Why is jazz important?
Many studies have shown the benefits of music and music education in schools. Research shows that learning music helps develop many non-music-related skills and important brain functions.
We know that music matters, but why does jazz music matter?
That’s exactly what we’ll be discussing today! Jazz music is more than a genre or something you hear at a cocktail hour. It’s charged with social and political energies that make it a central part of twentieth-century American history.
You don’t have the roaring 20s without jazz music.
But it isn’t an art form trapped in dusty history books! Jazz is a lasting medium of artistic personal expression that is very much present today.
If you are inspired by jazz music and want to learn more about how to play it, then you should check out the Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle.
The Inner Circle contains all the rules and tools you need to learn the jazz language and improve your musicianship skills. With our many courses, masterclasses, and jazz standard deep dives, you’ll have everything you need to become fluent in jazz!
Come see what the Inner Circle is all about.
Table of Contents
“But, Isn’t Jazz Dead?”
Did you know that Jazz was once popular music? After the 1920s, jazz quickly became one of America’s most popular musical forms. As American popular music, it reached its zenith in the 1960s when it passed its revolutionary torch to rock and roll and the counter-cultural revolution.
Because of this, many people speak of jazz in the past tense. Jazz is too often labeled historical music. Don’t misunderstand—jazz is historical and has played an important role in American history.
But jazz is not dead.
Quite the contrary! It is alive and breathing and is as important today as in the early-mid 1900s. Jazz is not just music history—it is present and evolving right now. And jazz education has something to offer everyone.
First, let’s discuss the historical importance of jazz music, and then we’ll talk about how this creative music still has so much to offer the world and the musicians who practice it.
The Social and Political Power of Jazz Music
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s opening address at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival:
“Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.
This is triumphant music.
Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.”
source: https://www.wclk.com/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-on-the-importance-of-jazz#stream/0
Jazz History Crash Course
Prior to taking the title of “America’s classical music,” jazz began as African-American music. It was directly born from the struggles and systemic anti-Black racism that Black people faced and continue to face today.
In the early 20th century, before the dance music of the swing era (1930s) was all the rage, jazz was created, nurtured, and developed by African-American communities in America’s big cities—first in New Orleans, then New York, Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, and many other burgeoning American industrial cities.
Stylistically, jazz music has three basic musical ingredients that were mixed in the melting pot of New Orleans:
- The Blues was inspired by work songs and church songs of enslaved Africans brought to the United States and the Caribbean during the Atlantic slave trade. The blues brings interaction, call-and-response, and “blue notes” to the genre.
- Swing and Syncopation also come from West African musical influences that mixed with musical features from indigenous Americans (leading to rhythmic styles like Afro-Cuban music). These were then brought to the United States through the slave trade.
- Functional Harmony comes from European classical music, learned and practiced by French Creoles in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early jazz instrumentation—trumpets, saxophones, snare drums, banjos, and tubas—came from marching band music. The marching band orchestra is a direct ancestor of the jazz orchestra.
So, those are the ingredients of jazz. But why is jazz important? The rise of jazz is directly tied to massive social changes that occurred in American culture after World War I.
Black Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Liberation in the Jazz Age
Early jazz clubs were located in insular Black parts of town—the Southside in Chicago, Harlem in New York, and the Jazz District in Kansas City. These nightclubs began to attract young White patrons who had left home in rural America for work in the big cities.
The mixed patrons of these bars and nightclubs grew enamored by this new music genre. Many early jazz icons like Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bichet, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and many others played in these early jazz clubs to diverse crowds of listeners.
In the 1920s, prohibition pushed bars and nightlife into secretive speak-easys, which became all the rage among a young generation of Americans who just survived the First World War. Jazz music, already considered by conservative White society to cause “moral decay,” (seriously) also gained a reputation for being the music of illegal bars and nightclubs.
Many young women who secured the right to vote in 1919 worked in big cities and lived away from their families. They began to enter traditional male spaces like bars and nightclubs, which was very transgressive for the time.
This created a moral panic and led to what are today extremely hilarious newspaper headlines:
And this one:
sources: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-an-angry-woman-in-baltimore-almost
There are so many more crazy headlines like this in newspaper archives. However ridiculous they seem today, these all-too-real newspaper articles reveal an anti-Black anxiety that was prominent in the United States.
The “jazz panic,” as portrayed in these choice headlines, was a clear conservative reaction to the realities of a modern American youth culture that was more open to racial and sexual equality. (There are interesting parallels between the moral panic surrounding Jazz music in the 1920s and the moral panic surrounding hip-hop music in the 90s.)
Of course, the fact that jazz was demonized made jazz music all the rage among the children of those White newspaper editors.
Jazz As Popular Music
By the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s, jazz became synonymous with modernity, women’s liberation, and Black civil rights. It had taken over American culture and could be heard in dance halls nationwide.
This is just a taste of the power jazz music has as a social and political force. Jazz continued to grow, evolve, and embed itself into the discussion between tradition and modernity in the post-World War II years and well into the 20th century, continuing till today.
But this is a blog post and not a history book. If you want to know more about jazz history, then check out our podcast episode to learn more about the different eras of jazz history.
That’s jazz’s social and political power, but what about the value jazz offers young jazz musicians studying it? Let’s go over important aspects of what jazz teaches jazz players.
BEFORE YOU CONTINUE...
If you struggle to learn jazz standards by ear, memorize them, and not get lost in the song form, then our free guide will completely change the way you learn tunes forever.
What Personal Skills Does Jazz Teach Young Musicians?
Performing music offers us many skills, but playing jazz gives us some unique benefits.
Jazz Teaches Us To Find Our Own Distinct Voice.
The great saxophonist Wayne Shorter once said in an interview that jazz means “I dare you.”
It takes courage to find your artistic voice. Jazz music encourages young people to find their own artistic voices. Thelonious Monk and Wayne Shorter both play jazz, but they are very different, unique jazz artists. Though they speak the same language, their dialects are quite different.
Jazz taught each of them to go against the grain and stand out.
Many of the innovations in jazz music resulted from musicians going against the grain. Bebop was a reactionary movement against the artistic constraints of the big band era, which limited the individual musician’s role. Bebop icons like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were labeled rebels by the older generation of jazz musicians.
Post-bop took many elements of bebop—like virtuosic solos and an emphasis on the interaction between members of smaller jazz ensembles—but rejected the inaccessibility of the complex harmonies, opting instead to bring bebop attitude to simpler, more soulful progressions.
From its beginning, jazz demands that we go against the grain and redefine it with each generation of jazz musicians.
Jazz Teaches Us Resourcefulness Through Improvisation.
Jazz also teaches us to be comfortable with not knowing while still having the ability to act. Jazz improvisation scares many musicians who haven’t explored it.
Whether it is due to the paradox of choice or the realization that you are at the wheel steering the ship in real time, jazz improvisation can cause a sense of panic in those who aren’t used to it.
Many jazz musicians spend hours practicing how to make things up on the spot, and this learned resourcefulness spills out into many things we do. We learn how to take calculated risks and navigate the unknown.
Perhaps, most importantly, we learn that mistakes are inevitable, and occasionally they lead to better results.
However, improvisation is more than just soloing. You have to improvise when things go wrong, too. If another player misses a cue or drops a bar, trained musicians will pick up on the change and improvise a solution on the spot.
Jazz Teaches Us That Everyone’s Role Matters and Requires That We Listen.
In a jazz ensemble, every jazz musician matters, and each jazz musician has a moment to share their voice and express themselves. The concept behind a jazz ensemble is the act of co-improvisation. You are creating a unique musical composition in the moment with your fellow musicians.
You may play the same tune again another night, but that particular version is a unique collaboration between you and other jazz musicians in that one moment.
To play jazz well, you must take the time and effort to listen to the people you are playing with. You can’t mechanically play a prepared part if the drummer or keyboardist does something that musically clashes with it.
You need to listen and adapt in the moment while prioritizing and preserving the quality of the music.
Why Jazz Education is Important
Jazz education is important because of its vital role in the cultural American story and because it offers practical skills to those who study it.
Practicing jazz music allows us to grow into independent free-thinkers who know how to listen and aren’t afraid of the unknown. It is a uniquely American cultural export that has taken root worldwide.
Musically, studying jazz helps us feel comfortable with improvisation and risk-taking. It teaches us to embrace our flaws and to trust that the process of studying jazz will help us grow into stronger musicians.
What To Learn More About Jazz? Check Out The Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle
If you play an instrument but have avoided learning jazz because it seems too hard or intimidating, you aren’t alone. However, learning how to play jazz music is like learning any style of music (or language, for that matter)—you have to study the vocabulary.
The Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle makes learning jazz easy. There are a variety of courses that address different areas people tend to struggle with—music theory, ear training, improvisation, memorizing jazz tunes, and much more.
Plus, there are instrument-specific courses designed to help you master jazz on your own instrument and a supportive community of like-minded players to grow with!
If you want to learn jazz but don’t know where to start, then check out the Inner Circle and trust the process!