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Jazz and Ethnic Diversity

As a primarily urban genre originating in early 20th century America, jazz embodies the harmonies and tensions of ethnic diversity. Its originality as an art form derives not only from its instrumental ensembles, characteristic chords and key signatures, and use of popular standards but also from its musical enactment of American history, presence, freedom, and multiple possible futures. In its improvisational, collaborative form, as well as the identities of its performers and audiences, jazz lyrically captures histories of ethnic struggle, breaks down ethnic barriers, and generates possibilities for emancipation and empowerment.

Locations of Jazz in America: Cities, Regions, Ethnic Landscapes, and Race

The earliest jazz thrived in New Orleans in the 1890s and then came into its own as a distinct music from the turn of the 20th century to World War I. Jazz moved up the Mississippi River to Kansas City and north to Chicago. New Orleans Jazz originated not only in clubs but also in the late 19th-century marching band tradition of performance in street parades and funeral processions distinctive of the city. Kansas City jazz in the 1930s was swing. White-owned clubs hosted “battles” of the bands involving intense musical sessions marked by instrumental competitions among the musicians, most of whom were touring African American performers. In Chicago, there existed two jazz cultures in which white musicians developed music borrowed from African American musicians from New Orleans.

The 1920s became known as the Jazz Age in the United States. It was at this time that jazz became popular in New York City, particularly at clubs in Harlem, most famously the Cotton Club in the 1920s and 1930s and the Apollo Theater from the 1930s. At the Cotton Club, jazz musicians were almost exclusively African American, while audiences were predominantly white, but this was not the case with jazz elsewhere in New York City or in other cities. In New Orleans and Kansas City, the spirit of the music was shared among all ethnicities, even as performances typically exhibited stark racial divides between white audiences or owners and black performers. In New York City and Chicago, jazz was often localized to particular neighborhoods, such as Harlem. Another hotbed of jazz in New York City was a single city block on the west side of midtown Manhattan—West 52nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. There, in contrast to the Cotton Club some 73 blocks north, racial barriers were erased as both white and African American musicians entertained an ethnically diverse audience of jazz enthusiasts.

U.S. Jazz Cultures Engage the Music of Latin America

The first truly international genre of jazz was bebop, which emerged from New York City's jazz scene in the 1940s. One of the progenitors of the movement was African American trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, originally from the American south. He was among the first U.S. jazz musicians to embrace musical styles of other cultures, breaking down ethnic barriers in the process. In performing a genre of Afro-Cuban music, Gillespie introduced Latin American music to the jazz culture in the United States. In 1954, a contemporary of Gillespie, African American jazz trumpeter and composer Kenny Dorham, recorded what he called an “Afro-Cuban” album dedicated entirely to such Latin jazz-centered rhythms, time and key signatures, and melodic and harmonic motifs. The album included an integrated band of African American jazz musicians and Latinos. Gillespie composed music for his own band that incorporated the rhythms of Latin America in songs such as “Tin Tin Deo” and “Manteca.” He recorded such compositions with ethnically diverse musicians, including Latinos.

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