2006/10/01 by David Savran · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Theater, Performance, and Music History #Music History and Culture #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Jazz #Highbrow #Comedy #Musical #Art #Literature #Soul #Jazz dance #Aesthetics #Visual arts #Dance #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1353/tj.2006.0171
openalex publication_date 2006/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
During the 1920s jazz was by far the most important and controversial form of cultural production in the United States. It was also decisive in separating an emergent literary theatre, which disdained jazz for its alleged social and moral depravity, and musical comedy and vaudeville, which not only embraced jazz but became crucial arenas for its development and dissemination. By analyzing early Gershwin musicals, this essay argues that musical comedy, by ingeniously mixing highbrow and lowbrow, became a privileged site in which the debates about the social, cultural, racial, and ethnic status of jazz were both thematized and enacted.