MASS MEDIA AND THE JAZZ AGEIn the 1920s, the mass media provided information and entertainment as never before.

Beginnings of Hollywood in the 1920s

What’s that?

The Mass Media

Mass Media is print, film, and broadcast methods of communicating information to large numbers of people

Before the 1920s, the U.S. had been largely a collection of regional cultures. Most Americans simply did not know much about the rest of

the country, talk with people in other regions, or even read the same news as other Americans!

Films, nationwide news gathering, and the new industry of radio broadcasting produced the beginnings of a national culture Americans began to share the same information, read about

the same events, and encounter the same ideas and fashions

Few American women dressed in the flapper style or smoked and drank in public until the growth of mass media

Flapper

In the 1920s, the word "flapper" described a young woman who rebelled against convention. Like jazz music, the gangster, and the speakeasy, the rebellious and fun-loving flapper was a product of 1920s  urban America. Most American women were not flappers, but the flapper's shocking behavior set a tone that helped many women explore Jazz Age freedoms without fear." ~ Chicago Historical Society

Movies

Motion pictures introduced in the 1890s By 1929, movie making became the 4th

largest business in the country Theaters sold roughly 80 million tickets each

week when the total population was roughly 125 million- roughly 2/3 of the population attended the theater each week!

First sound film, The Jazz Singer, was released in 1927- included speech, singing, music, and sound effects. Referred to as “talkies”

Silent Film Star

Silent Film and Talkie Star

Newspapers

During the 1920s, newspapers increased both in size and in circulation.

Profits, not quality, drove most of the new newspaper chains that emerged and many, especially in the cities, published tabloids. Tabloid- a compact newspaper that relies on large

headlines, few words, and many pictures to tell a story.

The tabloids of the 1920s replaced serious news with entertainment that focused on fashion, sports, and sensational stories about crimes and scandals

Magazines

Also rose in sales during the 1920s Provided a variety of information in a form

that most people could easily digest. Advertisers often ran full page ads to

promote their products Favorites included:

Saturday Evening Post Reader’s Digest Ladies’ Home Journal Time

Radio

Barely existed before the 1920s 1920- Frank Conrad, an engineer with the

Westinghouse Electric Company, set up a radio transmitter in his garage in Pittsburgh

Began sending recorded music and baseball scores over the radio

Became the first commercial radio station- KDKA By 1922, more than 500 stations were on the air To reach more people, networks such as the National

Broadcasting Company (NBC) linked many individual stations together and each network played the same programming

THE JAZZ AGEThe Explosion of African American Culture

Introduction

Jazz Arrives

Grew out of the African American music of the South, especially ragtime and blues

Jazz- features improvisation, a process by which

musicians make up music as they are playing it rather than relying completely on printed scores

Syncopation- a type of off-beat rhythm Some Americans horrified by jazz- too suggestive

of the free manners and morals of the age Eventually embraced by people of all walks of life

Jazz Clubs and Dance Halls

One of the most popular places was Harlem, a district on the northern end of the island of Manhattan

Nearly all the great jazz musicians played in the Harlem clubs at one time or another

National fad- the Charleston Embodied the Jazz Age- wild and reckless,

full of kicks and twists and pivots Could be danced with a partner, in a group,

or alone

Jazz Musicians

Benny Goodman

“King of Swing” His “big band” helped make jazz popular

with white audiences His 1936 quartet, which included African

American musicians Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson, was the first popular racially mixed jazz group.

Quartet

Big Band

Louis Armstrong

Wowed audiences with his brilliantly improvised trumpet solos

Nicknamed “Satchmo” for Satchelmouth Because of Armstrong, long solos

became key elements of jazz ensemble performances

Also improvised with his voice, replacing words with nonsense syllables in a style known as “scat” singing

Louis Armstrong- Jeepers Creepers

Hot Five Ensemble

Edward Kennedy Ellington- “Duke” Ellington

Arranger, composer, and bandleader whose works are played widely to this day

In 1923, Ellington and several other musicians moved to NYC and formed a band. This band, under various names and in one form or another, continued to play with Ellington until his death at age 75

Wrote at least a thousand pieces in his long career

“Duke”- Mood Indigo

George Gershwin

Composer Mixed jazz elements into more familiar

sounding music Most famous for Rhapsody in Blue

Gershwin- Rhapsody in Blue

Basic form of this rhapsody came to Gershwin in a sudden rush of insight while riding a train

“I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America– of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness”

Painting and Literature

Jazz

Painting

Artists like Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kint Showed the nation's rougher side, from cities to coal mines, from the streets to the barrooms

Georgia O’Keeffe painted natural objects such as flowers, animal bones, and landscapes

Rockwell Kent

Workers of the World Unite, 1937

Wood engraving While most famously a

landscape painter and printmaker, Kent was also a political activist. Kent created prints for politically charged magazines and contributed illustrations for American literary classics including Moby Dick.

Edward Hopper

Chop Suey, 1929 Oil on canvas

Georgia O’Keeffe

Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills, 1935

Literature

Sinclair Lewis- attacked American society with savage irony and became the first American to receive the Nobel prize for literature

Eugene O’Neill- playwright who wove dark, poetic tragedies out of the material of everyday American life

Literature- The Lost Generation American society in the 1920s troubled one group

of important writers who rejected the quest for material possessions that seemed to occupy so many Americans. They scorned American popular culture as artless and uninspired

They were so repelled by postwar society that they left the U.S. for Europe and found it more intellectually stimulating.

Included writers such as Sherwood Anderson, E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some people believe he helped create the flapper culture with his novel This Side of Paradise

The Great Gatsby focused on the wealthy, sophisticated Americans of the Jazz Age whom he found to be self-centered and shallow.

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

African American Literary Awakening

James Weldon Johnson

Executive secretary of the NAACP Leading writer of the Harlem group

His most famous work, God’s Trombones, is a collection of sermons in rhythmic verse modeled after the style of traditional black preaching

Dorothy West

Tackled the dual themes of being black and being a woman

Langston Hughes

Poet, short story writer, journalist, and playwright whose career stretched into the 1960s

Spoke about the joys and difficulties of being human, being American, and being black

“I, Too” – Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong.

Tomorrow,I'll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody'll dareSay to me,"Eat in the kitchen,"Then.

Besides,They'll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

1.

William Randolph Hearst Newspapers Louis Armstrong Mass media

How related?

1. Hollywood

Newspapers were one type of mass media, and William Randolph Hearst was a publisher

2.

Jazz Harlem Hollywood Duke Ellington

How Related?

Hollywood

Duke Ellington was one of the many fine jazz musicians to play the clubs of Harlem in the 1920s

3.

Rhapsody in Blue Sinclair Lewis Main Street Nobel Prize for Literature

How Related?

Rhapsody in Blue

Sinclair Lewis, author of the novel Main Street, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930

4.

Lost Generation Gertrude Stein Ernest Hemingway George Gershwin

How Related?

George Gershwin

Ernest Hemingway was one of the group of expatriate writers known as the Lost Generation, a term coined by Gertrude Stein

5.

NAACP Georgia O’Keeffe Harlem Renaissance James Weldon Johnson

How Related?

Georgia O’Keeffe

James Weldon Johnson, a leading writer during the Harlem Renaissance, was also executive secretary of the NAACP