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The vivid imagery and powerful expressive potential of jazz music inspired many authors during the era, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carl Van Vechten, and Langston Hughes, an archetypal poet whose work explores the experience of black Americans in urban settings (especially his home town, Harlem), and pioneered jazz poetry, a genre which often discusses Jazz music and incorporates it’s rhythmic meter. This excerpt from his “The Weary Blues” imitates the lazy sway of early Blues music;

The vivid imagery and powerful expressive potential of jazz music inspired many authors during the era, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carl Van Vechten, and Langston Hughes, an archetypal poet whose work explores the experience of black Americans in urban settings (especially his home town, Harlem), and pioneered jazz poetry, a genre which often discusses Jazz music and incorporates it’s rhythmic meter. This excerpt from his “The Weary Blues” imitates the lazy sway of early Blues music;

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

  I hear a Negro play.

  ... I hear a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

  He did a lazy sway …

  ... He did a lazy sway …

  He did a lazy sway …

  ... He did a lazy sway …

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues

Jazz music was certainly not without it’s opponents; music critics scathingly opposed it, and it was frequently mocked in newspapers. It was generally seen as threatening the musical traditions and audiences of traditional classical music. Professor Henry Van Dyke of Princeton University remarked, “… It is not music at all. It’s merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion.” Jazz was, in fact, not music in the sense of much classical music; it did not aspire to be art, but was instead a product, like much of today’s pop music, which came with extensive cultural implications. The 30s saw the rise of big-band Dixieland and swing jazz, and throughout the 30s and 40s, Jazz became commercialized as a marketable product with a predominantly white audience. By the fifties, mainstream public attention was shifting to pop music and later rock and roll, and with the development of the improvisational, impressionistic Bebop, jazz became for the first time a critically accepted art form.

Jazz music was certainly not without it’s opponents; music critics scathingly opposed it, and it was frequently mocked in newspapers. It was generally seen as threatening the musical traditions and audiences of traditional classical music. Professor Henry Van Dyke of Princeton University remarked, “… It is not music at all. It’s merely an irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion.” Jazz was, in fact, not music in the sense of much classical music; it did not aspire to be art, but was instead a product, like much of today’s pop music, which came with extensive cultural implications. The 30s saw the rise of big-band Dixieland and swing jazz, and throughout the 30s and 40s, Jazz became commercialized as a marketable product with a predominantly white audience. By the fifties, mainstream public attention was shifting to pop music and later rock and roll, and with the development of the improvisational, impressionistic Bebop, jazz became for the first time a critically accepted art form.