Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, And Nat King...

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Nat King Cole. These men all lived vastly different lives, but one exploit that they will always hold in common is that they helped to develop jazz into the integral part of music it exists as today. Jazz created a form of expression that allowed an entire generation to show what they valued and what they represented in life, which is exactly what the men I mentioned earlier did. Accordingly, they did not just make catchy tunes for dancing to and melancholy songs for crying to, they wove narratives that described their hope, dreams, and struggles. Moreover, this expression is why jazz almost synonymous represents the development of African-American culture in the late 19th and early 20th century. The genre provided an opportunity for blacks to break free of the poverty and racism that still attempted to shackle the entire race and it also provided a foundation several major African-American cultural movements including the Civil Right s Movement and Harlem Renaissance. Consequently, jazz remains one of the most influential parts of African-American culture today. It not only helped blacks show pride in and develop their culture, but it also allowed an ordinarily overlooked race to display its struggles to the world and blur the barrier between white and black. To truly understand why music, and jazz, remain such a monumental part of African-American culture, it is important to look at the whole picture that America presents