Jazz

Over time, social structures regarding racial segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. How fascinating, that music and in this sense jazz, could make whites agree to work with. Blacks (people they considered as inferior and could in no way be worked with). This was just the beginning of greater things to come The picture below is that of a memorial built in honour of a great saxophonist, Charlie Parker at the American Jazz Museum. People from all walks of life, especially jazz fanatics now visit, meet and interact with one another there. What comes to mind first is the fact that one is a lover of jazz music even before the individual’s race color or nationality is considered .This shows that music can and is helping bring international understanding , can break barriers and unite people irrespective of their race, tribe, language and any other factor that differentiate us as humans . These barriers are not only racial ones, but as also those in the world of literature, that jazz (and music in general) has broken. Poets who are naturally quite and reserved personalities have even come to the appreciation of jazz (music that is considered as loud and “clangy” ) Poets like Langston Hughes and Paul Lawrence Dunbar incorporated the syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases of blues and jazz music into their writing. As members of the (largely white) Beat generation began to embrace aspects of African-American culture during the 1950s, the art of jazz poetry shifted its focus from racial pride and individuality to spontaneity and freedom. In this case, both jazz poetry and jazz music were seen as powerful statements against the status quo.