Was listening to jazz considered counterculture or deviant behavior?

by aliendayze

I've heard things in movies and TV shows something along the lines of "Jazz music is what messed him up"

If you could point to a source regarding this, it would be really helpful as well. Thanks.

flotiste

I'm going to direct you to a previous answer I made on a similar topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3x3u31/in_recent_history_rap_rock_and_roll_and_jazz_were/cy1lj5p/

In the beginnings of Jazz, absolutely it was considered counter-culture. A music form that throws off a lot of the conventions of Western tonality and is played almost exclusively by black people in nightclubs? Oh yeah, that's going to generate a lot of controversy.

Jazz was banned in its entirety by the Nazis, because its association with black people, and was considered Entartete Musik or Degenerate Music. It was even featured on the posters of the Entartete Musik exhibition, using exaggerated racial stereotypes. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3epgd3/with_all_kinds_of_music_books_and_culture_banned/

As for a source of "jazz music messed someone up", that I don't know. I've seen it mentioned in movies and books from the period, just as the culprit was rock music a few decades later, rap music after that, and so on.

casestudyhouse22

yes. here are some quotes from Julia Claussen:

<i> I never permit my children to pollute my piano with it. They may have it on the talking machine, but they must not be accomplices in making it.

In a blare and confusion of noises, like bedlam broken loose, what chance has a child to develop good taste? It is admittedly fascinating at times; but is without rhyme, reason or order.

I hear my daughters practicing, and now and then they seem to be putting a dash of ragtime into Bach.

Before America can go about musical educational work properly, the teachers must inculcate this spirit, a proper appreciation of what is really beautiful, instead of a kind of wild, mob-like orgy of blare, bang, smash and shriek which so many have come to know as ragtime and jazz.