MetaFilter posts tagged with jazzage

“Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion”

The Whelk — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:02:25 -0800

How To Dress Like Edward Gorey (And everyone he ever drew)

Jazz Age Chicago

Iridic — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:54:38 -0800

Scott Newman's Jazz Age Chicago is a guide to every major movie theater, department store, sporting arena, amusement park, grand hotel and dance hall that operated in the Windy City during the 1920s.

The Ward

JHarris — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:46:13 -0800

The Ward (Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3) is a silly little Lovecraftian sitcom from the folks who bring us the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. (previously: 1, 2, 3, 4) The guys Lackey and Fifer are also writing a graphic horror novel set in the Jazz Age, Deadbeats.

Everyone Once in Berlin

Slap*Happy — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:15:21 -0800

Since the fur-coated Boot Girls’ particular services were suggested by the iridescent colors of their calf-length, patent-leather boots and shoelaces, suitors had to be intimately familiar with their semaphore-like advertising before accompanying them to nearby apartments. Naturally, only devoted aficionados could decipher such specific messages with confidence. Other potential clients had to buy special primers, where Berlin’s complex street semiotics were thoughtfully decoded for the uninitiated. - Sex tourism in Berlin during the Jazz Age, along with some illustrations from the period. (Racy rather than obscene, but somewhat NSFW)

An American Art Form

netbros — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:06:00 -0800

NEA Jazz in the Schools takes a step-by-step journey through the history of jazz, integrating that story with the sweep of American social, economic, and political developments. This multi-media curriculum is designed to be as useful to high school history and social studies teachers as it is to music teachers. Start with the introductory video to get a feel for the place. The education outline contains five lessons. If you just want to listen, all the music samples are on one page. Perhaps you're more interested in individual artist biographies, or a jazz history timeline. These lessons are designed as units; five units serve as a week-long curriculum. NEW ORLEANS: MELTING POT OF SOUND — Jazz grew out of the African-American community at the turn of the 20th century, a time when blacks were being denied their most basic rights. The music has since become a part of every American’s birthright, a timeless symbol of American individualism and ingenuity, American democracy and inclusiveness. The birthplace of jazz is New Orleans, the most cosmopolitan city in the South. THE JAZZ AGE AND CHICAGO — In the 1920s, jazz spread rapidly all across America. The rise of jazz was part of a new, post–World War I optimism, a prevailing sense that something new was happening, that America was finally breaking from European culture and coming into its own. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald called the new era the Jazz Age. FROM SWING TO BOP — With the decline in popularity of swing bands and the rise of singers as pop stars, many jazz musicians in the mid-1940s retreated to smaller groups of five or six instruments that were easier to organize, were cheaper to book in clubs, and provided more freedom for individual musicians to express themselves. NEW FRONTIER — The 1960s are virtually synonymous with social and political upheaval in America, and with a popular culture nourished by intrepid experimentation and a rejection of traditional symbols of authority. Of course, in the world of jazz, musicians had already been responding to—and carrying out—upheavals in American society for some time. AN AMERICAN STORY — Jazz is the purest expression of the American spirit—innovative, independent, and, ultimately, revolutionary. The history of jazz is inextricably linked with the political, geographic, and cultural history of America, and to understand the evolution of this music is to grasp the passion and genuine humanity at the heart of American democracy.

Constant Lambert

gdav — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 02:51:35 -0800

Constant Lambert, born 100 years ago this week, was briefly the biggest star in British music in the 1930s, famous for the jazz-tinged choral piece, The Rio Grande. The BBC are playing a retrospective of his music, together with pieces by his contemporary Alan Rawsthorne, every day this week at 11:00 GMT, repeated at midnight a week later, as part of their Composer of the week slot (buttons on this page for the live stream, plus the previous five programmes). Unfortunately they aren't playing the whole of his masterpiece, the Concerto for Piano and Nine Players, dedicated to his late friend Peter Warlock, which can be read as a elegy for the Jazz Age itself.
A heavy drinker, Constant died in 1951; his son Kit Lambert, who managed The Who during their rise to fame, also died young after drug troubles. Andrew Motion wrote a biography of three generations of the Lambert family, and reflects on Constant here.