Harlem, a Bridge to Modernity

By the early 1920’s, the center of the jazz world shifted northward from New Orleans to Chicago and New York City. Prominent jazz musicians left their traditional lives in hopes of a better life, freedom, and financial security that the North appeared to offer. Between 1916 and 1919 a vast population shift towards the North known as the Great Migration took place due to a combination of historical factors such as industrialization, halted immigration, and soldiers leaving vacancy of jobs to fight in World War I. Jazz started to leave its ragtime, marching band, and ensemble emphasis and tended towards a soloist style with smaller bands and more piano usage which served as an important link between classic European high culture and new Black musical innovation.

At this time, New York City became a newly established landmark of Democracy, human intellect, and profound assimilation of culture. Harlem, a “sharper color in the kaleidoscope of New York” is where jazz owes much of its prominence to over that of Chicago (Survey Graphic). Visually undistinguishable from the rest of the concrete jungle of New York City, Harlem served uniquely as a “laboratory of great race [and class] welding” and a conglomeration of a cultural elite (Survey Graphic). It is this combination of the African traditions of southern country people and the European traditions of Creoles that formulated jazz (Johnson 29). A full spectrum of human expression resided in this area as poets, writers, artists, musicians, and historians came to participate in this renaissance. It is rightfully called the Harlem Renaissance due to its outpour of intellectual genius, which emerged by finding its “proper context, its proper environment, and its proper audience” (Lecture 1/19). Harlem became the proper environment to a greater span of people due to deep social integration. Harlem based musicians were taking inspiration from the South and West, which in turn, created a competition within jazz styles which furthered its diversity, an important concept for the later upbringing of Swing (Henderson 103). Those of differing financial status, race, and religious affiliation were no longer inhibited from creating high art. At the start of the Swing Era, New York also played an important role commercializing and marketing culture on a national scale. For this reason, New York has a greater importance to the history of jazz and its ability to become a world renowned musical genre of human achievement.

To evaluate the importance of one city over another, it is crucial to recognize the influence that the great city of Chicago had on jazz history in comparison to Harlem. Chicago had its own degree of social integration which leaned towards commercialism. As such, Chicago’s accomplishments in terms of jazz music are more tangible than that of Harlem’s. Chicago enjoyed its economic splendor during the roaring twenties, and produced the right environment to expose some of the most influential jazz musicians of all time, The Austin High School Gang (a prime example of white appropriation of black music), and Louis Armstrong. However, Chicago’s racially segregated walls looked opaque in comparison to Harlem’s. Chicago was racially divided; blacks were prohibited from living on the northern side. It is important to note that in Harlem, Duke Ellington was capable of organizing a black band that catered to a white audience at the well-known Cotton club (Lecture 2/12). This artist, best representing this fast pace of changing culture, became an important figure by intelligently responding to his audience, which exemplified Bahkin’s Dialogic that the artist must be able to communicate with the audience and react with the environment to succeed. He was able to market himself with his agent, Mills, effectively, thereby significantly contributing to the spread of popular culture. Similarly, James P. Johnson and his stride piano style contributed to the emergence of swing and modern musical expression through mass media. Unfortunately this did not carry over to Fletcher Henderson (featuring Louis Armstrong) who tended to create composed music that did not evoke dancing.

Harlem was faced with duality, the reputation of being a high renaissance center point as well as being a decaying slum. In other words, “The Harlem Renaissance created an ideology, a cultural context for jazz but the Harlem of rent parties and underground economies created music.” (Gioia 94). Despite of this poverty lurking into the streets of Harlem, music from this part of society was still making its way into high culture of society. Jazz musicians would play for these rent parties, but also for the dance clubs and halls.

It was New York’s shift towards modernity that allowed Jazz to become what it is today, a classic. The intellectual crucible of Harlem created the ideology for a society to welcome genius, no matter who it came from. Through New York, jazz and swing styles of music were nationalized on a larger scale in comparison to the influences of Chicago. Chicago’s commercial success and superstars had a significant impact, but did not make jazz universal.