The Development of Jazz in the Harlem Crucible

The dialogue between music and society in New York during the 1920’s resulted in not just the culture of Harlem affecting jazz, but the music influencing the social and spatial development of the city (Bakhtin).  The key quality that differentiated New York’s jazz from Chicago’s was the existence of multiple different cultures and social and economic conditions within the black community. The combination of affluent and lower-class blacks sharing the same space in addition to the new commercialization of jazz paved the road for dualities in jazz music and culture that were unique to New York.  These dualities included the development of both “hot” and “cool” styles, through the forms of both piano-based stride and big-band ensembles, in spaces varying from Harlem rent parties to dance halls. These competing forces existed in black Harlem because it concentrated many different components of black life in a spatial crucible of modern New York (Survey Graphic, 630). Similar conditions did not exist in Chicago, which in comparison fostered a very unified black community, highly segregated in the South Side, in which mostly black industrial workers made up the audience for jazz. 

            After World War I, 150,000 blacks moved to New York from along the East Coast (Stewart). Blacks moving North from Carolina brought with them “ring shout” gospel music. Affluent blacks who had resided in Harlem since before the war favored European ragtime music.  The combination of these elements produced “stride piano” which grew out of rent parties in lower-income Harlem and set the foundation for swing music.  Stride had to make all blacks attending rent parties dance, despite their differnet backgrounds and musical tastes. This resulted in musicians like James P. Johnson playing emotive “gutbucket” (Henderson) music that combined European melodies with blues and ring-shout music of the South to create a “hot” improvisational sound specifically on the piano.  Rent parties existed in the lower-brow black communities while the higher-brow members of the literary Harlem renaissance looked down upon jazz and stride because it reminded them of the South they had escaped from in hopes of a better life (Gioia).

            Another development during this time was big band jazz ensembles. “A casual, accidental affair” (Fletcher, 105) for black musicians, jazz dance halls in New York grew on principles of commercialization rather than their equivalents on the South Side of Chicago, which were results of an industry based economy.  While in Chicago the best, “hottest” jazz clubs played for black audiences from similar backgrounds, Harlem big bands played “cool” jazz for either higher brow blacks, or for whites who wanted in on the increasingly popular novelty of black music.  Fletcher Henderson directed the band at the Cotton Club.  When Henderson brought Louis Armstrong to join his band, Armstrong propelled the ensemble to evolve from the classic “cool” sound of legitimate, ragtime-influenced written rhythms to a more free, rolling, improvisational sound with varying rhythms and a new style: swing.  Armstrong brought the same “hot” and “dirty” qualities that appeared in stride piano and jazz from the South to the dance hall big bands, which would later develop into the swing ensembles of the 30’s. Simultaneously, a “cool” jazz style also existed in the arrangements of Paul Whiteman and music of Joe Smith who played “with a legitimate rather than dirty tone, used vibrato sparingly, and couched their solos in an unhurried, reflective manner” (Fletcher, 103-4). 

Hot and cool jazz. High and low-brow blacks. New migrants from the South and long time Harlem residents. Stride piano and big band jazz. White audiences in the dance halls and blacks in rent parties. These dualities within different spaces and cultures distinctly influenced Harlem style jazz.  Similarly, the music that developed out the Harlem crucible came to influence the social, economic, and spatial developments of New York as a city. The symbiotic relationship between music as expression and society as context and space, allowed for a new generation of educated black musicians and arrangers like Johnny Dunn, Joe Smith, and Fletcher Henderson to expertly combine all of these elements in their own crucibles: the big band jazz ensemble.