The Influence Of Music During The Swing Era

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With the decline in popularity of swing bands and the rise of singers as pop stars, many jazz musicians in the mid-1940s retreated to smaller groups of five or six instruments that were easier to organize, were cheaper to book in clubs, and provided more freedom for individual musicians to express themselves. The music that began to emerge from these small bands was a sharp break from Swing Era jazz: Unlike the smooth, pulsing flow of swing, these new melodies were typically jagged and uneven, designed to catch listeners off guard. Whereas swing seemed to offer a lighthearted escape from the hardships of the Depression, many listeners and critics saw bebop, as this new style came to be called, as a reflection of the anxiety and uncertainty faced by African Americans in the immediate postwar years.…show more content…
Black servicemen, sobered by the experience of fighting in a racially segregated military, returned from overseas to find that few civil rights gains had been made on the home front. “Though I have found no Negroes who want to see the United Nations lose this war,” said the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. Philip Randolph, “I have found many who want to see the stuffing knocked out of white supremacy. ... American Negroes ... are confronted not only with a choice but with the challenge both to win democracy for ourselves at home and to help win the war for democracy the world over.” And while much of America began to enjoy newfound prosperity, many blacks now faced new displacements and upheavals, from pervasive employment discrimination to poor educational opportunities to increased racial conflict as the country struggled toward greater
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