The Great Gatsby takes place in 1920's, post-WWI America, a place where everyone seems to be desperately searching to find themselves. Along with this search for themselves came modernism, which brought with it the idea that life had no meaning unless you gave it meaning. So naturally, people listened. Some thought that throwing extravagant parties was the way to give life meaning. Others thought that new forms of art would work. But some smarter people turned to one of the greatest expressions of art known to man: music.

Music had always been one of the main ways one could recognize a cultural change in society, and in the time of the Great Gatsby, it was no different. Musicians grown from the seeds of modernism invented a new genre of music called jazz. It had a more upbeat, swinging feel than traditional music, and was thus dismissed by most. But turns out, they were wrong to doubt this new style. Because jazz is arguably the most influential new genre of the past century.

I decided to explore this further using my essential question, which is "How did jazz reshape society?

I think is safe to say that when most people think of jazz artists, they think of African-Americans, and they're not wrong: jazz was popularized mostly by African-Americans. They were often criticized for this rebellious new style that had helped create, and most artists were turned down by record labels and gigs for not sticking to tradition. However, some were able to gain respect for their work.

Jazz music was deeply cultural for African-Americans. In his paper, "The Social Effects of Jazz", Zola Philipp says that "Faced with racism, discrimination, and segregation, blacks have always found comfort and a sense of peace in their music". (Para. 3). This was inherently true for jazz. Philipp also states that "The social conditions facing American popular music, especially rap, are analogous to those faced by jazz music..." (Para. 3).

There were many positive effects of jazz music on society in the 1920s and beyond, but I will give two most important examples. First, it created, even if forceful, integration among blacks and whites in the music industry. Whites even began to be hired to play with major black jazz musicians.

Second, jazz helped grow the music industry. Jazz was one of the first genres of music to be recorded and distributed to widespread audience.

Although it may seem that jazz was all good, there was actually a lot of bad that came with the good. As the record labels and markets for jazz music grew, African-American artists began being pushed out and less credited with their invention and popularization of jazz music. Because the audience for consuming this marketable content was mostly white, their racial bias towards African-Americans was still present and they caused black influence in jazz to seem smaller as a result.

Gerald Early, a fellow at the Washington University National Humanities Center, elaborates more on the negative effects of jazz on society in his article, "Jazz and the African American Literary Tradition". Most of the negative effects were tension between whites and blacks in the industry. Early states that "some white performers felt that whites had not been given sufficient credit for their contributions to this art which has had white participation since its early days...". He also explains that the other side of the tension was "between black performers and the whites who mostly constituted the critics, writers, venue and record company owners who described, analyzed, promoted, publicized, recorded, and distributed this music." (Para. 5).

This tension lead to the continued victimization of blacks. A certain social stigma was pivotal in jazz. According to Philipp it "created an environment for black exploitation because jazz was considered black folk music...[it] consisted of a belief held by whites that the tradition of African-American music was not art, but was rather artistically worthless, trivial, and only tolerated for profitability". (Para. 16).

As you can see, while jazz music had positive effects, it had negative effects as well. Jazz had social contributions that have a lasting impact, but it in some ways creates racial and societal issues present today as well. In the time of the Great Gatsby, these issues helped define modernism and how society operated in a world desperately searching for meaning.