PRT - The Jazz Age (Lesson)
The Jazz Age
What a Wonderful World
by Louis Armstrong
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you
I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world
Jazz
Jazz is widely considered to be the first truly American music form. The Roaring Twenties is also known as the Jazz Age because of the prominence of the music during of the period. Jazz was established in the American South and was born from blues roots. New Orleans is widely considered to be the birthplace of jazz and home to one of its most famous musicians, Louis Armstrong. Armstrong not only was a notable jazz trumpeter and musician, but he also became the face of jazz music and an African American icon to many Americans. Armstrong served as an ambassador to jazz music and African American culture as a whole. Other famous jazz musicians included Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith.
Jazz was influential in musical theatre with the input from Cole Porter and the Gershwin Brothers. Ultimately, jazz spread more rapidly to become an American tradition because of the invention and widespread availability of radio.
Listen to Gerswhin's Rhapsody in Blue. Links to an external site.
Louis Armstrong by World-Telegram staff photographer - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division, Public Domain.
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance brought attention to the African American experience in the United States. The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and cultural movement which focused the nation’s attention to the collective cultural contributions of African Americans.
The movement was named after Harlem, the ethnic community in New York City, that was the epicenter of the cultural explosion. Over time this area had become an ethnically segregated community of former slaves and free blacks as well as those of African descent from communities of the Caribbean. The Harlem Renaissance was the first time that African Americans’ art, music and literature was appreciated. Langston Hughes, a famous poet and author of the Harlem Renaissance, produced poetry whose prose mimicked the pace of jazz music. The physical center of jazz and the Harlem Renaissance was the famous Cotton Club, a Harlem nightclub which exposed outsiders to the impact of the movement and African American society in the United States. Finally the African American community had a collection of cultural masterpieces of which it could be proud.
Review
Below is Langston Hughes’ poem: “A Dream Deferred.” Can you complete the poem?