How Did The Great Depression Affected Music?

Music has evolved in numerous ways since the Great Depression and nowadays music has modernized into rap and hip hop, but people don’t know how the history of jazz contributed the Great Depression during that time. The best method to conduct the research is by using valuable sites from .Gov or .Edu and possibly .Com. The most famous jazz singers during the Great depression are Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie. Ella Fitzgerald was becoming the most popular female singer at that time, and plus she put jazz back on the spotlight during the Great Depression. Duke Ellington was one of the top jazz musicians in American history and he created one of the most distinctive ensemble sounds in western music. Louis Armstrong

Being black during the Depression was very hard. You would be fired from any job you had and white men would take your place. On occasion if their were any whites out of work, they would call on blacks to be fired. Blacks didn't have jobs so they had no way to sustain themselves or their family. Although there wasn’t slavery during the civil war, African Americans would still sometimes be hired to work at homes to clean, and cook. The Library of Congress wrote, ¨The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of black Americans were out of work (Lib).¨ There was barely any money to pay Americans with, so they made significantly less in 1933, than in 1929. With no money there were more people starving, and only surviving off of their self grown foods, and local farming. Even with local farms, and gardens there still wasn’t enough for everyone to eat, due to not having enough money to buy seed.“In 1933, the average family income had dropped to $1,500, 40 percent less than the 1929 average family income of $2,300” (Enc). People were starved because of the lack of food. Many were forced to leave their homes and live on the streets, because they had nothing. From 1931-1940 alone there were no less than 8 million deaths in the United States. “Every sixth American farmer was affected by famine. People were forced

Many consider the Great Depression a tragedy but few actually know the ways in which it actually affected the people who lived through it. One way it affected the people of the time is the hopelessness it brought. During the early 1920's many men returned from the "Great War" jaded and angry. The same effect was seen in most people during the depression. It was this hopelessness that spawned modernist literature and thought. Another way the depression affected the everyday man was the loss of homes. Many homes were foreclosed during the depression and this left many homeless. In fact the "Okies" were people left homeless after farm foreclosures. The last way the depression affected people was the broken homes it caused. The number of father's leaving their families rose dramatically during

The Depression was the biggest economic crash America had ever experienced previously. Thousands of people lost their jobs, hundreds of businesses went bankrupt, and even some banks had to close their doors. It was a disaster. People lost everything, their savings were gone and their homes were foreclosed. Life for Americans was drastically changed. As if the Depression wasn’t bad enough, then the Dust Bowl happened. The Dust Bowl was the result of drought and erosion of the top soil of the land. Huge dust clouds swept through the Great Plains, suffocating its inhabitants (History.com). There were political efforts to better those two events, most of those efforts were enacted by the New Deal policies. FDR was the president at the time, and he created and pushed for the use of the New Deal policies. The New Deal encompassed the programs enacted to save homes from foreclosure, create jobs and many other helpful programs. All in all, the 30’s was an era of economic insecurity and general upheaval. By the late 30’s people were looking to the government to get the nation out of these national

The Great Depression was a very influential era in American history, affecting many future generations. One of the most prevalent impacts it had on society was the extreme poverty that swept across the nation, affecting both people in cities and in the country. The main cause for this poverty was the mass loss of jobs among the middle class. Millions lost their jobs and consequently their homes. Families lived out of tents and cars in shanty towns or Hoovervilles. In these camps, many people didn’t have their basic human needs met, children and adults alike starved. They lived in clothes that were caked in dirt and tattered, too small for growing children and too cold for the frail elderly. Government relief programs attempted to help but offered little support to the now impoverished families of the millions that lost everything.

When most people hear the phrase “The Great Depression” they only associate it the crash of the stock market and the hard times that followed. Here in the Midwest, when we think of the Great Depression we also think of the Dust Bowl and the Dirty Thirties. The Great Depression was a very climactic end to a series of poor choices that greatly affected the entire United States.

The end of the first world war brought about a recession and then nearly a decade of prosperity in the United States. However, on October 29th, 1929, during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, the stock market crashed due to a multitude of problems within the country. At this point, thousands of people that had prospered before the crash, were homeless, jobless, and in a state of penury. In the 1932 election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran against the former president, Republican Herbert Hoover, and defeated him in a landslide, receiving the electoral vote in all but six states (Appleby, 651). As Roosevelt was taking office, the unemployment rates were skyrocketing, and more and more people were

(One thing that Americans used to avoid the depressing times was to use illegal drugs, but that will be elaborated on later.) This is what it was all about; sure it was about the music, but it brought more, it brought a way of life across the ocean.

The stock market crash, called Black Tuesday. Unequal distribution of wealth was a key factor during the time period as well. The day know as “Black Tuesday” was the day the stock market crashed. This led to the fall of stock prices, in fear, people sold their stocks and gathered the money they could. The people who didn’t, lost all of their stocks. Those who bought them on credit, they were now in debt. Investors lost a collective amount equal to the amount spent in WWI, that’s billions of dollars gone, approximately thirty-two billion dollars (32,000,000,000). As bad as the crash was, unequal distribution of wealth did not help. The rich saw an income increase of 70%, and the poor saw an increase of 9%. More than 70% of families earned less than $2500/year. Many of these families couldn't afford household products, such as the flood of overproduced goods. Only one out of ten families owned an electric refrigerator. One thing many people overlook when on the subject of the Great Depression is the president's influence on the situation. The two presidents during this time were Herbet Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hoover was in office during the collapse of the economy, he didn’t believe in national relief, he believed in self-prevalence and self-help. His beliefs didn’t get the confidence of the people, in 1933, a fourth of working American’s were out of a job, that’s more than fifteen million people unemployed. Many people disliked Hoover, so when they needed to make a home out of paper, glass, tin, or whatever they could find, they named the towns constructed from these items “Hoovervilles”. They were found mostly on the outside of cities. Hoover's idea of self-reliance didn’t get him reelected, he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt brought forward a new strategy to take on the economic problems, it was called the New Deal. The New Deal was a series of actions him and his

After the wealthy and roaring 1920s, America entered one of the hardest economic crises in history in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s. The majority of people sank below the poverty line, but through the government and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (known as FDR), America was able to endure this time of struggle. The Great Depression lead to organizations such as the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration which helped when so many Americans were unemployed, and struggling to stay healthy.

The 1930s was one of the most challenging times in US history, where the Great Depression caused millions of Americans to suffer through hardships because of the economy. Many people were out of work and unemployed, and the government at the time, believed that the best option was to stay out of its affairs, leaving the struggling people hung out to dry. It was not until Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, that the state of the country began to change. And that was due to the creation of the New Deal; a plan to alleviate the state of the country, providing help through increased government spending and programs, that led to its eventual recovery after the second World War.

The 1930s were not for a moment easy since the Great Depression, which was the utmost absolutely horrible stock-market crash the U.S. has ever dealt with. But when the government planned to start building glorious architectures, people had jobs that paid exceptionally well and could afford to own a home in “depressed” America. When President Hoover was nominated president, he tried to change the ways of the depression, by increasing tariffs so imported goods would stay away, which never helped at all (Owen). Sadly, President Hoover should have just focused on helping the people, like increasing taxes that would cause the wealthy to more, and he would give the people some money back.

At the peak of the Great Depression in 1932 over 12,060,000 citizens were unemployed and the rate of deflation exceeded 10% (John C. Williams1). Millions of individuals were starving on the streets and billions were lost on the stock market (History.com2). When Franklin Roosevelt released the New Deal in 1933, a plan to provide relief, reform, and recovery to the distressed country, Americans were in dire need of relief. President FDR acted quickly and implemented a series of programs aimed towards providing an immediate stop to the economic free fall and providing relief to his people (DPLA3). In his effort to reduce the severity of poverty and unemployment, FDR released programs to aid business and labor, farmers, housing and homeowners,

The Great Depression was a time of tragedy and despair. There are several factors, which have contributed to the health of the nation during the Great Depression. While there were setbacks, there were also improvements during this time. Disabling diseases were more common in low-income families. However, cures for diseases were also found. Studies have found that the life expectancy increased during and after the great depression.

The 1920s seemed to promise a future of a new and wonderful way of life for America and its citizens . Modern science, evolving cultural norms, industrialization, and even jazz music heralded exciting opportunities and a future that only pointed up toward a better life. However, cracks in the facade started to show, and beginning with the stock market crash of 1929 the wealth of the country, and with it the hopes and expectations of its people, began to slip away. The Great Depression left a quarter of the population unemployed and much of the rest destitute and uncertain of what the future held. Wealth vanished, people took their money out of banks, and plans were put on hold. The most significant way in which the Great Depression affected Americans’ everyday lives was through poverty because it tore relationships apart and damaged the spirit of society while unexpectedly bringing families together in unity.