Race during the Swing era

Given that race had always been a discourse in the history of jazz, why did race become explicitly written and talked about in the 1930s during the “Swing Era?”

Race became an important issue to talk and write about during the 1930s swing era because of the acceptance of jazz as the popular music by mainstream Americans during this period. Before this time period, jazz was mainly consumed live in clubs in cultural melting pots such as Chicago, New Orleans, Kansas City, or New York, where race was not as big of an issue. With the rise of the radio, Americans could listen to music in their homes for free, which was especially important due to the Depression. As a result, people had to listen to music while being unaware of the racial characteristics of the musicians, and many Americans must have been confused by the similarity of white jazz to black jazz, especially if they were racist and believed that whites were better than blacks at everything, even playing music. John Hammond is an especially interesting jazz patronizer and critic during this period, who actually flipped this stereotype onto its head by saying that blacks were racially superior to whites in playing music.

In addition, growing acceptance and consumption of black culture, especially by the younger generations who loved swinging music to dance to, must have made the older generations uneasy. Many efforts were made to frame the African Americans as Godless Communists, often because the Communist Party had fought for their rights, and as a result many people accused jazz of being evil and unapproved, causing your body to gyrate in Satanic revelry.

In reality, however, blacks and their culture were making progress toward being accepted as equal by average American, and the popularization of jazz is only one piece of evidence. While it may have been due to his submissiveness to stand up for his rights, Duke Ellington was able to book his black band at the all-white Cotton Club from 1927-1931. John Hammond put a black pianist into Benny Goodman's white band, and this in addition to the controversial remark won more ground toward the equal acceptance of black culture. Ultimately, I believe that the American public had begun to realize a fascination with foreign cultures and more specifically African American jazz during this period of time.