Research Note: Jazz, Radio, and Modernism

"The increased exposure to jazz by white listeners and dancers coincided with the emergence of radio broadcasting. Unlike the more regionally based companies operating out of Chicago, New York City hosted national music publishing and recording industries as well as the most powerful radio corporations. By the early 1930s, jazz had emerged as the predominant popular music of the United States, and the jazz scene in New York City during the 1920s generated much of this success."

Court Carney. Cuttin’ Up: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear, pages 78-79.

Research Note: Jazz, Radio, and Modernism

"Jazz music and the idea of a jazz culture (modern, yet primitive; technologically driven, but emotionally based) spoke to the ambiguities Americans felt about modern life and became the symbol of the age. However, a better, more pervasive symbol for the times is radio, since radio brought the events and trends of the era to individual Americans."

Charles J. Shindo. 1927 and the Rise of Modern America, pp. 137-138.

Click here to listen to an interview with Charles Shindo.

Research Note: Modernism

"The greatest uncertainty of the Modernist legacy is here: how can any historical sense remain relevant to a culture that has no respect for its own past? The physical restlessness of Chicago and New York, and the disappearance of so much that would be preserved in England, is a metaphor in some sense for the destruction of a whole series of past cultures. Modernism remains a radical movement because it urges what, in terms of American society, is little less than utopian."

Eric Homberger. "Chicago and New York: Two Versions of American Modernism," Modernism 1890 - 1930, Pelican guides to European literature,. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976.

Research Note: Jazz, Radio, & Modernism

"A black jazz fan, however, faced certain racial and financial obstacles that limited the available music. By the late 1920s, the popularity of radio helped erase some of these racial constraints on the city's jazz scene, and, though not completely colorblind. The broadcasting medium provided new opportunities (and a certain degree of anonymity) for black jazz bands. As audiences increased and diversified, jazz music challenged and changed American culture, and New York City stood at the center of this transformation."

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

Research Note: Jazz, Radio, & Modernism

"Much of the motivation for the Harlem Renaissance derived from [the] desire to be respected as artists. Likewise, the developing radio industry touted its potential to enlighten and educate the masses by bringing informative and culturally sophisticated entertainment to American's living rooms."

Charles J. Shindo. 1927 and the Rise of Modern America, pp. 137-138.

Click here to listen to an interview with Charles Shindo.

Research Note: Jazz, Radio, & Modernism

"The radio industry [...] served as the primary instrument in the creation of jazz as a national music, and the growing popularity of national broadcasts in 1926 coincided with the appearance of more jazz music on the air. By 1927, jazz had finally discovered a truly national audience, and radio surpassed earlier media as the primary transmitter of jazz music."

Court Carney, Cuttin’ Up: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear, page 91.

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.