Download Ch. 20 S2 Mass Media and Jazz Age Notes

1920s were greatly shaped by the introduction of mass media
and the Jazz Age
 New and improved methods of film, print, and
broadcasting created the birth of mass media,
communication with large audiences.
 Film and radio broadcasting became more popular
during the era.
 Between 1910 to 1930 the
number of movie theaters
rose from 5,000 to 22,500.
 Moviemaking became
the fourth largest business
in the country by 1929.
 Hollywood became
moviemaking capital of
America.
 Early movies were silent,
The Jazz Singer becomes
the first successful sound
film, a “talkie”.
 Newspaper print and circulation
roughly doubled between 1914
and 1927.
 Profits, not quality, drove
newspaper publishers.
 Tabloids, papers with large
headlines, few words and many
pictures, became popular.
 William Randolph Hearst said he
wanted 90% entertainment, 10%
information.
 Magazines also rose in popularity
 Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s
Digest, and Time
 In 1920, engineer Frank Conrad set up a radio
transmitter in his garage and began sending recorded
music and baseball scores over the radio.
 Response was so positive it became the first commercial
radio station, Pittsburgh KDKA.
 By 1922, there were more than 500 stations on the air.
“(Jazz was) an expression of the times, of the breathless,
energetic, super active times in which we are living.”
- Leopold Stokowski
“Jazz objectifies America… a group of people can
come together and create art, improvised art, and can
negotiate their agendas with each other.”
- Wynton Marsalis
 Jazz music grew out of African American music of
the South, a mixture of ragtime and blues.
 Jazz becomes a nationwide craze.
 Young people loved dancing to jazz music, causing
some opposition to the new sound.
 The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age
 Harlem, NY becomes a
popular Jazz area, with
roughly 500 jazz clubs.
 Many upscale clubs were
attended primarily by
wealthy whites, but the jazz
was played almost
exclusively by African
Americans.
 Most popular of jazz dance
forms was “the Charleston”,
a wild, reckless dance full of
kicks and twists and pivots.
 Most important and
influential figure in Jazz
history.
 Grew up in New Orleans,
where he learned to sing
and play trumpet.
 His skill, improvisation,
showmanship, and new
“scat” singing made him a
huge hit.
 Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington performed in NYC.
 “Duke” was a pianist, band leader, an arranger, and a
composer.
 Wrote over a thousand pieces in his career.
 Jazz spirit ran through all the arts of the 1920s.
 People spoke of “jazz poetry” or “jazz painting”.
 More than a genre of music, “jazz” became an
identity and characteristic.
 Harlem, NYC served not
just as a center for jazz
music, but also gave birth
to an African American
literary, artistic, and
cultural awakening.
 This movement was called
the Harlem
Renaissance.
Renaissance is French for
rebirth.
 Most famous of these African American
writers was poet Langston Hughes.
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
 Georgia O’Keeffe painted naturalistic scenes like
flowers, landscapes, and oceans.
 Sinclair Lewis attacked
American society through his
writings.
 “Savorless people, gulping tasteless
food, and sitting afterward, coatless
and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs
prickly with inane decorations,
listening to mechanical music, saying
mechanical things about the
excellence of Ford automobiles, and
viewing themselves as the greatest
race in the world.”
–Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920)
Right: Hemingway
 Many writers found postwar America materialistic, and
unintellectual.
 These writers and artists left the U.S. for Europe, many in
Paris, France, where they produced many of their
classics.
 Coined a “Lost Generation” of writers, the group included
E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott
Fitzgerald.