Changes in Music After World War One

In the 20’s, the era right after World War I, music and dancing became a focus. Many musicians were moving Northward from southern cities such as New Orleans, which was a main focus for what would become jazz music. As these musicians came up to more urban cities, they introduced the country to a world of music based on Caribbean music tones and southern blues. Syncopation was common in the songs that were known in this area, as were the common bluesy sounds and rhythms of those gospel songs and old hymns. This would all greatly influence the jazz creation. Jazz began as a music type that was focused more on orchestral sounds and bigger bands than smaller bands, such as seen with Whiteman, and this was evident in the types of dances and music the people listened to, with large piece orchestras. In this time period, there were big bands, but few solos or focus on jazz technique individually, as the bands showcased the overall sound of the band’s polyrhythmic and polyphonic sound more than its homophonic solo sounds. People such as Louis Armstrong began to be interested in focusing more on chords than melodies and on solos than group collective improvisation, and this started the move to a new wave of jazz: swing.

When we reached our forum post for Lesson 4, which was the lesson about the 1920’s, Paul Whiteman, and jungle music, I ended up researching Fletcher Henderson and found many interesting things about him, such as that he had sold many of his songs to Benny Goodman later in his career. Knowing this, I can look at that information in conjunction with what we learned in Lesson 4 about Henderson’s tendency to be influenced by Whiteman. Whiteman was more interested in orchestral dance music and during this time there was orches...

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... the melody. This call and response is an interesting technique that can be found in part originally from the deep South, such as in New Orleans, Baptist Churches. These musicians who had migrated North from these places inputted techniques such as this into their music. Riffs became more common as well. In this period of time, there was an increased focus on homophonic rhythms and sounds, highlighting the individual players’ techniques and allowing many more solos to take place (for example in the previous Goodman piece). As stated in Lesson 7, there was another large change from the 20’s to 30’s, and that was found in the switch from a tuba to a string bass in the majority of the songs. This meant that songs switched from a 2/4 beat to a 4/4 beat/bassline. This was referred to as the walking bass, and allowed for a very upbeat, rhythmic song with a catchy sound.