Date of Award
Spring 5-2013
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Dr. Connie Zeanah Atkinson
Second Advisor
Dr. Molly Mitchell
Third Advisor
Dr. Albert Kennedy
Abstract
This essay will use the views of two African American newspaper columnists, E. Belfield Spriggins of the Louisiana Weekly and Dave Peyton of the Chicago Defender, to argue that though New Orleans and Chicago both occupied a primary place in the history of jazz, in many ways jazz was initially met with ambivalence and suspicion. The struggle between the desire to highlight black achievement in music and the effort to adhere to tenets of middle class respectability play out in their columns. Despite historiographical writings to the contrary, these issues of the influence of jazz music on society were not limited to the white community. Tracing these columnists through the years of 1925-1929, a critical point in the popularity of jazz, reveals how considerations of black innovation and economic autonomy helped alter their opinions from criticism to ownership.
Recommended Citation
Waits, Sarah A., ""Listen to the Wild Discord": Jazz in the Chicago Defender and the Louisiana Weekly, 1925-1929" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1676.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1676
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Cultural History Commons, Music Performance Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social History Commons
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.