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Moral Outrage and Musical Corruption: White Educators’ Responses to the “Jazz Problem”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jacob Hardesty*
Affiliation:
Rockford University ([email protected])
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Abstract

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More than a musical genre, jazz in the 1920s was viewed by critics and supporters alike as a type of lifestyle, one that frequently led to drinking, dancing, and “petting.” Much to the horror of older generations, white young people were particularly drawn to jazz and its “hot rhythms.” Secondary school teachers and administrators took up the formidable task of persuading youth of jazz's morally corrupting influences. I argue that, in the first half of the decade, such educators instituted curricular and various informal policies designed to replace jazz, universally associated with black musicians, with more “wholesome” European-originated alternatives. By the latter part of the decade, however, most educators admitted a grudging acceptance of jazz's permanence and abandoned their efforts to convince students of its iniquity.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 History of Education Society 

References

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3 At its heart, Victorianism rested on various identifying characteristics: a clear conception of whiteness, a near obsession for maintaining the clearly defined social order, female modesty in dress and deportment, and the centrality of Christianity in people's lives. Jazz was, in many ways, the opposite: a justification for female “immodest dress,” plainly sexualized dance steps, unabashedly secular, and regularly alcohol-fueled. Court Carney correctly argues in his history of early jazz, “The shift from Victorianism to Modernism formed the context in which Americans reacted to jazz music. In general, Victorianism created a dichotomy separating controlled human instincts from natural impulses, and modernism strove to reunite these two forces.” Court Carney, Cuttin’ Up: How Early Jazz Got America's Ear (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2009), 129. See also Stanley Coben, Rebellion against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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8 I borrow the phrase “jazz problem” from a 1924 issue of the music education magazine The Etude. The full title read, “The Jazz Problem: Opinions of Prominent Men and Musicians.” The magazine's editor wrote that the music had been an “accursed annoyance to teachers for years,” before promising neutrality in his reporting. James F. Cooke, “Where the Etude Stands on Jazz,” The Etude, 42, no. 8 (August 1924), 1.Google Scholar

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12 In his famous history of early jazz, Gunther Schuller acknowledges that “the African and European lineages will become somewhat entangled.” Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 4. For a more updated treatment, see Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).Google Scholar

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36 Coe would have the last word, of sorts. In the mid-1980s, after a successful touring career, Coe served as Jazz Artist in Residence for the Indianapolis Public Schools. Lissa Felming May, “Early Musical Development of Selected African-American Jazz Musicians in Indianapolis in the 1930s and 1940s,” Journal of Historical Research in Music Education 27, no. 1 (October 2005), 21–32.Google Scholar

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