Jazz Lecture New Thought on Weimar

Author: Becca Kaufman

Most Americans can make immediate associations when hearing the term jazz. It rouses feelings of musical freedom, artistic liberty, improvisation and experimentation that, in its creation, tested the boundaries of what music could be and do. Perhaps more than other styles of music, jazz has been daring and provocative, often because it has taken on a social significance as a rebellious form of music founded by a marginalized class. Specifically African Americans, filtered over time into mainstream culture, becoming a classic American musical genre. If jazz has such unique American features and connotations, what is its significance and meaning in other nations?

On Friday, Nov. 30, in the Abernethy Room, Cornelius Partsch, a professor at Mount Holyoke College presented his lecture entitled "Jazz in the Weimar Republic"; a study of how this modern and uniquely American art form was translated across seas in a German nation embracing America for the first time. Germans, in the post World War I era, were faced with a paradoxical situation with respect to the Americans: although they were defeated by them in battle, they were infiltrated by all things American, ranging from democracy and capitalism to consumer goods and American art. And, in many respects, all these American ideals were interconnected, including the introduction and fascination with jazz. It was not simply an art form, but a representation of a new Germany heavily influenced by an American presence that, more than anything, de-emphasized the individual and over-emphasized mass culture. Jazz in Germany during this period was consequently, intrinsically tied to production and consumer capitalism.

This new easily accessible jazz was, as Partsch pointed out, very different from the jazz of earlier eras which was loosely defined and consisted of experimental and avant-garde musicians appealing to a small audience. "My parrot doesn't eat hard-boiled eggs" were the lyrics in one of the examples he used to show the creative nature of early jazz. By 1924, however, jazz or music categorized as jazz had evolved from a subversive form of art to a new cultural phenomenon that was part of a modern way of life.

Mass produced jazz, Partsch explained, was a result of the technological advancements that reached German society after World War I. Music was not considered simply emblematic of mass production and consumption but part of it: "Engineers make music," Conrad stated. Music could sound like trains or like someone getting hit by a car, Conrad said, and it was fashioned after capitalist production in which the objectives were speed and quantity. In the case of jazz, these two ideals also played an important role. The rhythm and the sounds were constructed so that people could recognize the music to dance the most popular dances or enjoy a familiar piece. Conrad referred to the "tilla girls," who dressed in the same outfits and kicked up their legs in harmony like mechanical wind-up toys. He showed a political cartoon that portrayed the tilla girls coming out of a factory on a production line, indistinguishable from one another but ready to dance in the concert halls or the cabarets.

Another political cartoon showed a conductor, enormous in comparison to the musicians, and the instruments illustrating a similar message of "a well-tuned engine lead by a supreme technician." It was a rational and sanitized form of jazz that could be played in front of a large middle class audience. While this form of jazz was embraced in Germany, especially in Berlin, it was not unique to the nation. Paul Whiteman, an American, was one of the first to "clean up" and "democratize" jazz by bringing it to the masses in huge concert halls. Interested in this accessibility, many German jazz musicians began to use parody as a means of attracting a consumer-minded population. The works of classical musicians, even the most renowned such as Wagner, were re-created in the style of jazz. If people could recognize what was composed, perhaps they would be more interested in buying it.

As history tells us, however, this revamping of the classics did not last. By 1933, this parody ended and jazz, as a musical style, was called into question. The transformation from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich meant the elimination of all foreign, and especially American, influences. Like many things during this period, the clock was turned back and music considered classically and uniquely German, like Wagner, was the only permitted kind of musical expression.