Rock(in') Jazz:
A Comparison of The Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Sixties with Special Reference to the Music of the Two Eras

 

"[The sixties are] like the twenties," as Marty Balin, the lead singer of one of the most legendary rock and roll groups, Jefferson Airplane, so simply put it,

The twenties were really a start and at the end of it, they had all these great creative different things come out of it. I really feel [the sixties are] the same. [The sixties are] the most moving generation since the twenties. In creativity. And out of [the sixties] are going to come many wonderful artists and people and thinkers. Even the philosophy of the day is being changed by what's happening [in the sixties] (Szatmary 136).

In the nineteen-twenties, many Americans were disillusioned after World War One. American young people, especially, felt the desire to spread their wings and fly to a new social culture. They found a new revolutionary society within jazz music, and so they clung to it. Jazz, a fast paced, chaotic noise blaring style of music symbolized a lot of the pandemonium, sexuality and corruption that distinguish the twenties. Similarly, in the nineteen-sixties, the hippie youth began to branch away from the strict conformity of the ultra-conservative fifties. Not only was the younger generation growing from the societal norms, but the new music of the decade was transforming as well. Rock and roll was born and evolved during the sixties and grew to embody the ideas of change, peace, drugs and freedom which in turn represented the hippie generation and the flower power ideas of the sixties. The youth of the two eras truly inspired the music to be written, for without changes in fashion, technology and thinking, without war, drug use, protests or promiscuous sex, musicians would not have had the interesting topics that affected many of their songs. This also worked the other way around: the new music styles of the musicians changed the lifestyles of its listeners as well. It was a continuous cycle of inspiration between the musicians and the listeners. Music was both the cause of the cultural revolutions of the nineteen twenties and nineteen sixties, and also an accurate reflection of the two social rebellions.

The counterculture movements of the twenties and sixties were caused by new standards in popular culture, especially in terms of the then-modern ethics and values and also war, laws and politics. In some cases social movements are sparked by previous revolutions based on the same ideals. For example, the origins of the sixties "hippie rebellion" lie in the "beat" or "beatnik" generation of the fifties. The beats a group of the greatest alternative writers, poets and visual artists in the nineteen fifties. They did not believe in following the traditional American path, and inspired others to do the same (Szatmary 138). As the sixties approached, the beats encouraged the new generation of youth to follow in their footsteps and thus, the hippie culture was born. The hippies were advocates of love, happiness and especially peace. They believed in one’s personalfreedom of one's personal body and mind. The hippies, like the beats, felt no need to involve themselves with conventional, consumer America because

[they] had no interest in building a greater America, in fighting Communism, in working at a career to buy $100 suits and dresses, color television sets, a house in the suburbs, or a flight to Paris. In fact, they laughed at those goals. Some brew, a few joints, a sympathetic partner in the sack, a walk in the park, an afternoon of lying in the sun on the beach, a hitchhike trip to Mexico---this was all there was (Burton Wolfe qtd. in Szatmary 128).

 

The politics of the sixties, especially the controversy over the Vietnam War, affected the social youth culture. The hippie children did not trust or agree with the American governments’ justifications behind the war. The hippies did not feel that the arrogance and boldness the government continuously demonstrated in its relationship with Vietnam was a good technique for solving foreign problems. Because they disagreed so vehemently with American wartime politics, many youth of the movement protested against the Vietnam War on college campuses across the nation and began to experiment with music. (Szatmary 171).

After experiencing its first world war, America was in a state of enchantment. The country had suffered many casualties amongst its soldiers, and needed relief from the misery. The war had deeply tarnished the American people, and many of them felt that in order to move on they needed to create a new society amongst themselves. Abandoning their sullen views on the war, the people eagerly drank in the wildness and excitement the twenties offered. "Americans, tired and disillusioned by World War One, cast off Victorian values, experimented with new sex roles and more and defied the rule of Prohibition" (Peretti 31). Prohibition was a large issue in American politics during the twenties and it affected the social revolution of the decade greatly. The American people had just started to recover from World War One Congress put the eighteenth amendment into effect. (The amendment was actually passed during the war and before the dramatic economic and social changes but was not put into effect until 1919.) More commonly known as Prohibition and the Volstead Act, the eighteenth amendment outlawed the manufacturing, sale or transportation of alcohol (Martin). This immediately presented a huge problem to Americans, especially the younger community and usual drinkers whose social engagements were generally staged in bars and dance halls that illegally served alcohol. After liquor was prohibited in 1919, illegal bars called "speakeasies" were created, and if people wanted to drink, they were forced to go to these clubs. It was in these clubs where a lot of the "abominable" new youth culture developed. One report perfectly shows how Prohibition changed the United States:

When the prohibition laws went into effect there were 34 distilleries in the United States employing 1380 men. Since then the Federal Government alone has seized 40,675 distilleries up to June 1924. Probably the states, forty five of which have enforcement laws of their own, have seized as many more" (William H. Stayton. qtd in Beman 104).

 

After World War One, the law of prohibition robbed the American people of one of the last freedoms they still felt they possessed. Because they felt their lack of legal alcohol was an unfair deprivation, they rebelled against societal norms and a societal counterculture was created. People responded very differently to the growing counterculture movements and alternative social changes. The older generation of the nineteen twenties was shocked by the large, startling cultural change, because the switch from a nation of somber wartime to a country that lived in “one long roaring party” (Peretti 31), was all too dramatic. They did not approve of the developing counterculture, especially the new roles of gender and sexuality. Additionally, the twenties produced a new form of female sexuality: women chopped off their long hair and had stylish bobs and they added glitz and spice to their dresses by shortening hemlines and adding frivolous accessories. The young people fully embraced the “vile surroundings, filthy words, unmentionable dances and obscene plays” (Peretti 34) the twenties offered. They loved the unprecedented style of music and fashion and s,o they took a daringly large step away from traditional American conformity. Very similar to the reaction to the counterculture of the nineteen twenties was the reaction to the new generation of the nineteen sixties. During the sixties there were two main, and very different, opinions on the counterculture. Older, more conservative Americans were outraged and confused by the younger generation’s political views, their experimentation with drugs and sex and the new rock and roll music they listened to. On the other hand, younger people who either had similar views as the hippies or were hippies fully embraced the new anti-authoritarian culture. These members of the counterculture were usually college students or “flower power children” who were guided towards LSD and had started to listen to new styles of music. They believed that “love could replace war, sharing could replace greed and community could supercede the individual” (Szatmary 136).

Before the times of drugs, sex and rock and roll, were the nineteen fifties. The fifties introduced a type of music called pop rock, including songs like those performed by Elvis Presley. Real rock music (the blues, hard rock, acid rock and what we now call classic rock,) however, truly surfaced during the nineteen sixties. A leading cause of this was that the tumultuous political issues of the sixties that ultimately grew to be large social (and musical) topics. For example, the Vietnam War was a controversial subject from the late nineteen fifties to the early nineteen seventies, with the largest climaxes of discussion and demonstration during the sixties. It was fought both in and away from Vietnam and was vehemently discussed and protested against by the many of the youth of the United States. Rock music was often a part of the anti-war demonstrations and thus the popular music of the times grew into the phenomenon of rock and roll. It is important to observe how both the music grew from and reflected political issues, and not the other way around.

 

A common misconception of the hippies was that by creating their music, they were abandoning any form of faith they had. Critics believed that rock music was faithless garbage, however they failed to see

that the New Generation, raised on music with a transistor radio plugged into its ear from birth, [had] found religion in music. [In the sixties] the radio [was] the church and every man [carried] his own walkie-talkie to God in his transistor (Gleason 14).

Rock and roll grew into a religion. Followers did not need to have a strong belief in God because they felt that their music preached all they needed to know; hope, freedom, peace, personal self embodiment and love. To show their faithful, fanatical devotion to rock and roll and the counterculture, a small group of wealthy students collaborated with music industry representatives and created one of the most well known rock and roll concerts of all time. The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival was held from August 15 to August 17, 1967 in Bethel, New York where over 400,000 hippies, stoners and music lovers gathered together to hear over 75 musical performances by legendary artists such as the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and the Who (Szatmary 186-187; Barnes LTD). Ultimately, Woodstock signified everything the sixties counterculture was about. Not only was it "the coming together of all tribes" (Carlos Santana qtd. in Szatmary 187), but it was also a symbol of many components of the sixties counterculture: drugs, peace, sex, freedom and rock and roll.

Jazz, on the other hand, was very different than rock and roll in the sense that many more people were unprepared for its birth. Although jazz music originated in African and African-American culture, some of its roots also lie in European music. Jazz, a chaotic mixture of African rhythms, European melodies and modern brass, was influenced by Creole, New Orleans, Tin-pan Alley and Harlem. Jazz did not fully emerge as a popular form of music, however, until the end of World War One when Americans took advantage of their new freedom. They chose to celebrate their military victory by altering not only the popular music, but also a large portion of American lifestyle. Although many critics appreciated or even enjoyed the actual sound of jazz, most of them had large objections to the culture with which it was associated. They believed that jazz placed youth in terrible surroundings and lowered their mores as well. The beliefs and opinions of these older, conformist people was strongly bias, but very strong nonetheless.

Jazz was condemned by conservatives as the downfall of America’s white youth [and] to middle class whites no group seemed more rebellious and insolent than their own children. A distinctly adolescent subculture-neither childlike nor adult-a subculture of social experimentation and leisure for [page break] young men ad women, had been emerging and gaining attention since the ragtime era, but the Jazz Age marked its controversial national debut (Peretti 36-37).

The elder generation criticized and disapproved of the younger generation because of their alternative beliefs and blamed a lot of their new behavior on the “wild” new jazz music. They refused to accept the idea that times change and culture changes. Youth, on the other hand, did not blame their newfound culture on jazz but

instead used jazz to grapple with the new concepts and ways of life. For [the youth of the twenties,] jazz was a pastime and a stylistic statement-both an element of carefree leisure and a critique of existing American institutions. Younger whites, especially, used the music to champion social experimentation and rebellion, and began an adolescent critique of adult standards which would grow and evolve for at least the next half-century (Peretti 32).

The repulsion and rejection of the social counterculture by the older generation is understandable; however, it was unfair and unjust for them to pardon their own faults by blaming jazz music and the modern culture of the twenties.

 

In both the nineteen twenties and the nineteen sixties music was a creation of cultural uprising. In the roaring twenties, jazz was brought forth as a rebellion against the somber post-war era. During the stormy sixties, popular music grew from pop rock to rock and roll as a continuation of the Beat Generation and in response to the Vietnam War. For those rebelling, music was what represented them, but to those who resented the hippies and swingers, music was an excuse for the problems and mistakes of the times. Music was a large cause of the social changes and countercultures in the twenties and sixties. For example, without jazz, the "vulgar" Charleston would not have been invented in the "vile" speakeasies, nor would the sixties' peace protests have been so "unlawful" or "unpeaceful." Jazz and rock and roll were also large results of the two countercultures of the American 20th centur as well. The eras experienced an immeasurable amount of musical growth and development. Although Jazz had been developing for hundreds of years before the nineteen twenties, the jazz legends we hear of today were made famous during the twenties and drew their inspiration from the counterculture. The other musical effect on the counterculture, rock and roll, had been evolving for several years before the hippie generation elevated rock and rolls' status by interpreting their generation’s feelings through the music. The two decades were continuous cycles of inspiration between music artists and their audiences. To begin, the world and its people would give a musician insight into an idea for a song, and after performing that piece, the listeners would then be inspired to think new thoughts or believe new beliefs. Overall, the continuous cycle and dance between current events and music and musicians and listeners is what truly inspired the countercultures’ different music.