Jazz-Blues-R&B..must we?

mowque

Banned
In my TL I am looking at the history of music in the USA. We have a Bryan presidency in 1908. (But the POD is in 1902). Anyway, with this administration we have more states rights and such. So a 'stronger' South and a more isolated one.

With that in mind. Can I have more of a 'Folk Revival' then a Jazz one? I don't want Jazz, to be honest. It doesn't fit with what I have in mind for 'my' America. Something with popualr Applichian folk music. Blues is ok, but channeled into Folk (or something like that) then channeled into Jazz. No Jazz and certainly no rock and roll.

See what i am driving at? Possible, best way to do it, and so on. Thank you.
 
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In my TL I am looking at the history of music in the USA. We have a Bryan presidency in 1908. (But the POD is in 1902). Anyway, with this administration we have more states rights and such. So a 'stronger' South and a more isolated one.

With that in mind. Can I have more of a 'Folk Revival' then a Jazz one? I don't want Jazz, to be honest. It doesn't fit with what I have in mind for 'my' America. Something with popualr Applichian folk music. Blues is ok, but channeled into Folk (or something like that) then channeled into Jazz. No Jazz and certainly no rock and roll.

See what i am driving at? Possible, best way to do it, and so on. Thank you.

For that, you're really going to need to go back to the traditions that blues and jazz stemmed from, and find a reason for them to not catch on. The best bet is around the year of your POD, since you could conceivably find a way to keep African-American culture limited to African-American communities, and to strangle ragtime in its crib while you're at it.
 

mowque

Banned
For that, you're really going to need to go back to the traditions that blues and jazz stemmed from, and find a reason for them to not catch on. The best bet is around the year of your POD, since you could conceivably find a way to keep African-American culture limited to African-American communities, and to strangle ragtime in its crib while you're at it.

Well I wouldn't mind it existing, just not become the 'Jazz Age' I plan on Joplin dying of a nasty cold in 1904 though, so that might help a little. Anything else? This isn't my area of expertise. Maybe just have 'jazz' and 'blues' contained to New Orleans and such?
 
Well I wouldn't mind it existing, just not become the 'Jazz Age' I plan on Joplin dying of a nasty cold in 1904 though, so that might help a little. Anything else? This isn't my area of expertise. Maybe just have 'jazz' and 'blues' contained to New Orleans and such?

If you keep the US out of WWI, Storyville will remain open and that will at a minimum slow the diffusion of jazz.
 
For that, you're really going to need to go back to the traditions that blues and jazz stemmed from, and find a reason for them to not catch on. The best bet is around the year of your POD, since you could conceivably find a way to keep African-American culture limited to African-American communities, and to strangle ragtime in its crib while you're at it.
How to kill off ragtime, though? A 'moral crusade' would simply drive it underground, and that's never killed off anything. ;)

Ragtime itself is pretty hard to get rid of-- at its core, it's marching music condensed into a one-hand-bass-one-hand-treble piano music, with the melody being a compromise between the core brass bits of a march and the frilly flute bits, leading to a jumpy, syncopated melody with a solid march beat. Turns out, people like syncopation, so ragtime spreads (and any businessman worth his salt will try to get a hold of something popular like that) and gradually encompasses the United States.

To make it not spread, you'd have to make people not hear it. Limit distribution somehow, I suppose.
 

mowque

Banned
If you keep the US out of WWI, Storyville will remain open and that will at a minimum slow the diffusion of jazz.

'WW1' is in 1910, and American joins in 1911 and with even more enthusiasm then OTL. What is this Storyville?

How to kill off ragtime, though? A 'moral crusade' would simply drive it underground, and that's never killed off anything. ;)

Ragtime itself is pretty hard to get rid of-- at its core, it's marching music condensed into a one-hand-bass-one-hand-treble piano music, with the melody being a compromise between the core brass bits of a march and the frilly flute bits, leading to a jumpy, syncopated melody with a solid march beat. Turns out, people like syncopation, so ragtime spreads (and any businessman worth his salt will try to get a hold of something popular like that) and gradually encompasses the United States.

To make it not spread, you'd have to make people not hear it. Limit distribution somehow, I suppose.

But this is a more conservative (morally) America then before. I don't want the Jazz Age coming along and smashing that. Rural America reign supreme! (At least culturally here). I have radio being run by combination of the radio manufacturers and state money. Might that hurt the spread?
 
But this is a more conservative (morally) America then before. I don't want the Jazz Age coming along and smashing that. Rural America reign supreme! (At least culturally here). I have radio being run by combination of the radio manufacturers and state money. Might that hurt the spread?
The trick would be to subvert it and make it be associated more with rural, conservative, religious people. Play up the Spiritual influence, and have it become established as a slower-paced genre with themes of God, rural living (see Gershwin's "I Got Plenty of Nothing" for an example of what I'm thinking of here), and life as it usually is.

People may experiment with speeding up the tempo and giving it a 'jazzier' feel, but this would probably be limited to Manhattan clubs and stay relatively low and underground compared to the more widespread Gospel-Blues.
 
'WW1' is in 1910, and American joins in 1911 and with even more enthusiasm then OTL. What is this Storyville?



But this is a more conservative (morally) America then before. I don't want the Jazz Age coming along and smashing that. Rural America reign supreme! (At least culturally here). I have radio being run by combination of the radio manufacturers and state money. Might that hurt the spread?

Storyville was New Orleans' red light district from 1897 to 1917.
 
'WW1' is in 1910, and American joins in 1911 and with even more enthusiasm then OTL. What is this Storyville?



But this is a more conservative (morally) America then before. I don't want the Jazz Age coming along and smashing that. Rural America reign supreme! (At least culturally here). I have radio being run by combination of the radio manufacturers and state money. Might that hurt the spread?

How about an early version of televangelism? The radio is exploited by evangelicals, much like TV is today IOTL, and they manage to get their own people in charge of the radios. If we can have some of them turn into Fred Phelps lite, then that can hurt the spread of jazz, which, at the very least, might remain some sort of inner-city phenomenon, like the 50s Beat Generation.

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