Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The quest for cultural legitimacy
- 1 Before the Jazz Age: professional musicians and good music
- 2 The Jazz Age: professional musicians and the cultivated vernacular
- 3 The swing craze: professional musicians, swing music, and the art of improvisation
- 4 The rise of a jazz art world: jazz enthusiasts, professional musicians, and the modernist revolt
- 5 The New Jazz Age: the jazz art world and the modern jazz renaissance
- Conclusion: The jazz art world and American culture
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The rise of a jazz art world: jazz enthusiasts, professional musicians, and the modernist revolt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The quest for cultural legitimacy
- 1 Before the Jazz Age: professional musicians and good music
- 2 The Jazz Age: professional musicians and the cultivated vernacular
- 3 The swing craze: professional musicians, swing music, and the art of improvisation
- 4 The rise of a jazz art world: jazz enthusiasts, professional musicians, and the modernist revolt
- 5 The New Jazz Age: the jazz art world and the modern jazz renaissance
- Conclusion: The jazz art world and American culture
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Have you ever heard the average devotee of classical music talk about jazz? A patronizing attitude of condescension hangs on him like a cigarbutt on the face of a politician. The fire is out and something smells. He speaks of classical music as “good” music and he means that all other music is bad. Jazz is the worst of all … Why the public seems to hear and enjoy jazz more than classical music is a horrible mystery. The majority of people are stupid, ignorant, and all wrong. And so the long-haired devotee throws his scores over his head and takes off with mental bumps of bewildered disapproval. He can't play or understand jazz but he knows it's terrible.
Marshall Stearns, “Bessie Versus Beethoven,” Music and Rhythm 2-1941: 5Marshall Stearns in 1941 sounded the all too familiar lament since the Jazz Age about the less than positive attitudes classical “longhairs” held about jazz. Stearns, along with a growing community of jazz enthusiasts in the 1930s, considered jazz a serious American art suffering from various forms of resistance and corruption. These enthusiasts viewed this music as under siege not only from the lack of recognition from classical longhairs, but also from the demands of the commercial music industry, the ignorance of popular audiences, and worse yet, the capitulation of swing musicians. Jazz enthusiasts were “righteous” aficionados who were avid supporters of what they called genuine or real jazz.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rise of a Jazz Art World , pp. 157 - 216Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002