Music During the Jazz Age, music was completely revolutionized. Look at the name of the era, the JAZZ age; the years that genre of jazz was born. Much like the early 1900s, Jazz sprung up with a blast, introducing completely new concepts to the world—improvisation, swinging, and syncopation, completely contrasting the old classical sound of band music that the public was used to. Music full of trumpets and trombones soon replaced the traditional string-based compositions.
Jazz has different many subgenres, some of the most popular being swing and Dixieland, but it all originated in the late 1800s during the African American slave trade. While working, usually in the fields, slaves would sing work chants, developing melodies and rhythms using mainly the pentatonic scale, creating a sound that would soon be recognizable as jazz. Ragtime and New Orleans jazz soon became popular as the 1920s hit and bands began playing in clubs and speakeasies during the times of prohibition. Names like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin began springing up. Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans to a poor African American family. His father walked out on him early in life and after a few bad decisions, Armstrong found himself in a reform school called the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. This is where he would first pick up a cornet, and soon, he would join “King Oliver” in one of the most famous Jazz bands of the time. In the music industry he met another famous name, Duke Ellington. Ellington would begin playing piano at the age of seven, but would not become very interested in music until later in his life. When he began composing, Ellington didn’t even know how to read music, but he would soon learn, writing songs like “Take the A-Train.” Unlike