car. She created portraits of men depicted with
exaggeratedly wide shoulders; tall, serious, and tense. She presented women
holding lilies—strong and supple flowers, pure and rich, as in “Calla Lilies”—with
shawls flowing, blown by the wind. De Lempicka showed strong sexuality,
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as that of women in rich furs as serious and intense as the men she
painted; they are also set against backdrops of the city.
Faces are soft or angular. Garments and cloth meanwhile flow
sensuously in her canvas, as smoothly as the metal of automobiles.
There was always strength and power in her pieces, masculinity and
femininity in distinct breeds.
In 1959, amidst the traffic and the confusion of artworks and many
jazz styles, Miles Davis released what was to be his and perhaps the
entire jazz industry’s best-selling album, “Kind of Blue”. Categorized
under Cool Jazz, it is freely melodic and deceptively simple. It is in
fact as exquisite as a haiku.
Miles Davis’ trumpet is rebellious in the piece “So What”, which
includes the dashing tenor sax of John Coltrane and the ebullient
piano of Bill Evans. With piano, trumpet, sax, and drums, “Freddie
Freeloader” loiters in side streets and back alleys, empty hand in
pocket, and slips past the eye of strict authority, while his double
bass sidekick struts and pouts at the police. The piano of Evans
and the bass of Chambers form the foliage of “Blue in Green”, while
Davis’ trumpet and Coltrane’s sax compose the thick darkness. One
of the smoothest in jazz, “All Blues” is a trilled rushing sea of song.
Lastly, “Flamenco Sketches” is the rain of the alto and tenor sax
flooding the song’s Iberian night.
FUSION
The stone walls of the Rockefeller Plaza come alive with
allegorical figures. Above the main entrance of 30 Rockefeller
is the relief “Wisdom with Light and Sound”, with Wisdom as
the noble Zeus and Sound and Light as a man and a woman,
both athletic and strong, exuding the vitality of change. Also at
Rockefeller Plaza are Pegasus, Atlas, and Prometheus.
“Amory talked with an ingenious
brilliance of a thousand impulses
and desires and repulsions and faiths
and fears.”
(“This Side of Paradise” by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
After so many styles that have developed from jazz, only
improvisation remains characteristic of it, stays its key element.
In the late 1960s, a new form of jazz was developed, called Fusion.
It is the genre that merges jazz with other musical styles, like funk,
rock, R&B, and electronica. It fully utilizes musical improvisations
through the use of old and newly available instruments, motifs,
recording and editing studios, and various electronic effects.
Again Miles Davis came ahead in this new genre, releasing two
consecutive fusion albums: in 1968, the subtly sublime “In a Silent
Way”, to be followed in 1969 by the phenomenal “Bitches Brew”.
When it was released, “Bitches Brew” roiled immediate controversy
because of its boldness and its agility of innovation, its essential
visionary savagery. In the album, Davis mixed free jazz with dancing
funk, electric rock, blues, and his own musical breakthroughs. He
wove multiple tones and rhythms with volatile chords to achieve
complete power over emotion.
Down the fantastic sands of a desert at dusk or in the dark
corners of bars and performing joints, the piece “Pharaoh’s Dance”
thrives. Built on the soil of the muted beat of drums, the bass, and the conga,
the song strikes in psychedelic outbursts, electronic ideas and affectations. The
song, together with the other pieces of the album, is Davis’ chronicle into the
formerly incommunicable dark dreams of jazz. It is the funk-influenced, dissonant
interpretation of the subconscious of swing; it is bebop spelled backwards.
“Pharaoh’s Dance” threatens and thunders, falls into pitch, only to reemerge
undistracted and majestic.
Next comes the title song, “Bitches Brew”, which is an incantation of trumpets
and the echoes of trumpets, a divination through the skeletal chords of
the bass, the magic of the wings of electric piano, and the ramblings of
shaker and percussions—a primal conversation with the feline.
As unpredictable as “Bitches Brew”, “Spanish Key” begins with the
suspense before an illicit act set by tempting drums and electric
bass, demonic guitar and bass clarinet, and tense electric
piano. The guitar goads, chides, lures, and ridicules. The sax
vacillates, gives in, and is surrounded, weeping release.
Lastly, “Sanctuary” is another retelling, which begins with
the lonely sigh of a soprano sax. Electric piano, drums,
shaker, and guitar console her as the memory of pain
and loss is unfurled. Lost emotions are rediscovered.
In one brief moment, anguish crowds the throat of the
saxophone and she lets out a trumpet wail.
ART DECO’S BIRDSONG
“ ‘Those big movies around
Fiftieth Street are cool,’
suggested Jordan.
‘I love New York on summer
afternoons when every one’s
away. There’s something very
sensuous about it -overripe, as
if all sorts of funny fruits were
going to fall into your hands.’“
(“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Under afternoon suns, birds sing like saxophones, cornets, and
trumpets. They sound like Sidney Bechet’s “Weary Way Blues”,
which is carried by the wind; like Duke Ellington’s intent siren
song “Creole Love Call”; and like Miles Davis’ otherworldly “Shhh/
Peaceful”, an esoteric jazz lullaby, a sax nightingale singing across
the vast percussion Milky Way.
Birdsong is not only alive in jazz; it is also evident in the patterns,
symmetries, textures, and designs of the Art Deco period, especially of Art
Deco textiles. Melody, harmony, and rhythm guide both the stark and elaborate
designs of these fabrics; there are notes and chords in beautiful shapes and lines.
The exoticism of floral and animal prints, ferns and vines, fruits and butterflies
only comes alive through the singing vibrancy of color: of ruby, orange, royal blue,
and buttercup.
The term “Art Deco” came from the 1925 International Exposition of Modern
Industrial and Decorative Arts in France. Participating in this exposition were
pattern makers and painters who sold their designs to textiles manufacturers.
These artworks and designs were inspired by a variety of sources, including the
art schools that influenced Tamara De Lempicka’s paintings. But even way before
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1925, it is said that it was the flamboyant Ballets Russes, established in Russia in
1909, that was the catalyst for the Art Deco movement.
Art Deco became the meeting of cultures, where designs were drawn both from the
“primitive” or exotic arts of the ancient world, Africa, Egypt, Indian America, and
Asia and from the forms and geometries introduced by industry through machines,
transportation, technology, and infrastructure. Design and material elements of
the Art Deco architecture for New York buildings previously mentioned drew from
this pool of inspiration.
But the Art Deco textile houses of France were not only inspired by these designs,
compositions, and colors, they were also empowered by new technology in the
creation of dyes and artificial fibers, in weaving, and in silk-screen printing.
Inevitably, these developments in Art Deco textiles led to changes in clothing,
which were epitomized in the Art Deco fashion created by Coco Chanel and
Madeleine Viviene, and as popularized by the chirping “flappers”.
FASHION, FLAPPERY, AND FREEDOM
“Noon would come—she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede,
her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a stroke
of the wind’s brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air—and
the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would divide, fifty masculine
eyes would stare, as she gave back forgotten dreams to the husbands of many
obese and comic women.” (“The Beautiful and Damned” by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“There used to be two kinds of
kisses: First when girls were kissed
and deserted; second, when they
were engaged. Now there’s a third
kind, where the man is kissed and
deserted.”
(This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Development in textiles brought Art Deco into
the street. In offices, shops, drinking houses and
restaurants, in the cities and in the movies, and in the
dresses worn by shop girls, new designs and patterns
could be seen. New tastes were cultivated.
In the 1920s, as women gained the right to vote,
they threw away their corsets and pantaloons and
put on short skirts, dropped waistlines, pantsuits,
and straight and loose dresses, similar in shape to
Japanese kimonos. They bobbed their hair, powdered
and put on rouge, and topped their looks with cloche
hats. This new breed of women, who now dressed
androgynously, drank hard liquor, smoked tobacco,
rode bicycles and drove cars, and probably had jobs,
have become known as the “flappers”—the term
simply meaning young women who went out on dates
without a chaperone.
1920s fashion, flapper or otherwise, was also much influenced by Gabrielle “Coco”
Chanel, who launched the influential Chanel suit in 1923, which was comprised
of a knee-length skirt and an angular jacket, traditionally made of woven wool
and worn with large costume pearl necklaces. Chanel also popularized the “little
black dress”, which was versatile enough for day or evening wear. She was also
famous for her minimal costume jewelry, which included brooches, buckles, and
clips inspired by African and Cuban figures and styles.
In the twenties, women were not merely given the choice to wear what they
wanted; because they earned incomes of their own and were able to vote, they
gained more social, economic, and participative freedom. Outside of their
restrictive homes, they earned confidence.
LIBERATION
“Mr. Backlash, just who do think I am? You
raise my taxes, freeze my wages and send my
son to Vietnam. You give me second-class houses
and second-class schools. Do you think that all
colored folks are just second-class fools?”
(“Backlash Blues” by Nina Simone)
Jazz was born from the aspirations of the African-American race. Even in its
inception, jazz was born of struggle: it began from stories and aspirations of free
people of color, of whose cutting memory of slavery was still very fresh, and who
even after gaining freedom, experienced much oppression and discrimination. This
is the very first source jazz drew from, a source that was dark, deep, and painful.
In the late 1930s, Billie Holiday was introduced to a song telling of such an
experience, entitled “Strange Fruit”. It is about the lynching of a black man.
Holiday said that the images of the song reminded her of her father’s death, and
that this experience played a role in her persistence to perform it at Café Society
in 1939, at a time when retaliation was not impossible.
Nina Simone, an intense and mercurial performer of jazz, the blues, and other
genres, later sang a cover of “Strange Fruit”. She also participated in this struggle
with pieces such as “Four Women”, “To be Young, Gifted, and Black”, and “I Wish
I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”. Besides Simone, John Coltrane also had his
haunting “Alabama”, a page from the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
This dynamic of liberation alive in the preceding songs, was similar to the force,
that together with the native tradition of innovation, pushed ragtime, spirituals,
and the blues to develop into jazz—into swing, bebop, and fusion—to enable new
expression.
Jazz begins with pain and despair, creeps through to hope through dance and
song, and unfurls with the fullness of life and its many forms with the passion
known only to those that have been deprived it. Jazz is sublime, lyrical, and soulful
because it is inseparable from life; it embraces it. It is the most honest, frank, and
vulnerable among the musical genres.
Industrial innovators, the Lost Generation, women, and artists identified with the
spirit of change and rebelliousness intrinsic in the craft and the history of jazz. It
has become an inspiration for every age in the overcoming of struggles.
These are what make jazz music modern and relevant.
The Jazz Age was the time for development, emancipation, expression and
innovation, and equal rights. It was the time of liberation.