Jazz: The Bee’s Knees

by Royce Le

        Jazz is seen as just another category of music in today’s era, but, back in the 1920s, jazz was soulful, moving, and was even known as the rebellious music during that time period. Jazz was so essential within the 1920s that historians named it the “Jazz Age”. The birthplace of Jazz was New Orleans in which it danced its way to the ears of people in New Orleans, to Chicago, New York, and Kansas City. The word “jazz was not coined until 1917”, before then, this type of music was referred to as the “New Orleans Sound” or “The Sound of New Orleans”.

To the right is an image of one of the most

influential musicians of this era, Louis Armstrong.

He was a Jazz trumpeter and signer from New

Orleans, Louisiana in which he inspired the whole

concept of musical improvisation of groups to

individual extemporaneous pieces. He was

nicknamed “Satchmo” which was short for

“Satchelmouth”which was derived from rumors

saying that he got the name from his infections

grin or when his cheeks blew up when he played

the cornet.

            Jazz music falls directly in line with the whole Modernist Age in which there were no real defined verses or musical stanzas in which one must follow. This music was known as the rebellious music in the 1920s for it followed no rules and inspired those who listened to play by their own rules. We can see a distinct difference between the jazz played in the middle-class white populations’ dance halls, the “Negro Clubs”, and the jazz played in New Orleans. Since jazz originated in New Orleans, jazz musicians were more experienced, thus their music was more bold and vigorous when compared to the clubs and dance halls in other states. Moreover, scat singing was popularized during this era, which is also improvision but with voices to mimic instruments. Although there were many earlier examples of scatting, Louis Armstrong was the most famous for making scatting known and popularized and Ella Fitzgerald was known for being the women who carried the scat and quivered the soul. Overall, in the 1920s, Jazz was essentially for transforming the way people lived their lives, not only that, but in this day and age, we can see that jazz comes in all forms, blues to pop to rock, jazz as J.J. Johnson, one of the first trombonists to embrace bepop music, stated, “is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will”.

Born on 25 April 1917, Ella Fitzgerald was known by nicknames “Queen of Jazz,” “Lady Ella,” and “First Lady of Song”. She was a jazz vocalist who brought a sense of pride and self-esteem to women everywhere. When she sung, other voices stopped and every person listened with awe.