In the early decades of the 20th century jazz was the name that was given to music played by African Americans. It was a kind of folk music that black people played for entertainment. Today jazz is performed all over the world and it has also influenced other kinds of music.

The features of jazz are its sound and rhythms. Jazz is improvised music that shows strong emotions and feelings. Typical jazz instruments are the trumpet, trombone , saxophone and clarinet.

Image : Creazilla

The Beginnings of Jazz

The first jazz was played in the early 20th century. Jazz musicians were inspired by ragtime and blues which also evolved at the beginning of the century.

Ragtime was a musical style that came from St.Louis. It was played mostly on the piano and quickly became popular with orchestras. A blues was originally a sad song, a ballad that was sung slowly and accompanied by a piano or guitar. Some people say that blues were songs that the slaves sung.

New Orleans Jazz

The birthplace of jazz is New Orleans. In the early 1900s people of many cultures lived in the city: French, Spanish and African-Americans. The music was a mixture of blues, black spirituals and rhythms from the Caribbean .The typical jazz band was made up of one or two cornet players, a clarinet and a trombone player. Sometimes there were pianos, banjos, tubas and drums to accompany the horns.

New Orleans jazz became later known as Dixieland. As time went on jazz travelled up the Mississippi to Chicago and then to New York City. Big band jazz emerged as the bands became larger and had more instruments. There were three parts of a big band: brass instruments with trumpets and trombones, reeds with saxophones and clarinets and rhythm instruments (piano, guitar, double bass and drums)

Famous bandleaders were Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman. Big band jazz was smoother with lighter rhythms. Most of the bands had famous soloists like Louis Armstrong, the most famous musician of that time.

Benny Goodman with his band
Image: DuMont Television network; photographer: William Kahn, New York City.,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Swing

The 1930s and the 1940s were called the swing era. Music was free and relaxed during this period. The start of radio made jazz well-known all over America. Some of the most popular bands of the country were led by Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller , who was probably the most successful of all.

Maybe the greatest big band of all times was led by pianist and composer Duke Ellington. He wrote over 1000 works. His best known songs are “Sophisticated Lady” and Mood Indigo”.

Duke Ellington Big Band
Image:Hans Bernhard (Schnobby), CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Bebop

The next major jazz style was bebop which lasted until about 1960. It was played in smaller groups and hardly in big bands. Bebop musicians improvised not so much the melody as the jazz musicians before, but the tune’s chords. Many bebop pieces were also played very quickly. The centre of bebop was Kansas City, where the greatest bebop musician, Charlie Parker , grew up.

At the same time as bebop came up in the Midwest hard bop emerged in the eastern cities. It was strong and full of energy and stressed the African American sound. The electric organ became a popular instrument and Miles Davis was one of the most famous beboppers of that time.

In the 1960s musicians started to look for other ways to improvise jazz. John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman became the greatest performers of free jazz, as it was called.Today jazz is played all over the world, in concert halls as well as in dark night clubs. Many of the world’s famous jazz festivals take place in Europe and Japan.

Saxophonist Charlie Parker was a leading performer of the bebop era
Image: William P. Gottlieb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was America’s greatest jazz musician. He was born in New Orleans , the birthplace of jazz. His father left the family shortly after Louis was born so the boy had to spend his early years living with his grandmother. Louis loved all kinds of music. He bought an old cornet and learned how to play. When he was in third grade he dropped out of school and started singing on the streets to get money for his family.

Louis spent his teenage years selling newspapers and unloading bananas from boats. In his free time he listened to the famous bands of that time. Later on, he started performing on steamboats and during this period he learned how to read music and play classical pieces on the cornet.In 1922 Louis started playing in a band in Chicago and later on moved to New York, where he played in one of the city’s most famous bands. No one else could play like he could. He hit the highest notes easily and played great solos.

After a few years in New York he went back to Chicago where he made his first recordings. Here he started playing the trumpet. During one of the recordings Louis dropped his text on the floor. The producer told him to keep on singing so Louis improvised and sung syllables that had no meaning. This became known as “scat singing”. Soon many other jazz musicians tried to copy this style of singing.

His records made him famous and when he moved back to New York in 1929 bandleaders all over the city wanted to have Louis in their orchestras.He not only recorded music, but also performed on Broadway and played in movies. Louis Armstrong was a singer, dancer and master of the trumpet. He travelled all over the world and made people happy through his music.

Louis Armstrong
Image: New York World-Telegram and Sun ,
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Videos

The Birth of Jazz
Duke Ellington : “Take a Train”
Louis Armstrong

Exercises

Multiple Choice Test
Words and Definitions
Missing Word Cloze
Duke Ellington – Too Many Words
Crossword

Printable Downloads (PDF)

Word List
End of Unit Test
Key

Image : Herman Hiller, World Telegram staff photographer,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As a student Malcolm dreamed of becoming a lawyer. However, he soon became involved in criminal activities. At the age of 21 Malcolm was sent to prison where he joined the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, as they were often called. They hated white people and referred to them as devils. In contrast to the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King, the Black Muslims thought they could fight whites through violence. In prison Malcolm changed his last name to X, which stands for the unknown name of Malcolm’s African ancestors.

Malcolm X quickly rose up the ranks of the Nation of Islam and supported the group’s leader Elijah Muhammed. In his passionate speeches he tried to convince black supporters that they should be proud of their black ancestry and should live separately, apart from the white population

After quarrelling with important members of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X left the movement in 1964. During his stay in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where he met many different people, Malcolm X slowly started changing his opinion of whites and gave up his violent attitudes towards them. After returning to the United States he formed his own group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

In his later life Malcolm X worked together with Martin Luther King, even though he did not share his ideas. In 1965 the black leader was shot during a speech he was giving in New York. It was thought that members of the Nation of Islam were responsible for the murder.

Exercises

African Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestors who came from Africa. Their forefathers were brought to American colonies as slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries. About 40 million African Americans, 13% of the total population, live in the USA today.

In the past African Americans have been known by many names. They were called Negroes, Blacks and Coloureds. In the last 30 years the term African Americans has officially been used.

About half of them live in the southern states of the USA, the rest in large cities of the East, Midwest and West.

Percent of African American Population by State
Image: Ghislain Montvernay [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Age of Slavery

European traders brought the first slaves from Africa to the new colonies in the 1600s. After arriving in the New World they were bought by white masters and had to work on large cotton and tobacco farms in the South. They didn’t get any money for their work and living conditions were very bad. The economy of the South depended on slaves.

Slave work was very difficult. Most women cooked, cleaned the house and raised the children of their white masters. Men were trained to be carpenters or masons. Most of them, however, were farm labourers. They planted and harvested crops.

Not all Blacks in America were slaves. “Free Blacks” lived and worked in big American cities but they had very few rights. Expressing political views, carrying guns and meeting with white people was forbidden.

Americans in the northern states thought that slavery shouldn’t be allowed in a free country. As time went on more and more people joined in the fight to end slavery. These abolitionists helped slaves escape to the North through secret routes. This system was called the Underground Railway.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States. He was strongly against slavery. Many southern states withdrew from the union and formed their own country – the Confederate States of America. It was the beginning of the Civil War, which lasted until 1865.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in the Emancipation Proclamation. The northern states won the Civil War and American slaves were free.

The Reconstruction Period

The time after the Civil War became known as the Reconstruction. The American government sent soldiers to the southern states to protect the Blacks and their newly won freedom.

Although they were officially free, most of them still lived in poverty and in very bad conditions. In the South they worked as sharecroppers, farmers who cultivated land and could keep a share of what they grew for themselves.

Whites continued to discriminate against African Americans. Blacks were not allowed to attend the same schools or go to the same churches as whites. Segregation meant a complete separation of life between the two groups. Blacks were also kept from voting.

During the second half of the 19th century violent groups started to terrorize the Blacks. The most famous was the Ku Klux Klan. Bands of white-hooded Klansmen rode through the countryside at night. They beat up and murdered many Blacks and white people who felt sympathy for them.

Three Ku Klux Klan members at a parade in 1922
Image: National Photo Company Collection,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The World Wars and the Great Depression

During World War I and in the years that followed more and more Blacks started to move to the cities of the North where they expected to find a job and lead a better life. Most of them, however, were disappointed because they were not educated and didn’t have the skills that they needed. Slums and black ghettos developed in the inner cities throughout the northern United States.

The Great Depression, which began after the stock market crash of 1929, hit the black population harder than the whites. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Programme did a lot to help Blacks.

World War II opened up new opportunities for Black people. About a million men joined the army and served for their country – mostly in all-Black units. As time went on more and more Blacks succeeded in getting a higher position in the army. Some of them even became pilots and officers.

In the past hundred years African Americans have moved from the red states to the blue ones

The Civil Rights Movement

After World War II a new movement for civil rights began. African Americans started to have more confidence and believe more in themselves. They had served for their country with honour during the war and in the North many Blacks started living in better conditions. A new group came to life – the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People). It attracted many members and received support from both Blacks and Whites.

The Civil Rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s. In 1954 the Supreme Court decided that segregation in schools was against the constitution. In 1955 a black woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama because she refused to let a white passenger take her seat. Blacks in the city started boycotting buses. This boycott was led by Martin Luther King, who became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

The movement reached its climax in 1963. Over a million people, Blacks as well as Whites took part in a protest demonstration in Washington D.C.

In the following year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. This law banned discrimination in school, public places, jobs and many other fields. African Americans received the right to vote and in 1967 Thurgood Marshall became the first Black judge to serve with the Supreme Court.

Rosa Parks
Image: See page for author,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Black Power Movement

While Martin Luther King and wanted to improve the situation of Blacks in a non-violent way, others were more violent and militant. In the 1960s Malcolm X preached that Blacks should use force and violence to achieve equal rights. Stokley Carmichael coined the term “Black Power”.

During this decade the country was hit by a series of riots, mostly in big cities. Blacks protested against bad schools, poor housing, high prices and unequal treatment by the police.

In the 1968 Olympic Games two American medal winners held their closed fist in the air and in protest, turned away from the American flag during the ceremony. In the same year the most respected leader of the American Blacks, Martin Luther King, was assassinated by a white man in Memphis, Tennessee.

John Carlos and Tommie Smith raise their fists
during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City
Image : Angelo Cozzi (Mondadori Publishers)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

African Americans Today

Since the violent times of the 60s African Americans have made progress and improved their situation in every part of American life.

The largest cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have had black mayors. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were two African Americans who became Secretary of State, and in 2009 Barack Obama became the first African American President of the United States.

In the film industry Halle Berry and Denzel Washington are among the most famous stars. Bill Cosby was the first African American with his own comedy show and Oprah Winfrey is the most famous and best-earning talk master on American TV.

Blacks have dominated many sports as well. Boxer Muhammad Ali was heavyweight champion of the 60s and 70s. Basketball’s Michael Jordan was probably the most successful player in NBA history.

Despite these advances, about 25% of African Americans live in poverty. Discrimination still exists in many areas and the standard of living lags behind that of the white population. Compared to other groups, average income is much lower and the rate of unemployment higher. Nevertheless, African Americans have made big gains since slavery ended 150 years ago.

Oprah Winfrey
Source : https://www.flickr.com/photos/aphrodite-in-nyc [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Videos

Slavery
Life of a Plantation Slave
The Underground Railroad
Abraham Lincoln – Emancipation Proclamation
After the Civil War – The Jim Crow Laws

Exercises

Multiple Choice Test
Match the Sentence Parts
Words and Definitions
History of African Americans – Order the Events
African American Music – Word Formation
The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano – Missing Sentence Parts
Rosa Parks – Multiple Choice Cloze
Famous African Americans
Crossword

Printable Downloads (PDF)

Word List
End of Unit Test
Key