Blog Post #3: Swing Speaks for Itself

Swing Speaks for Itself

It’s easy to avoid confrontation.  Just lay low and keep your opinions to yourself.  But what if the confrontation you’re avoiding is shoved right in your face and begging for a response?  In the 1930s, jazz migrated from the dingy low-lit clubs of Harlem to America’s main stage as Swing claimed king of American popular music.  This move into the spotlight placed the issue of racial prejudice in the face of the American public, a place where it would remain for decades.

This shift into the mainstream was caused by several factors, one being the rise of radio in America.   “…By the close of the [1930s], annual [radio equipment] sales had skyrocketed to over $850 million” (Gioia, 128).  Radio created a means by which music could be mass marketed to American public.  Therefore, if musicians could get their music played on radio waves, they would be able to not only make a living, but also create a fan base that would support them on tour. The thing about radio, however, is it’s audio entertainment; no one could see what the musicians playing the music looked like.  Consequently, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington could enjoy the same radio fame as Benny Goodman (Gioia, 128).  When the bands toured however, there were no longer miles of empty American air shielding the performers from their audience.  “[White bands] typically encountered easier working conditions, stayed at better accommodations when on the road, received higher pay, and had more secure careers” than their black counterparts (Gioia, 129).  When black bands toured, however, it was open season for racial prejudice.  Upon seeing Louis Armstrong perform in Austin, Texas, a crowd member commented, “after all, [Armstrong’s] nothing but a goddamn nigger” to Charlie Black (Ward, 1-2).  In a sense, swing created a literal stage to showcase the issue of racial prejudice.  Yet there was much occurring off-stage as well.

It is in this decade that the jazz critic is born, creating an opportunity for a new dialogue with jazz in magazine columns for the world to see.  Of the critics, John Hammond was the most instigative.  In 1935, Hammond argued Duke Ellington’s music had “become vapid and without the slightest semblance of guts” (Swing Changes, 51).  The irony of the critic is that Hammond was not embedded in the same reality as Ellington.  He was a well-to-do white male from a Vanderbilt family who enjoyed jazz (Lecture, 2/12).  Furthermore, Ellington’s music in the 1930s “was explicitly and self-consciously concerned with African-American cultural expression” (Swing Changes, 51).  This quote reveals another contradiction; the public may not receive art in the same way as the artist had envisioned.  It is in this fault, however, that the beauty of criticism reveals itself.  Through criticism, an open-ended dialogue is created between not only the musician and the critic, but everyone who reads the critic.  Criticism is a catalyst for awareness.  Criticism was able to place the issue of racial prejudice on a page for America to see, share and act upon.

The action, however, is contingent upon the audience, the consumer, the American citizen.  The Swing Era signifies the first time jazz was popular enough to begin to change the American public.  Just as Americans shaped jazz into what it had become, jazz was beginning to shape American’s into what America would become.