Research Note: Jazz, Radio, & Modernism

"[The radio industry and the writers of the Harlem Renaissance] deepened the connection between jazz and modernism. As many Americans drifted away from 19th Century Victorianism, a new spirit of moral, cultural discontent framed intellectual debate. Writers directed much of this discourse, but jazz illustrated their prose assertions with its combination of folk tradition, African primitivism, and a musical potency detached from the previous century. As radio produced a larger national audience for a new music, and the writers of the Harlem Renaissance crafted a new language of Modernity, jazz came to define a decade, a generation, and a nation."

Court Carney, Cuttin’ Up: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear, pages 86-87.