An inaugural 'stack by an iFunny emigre. This article concerns music from the very early 1900s and what it about it is relevant to people in the 21st century.
I think the focus on “artists” now rather than songs is a symptom of a music culture which has been increasing in decadence really since the 1920s. Reading this actually reminded me of a textpost I wrote on ifunny years ago about this topic. Pretty much every popular genre after the 1920s is derivative of Jazz, which was hated by conservatives and right-wingers in the interwar period and I suspect for good reason. Jazz, from what I hear, is music designed by and for instrumentalists. Like the modern artists, they got bored. Jazz is less boring to play, and also it is flashier and fast-burn, making it a hit at the clubs. I can’t say I listen to any music from before the 1920s, but I do sometimes enjoy watching old cartoons, and I see the same characteristics which modern audiences hate. The racist stuff always cracks me up, it’s genuinely funny. And also, a lot of times when it’s not something played for laughs, it hardly “dehumanizes” a foreign race. I don’t understand why people get offended because White people in the 1920s portrayed an inaccurate, romanticized view of their cultures. My chest is filled with a sense of national pride when I see the ways that the Japanese portray Americans. I even feel a sense of pride watching how the Chinese make MacArthur look so badass as a villain.
> if you ever come across a song from the 1910s in the wild, it’s almost certainly going to be a part of some 14 year old kid’s analogue horror project.
KEEEEEEK. Trvthnvke.
Very good points on 1918 as well. Whenever some libtard bitches and moans about the red summer, remember that they were fighting against the inner city ghettoes that exist today. Those ghettoes used to be the functionally segregated neighborhoods of the White ethnics in the cities, and they made sure their own didn’t break the barriers. But everything changed when the Hennessy Nation attacked…
The 1920s were not as liberal as people say. Flappers et al were a small subculture at a time when other parts of the country were more conservative than they’d ever been. The Klan was growing again, Jim Crow was at its height, immigration was cut extremely thin, and yes even though it was enforced by women and only vaguely tolerated by most men, temperance was another conservative movement. But that sort of low urban subculture had an outsized influence on the modern perception of the 20s
Thank you for your thoughts, and for giving this article a thorough read.
The jazz thing is real. I think it’s still possible to enjoy jazz without a guilty conscience. But I always find that any jazz I do enjoy, it’s peripheral within the genre and I really only enjoy the parts of it that are the least jazz-like.
I thought of speaking in greater detail about the 1920s reaction, all the Warren G. Harding “Return to Normalcy” stuff, but figured the article had gone on long enough. There was definitely a lot of pushback to the 1918 Brave New World type stuff and most women were still modest and well-mannered. But I do think that society was already set down a track by that point, and that there’s a noticeable gap between the pre-WWI and post-WWI worlds.
One time a libtard wine aunt played “Ethiopian jazz” to me. I told her that Ethiopians aren’t black so she didn’t have to pretend this garbage was good for SJW brownie points. She asked me what I listened to and I played some sonic OSTs and the whole facility laughed at me
For some reason that reminds me of that iFunny text post about the guy whose coworker was going to name his infant son “Odin.” And the iFunnier said “you could also name him Woden, that was his name in the Old English language.”
“What? No, I’m talking about Odin from Norse mythology.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The Anglo-Saxons also used to be Germanic pagans.”
“Huh? Who are you talking about? What’s a Germanic? You’re kind of freaking me out, dude.”
Heh, I was just listening to Maple Leaf Rag. It's a shame stuff like fallout and dr. strangelove has turned old music into this heccin scary psychological horror apocalypse music for zoomers. "This music ain't rap + dubstep? Nahhh blud no cap dats gon' play when all da nuclear bombs go off fr fr but don't yall DARE enjoy wyteboi entertainment like skibidi toilet"
But great point on the Progressive era. I find it strange how most normie conservatives point to the 1950s as the high point of the USA, when I've always seen the 1880s-1910s as our Golden age, a Golden age for Europe as well, Belle epoque and all that. Not that it was perfect by any means but to me it has always shined as a great, beautiful, Romantic period for the west. An age of High adventure!
The era certainly had major problems, because it was filled with people searching for answers and offering radical solutions. But it was also an age of wonders and beautiful things, with a lot of hope for the future that would go unrealized. I love the early 1900s and have been very captivated by this decade for many years. Probably the only pieces of modern media that cover it are the Titanic movie and Bioshock: Infinite, both of which fail to do it justice.
I think much of the revolutionary miasma that gripped the world from ww1 onwards finds it's roots in this era for certain. However standards of living were developing rapidly enough that the vast majority of the population did not take these ideologies seriously. Despite what Turgenev and Dostoevsky would have you believe, not every young man from the 1860s onward, we're radical terrorist. I believe, perhaps naively, that without ww1 the societal ills that bred these revolutionary movements would have slowly been resolved and the revolutionary nervous would have never spread to the wider public as it did in 1918.
On a side tangent mens fashion from the 1910s, particularly among the upper and middle classes of the American East coast are some of my favorites, very wholesome.
Thank you for reading it! I’m glad this resonated with some people. I have a few other articles planned, most of which revolve around music, namely opera and comic opera. I’d like to be a kind of cultural supplement to the mostly political iSubstack community.
As for Marion Harris, she’s a far cry from basically anything that followed her. 1920s music sounds innocent and wholesome to most people today, but it was a very stark departure from what came before. It wasn’t lost on people back then. It’s a little beyond the scope of the article to write this, but the 1920s and 30s is also when you start seeing references to drug use in popular music, chiefly through jazz.
I think the focus on “artists” now rather than songs is a symptom of a music culture which has been increasing in decadence really since the 1920s. Reading this actually reminded me of a textpost I wrote on ifunny years ago about this topic. Pretty much every popular genre after the 1920s is derivative of Jazz, which was hated by conservatives and right-wingers in the interwar period and I suspect for good reason. Jazz, from what I hear, is music designed by and for instrumentalists. Like the modern artists, they got bored. Jazz is less boring to play, and also it is flashier and fast-burn, making it a hit at the clubs. I can’t say I listen to any music from before the 1920s, but I do sometimes enjoy watching old cartoons, and I see the same characteristics which modern audiences hate. The racist stuff always cracks me up, it’s genuinely funny. And also, a lot of times when it’s not something played for laughs, it hardly “dehumanizes” a foreign race. I don’t understand why people get offended because White people in the 1920s portrayed an inaccurate, romanticized view of their cultures. My chest is filled with a sense of national pride when I see the ways that the Japanese portray Americans. I even feel a sense of pride watching how the Chinese make MacArthur look so badass as a villain.
> if you ever come across a song from the 1910s in the wild, it’s almost certainly going to be a part of some 14 year old kid’s analogue horror project.
KEEEEEEK. Trvthnvke.
Very good points on 1918 as well. Whenever some libtard bitches and moans about the red summer, remember that they were fighting against the inner city ghettoes that exist today. Those ghettoes used to be the functionally segregated neighborhoods of the White ethnics in the cities, and they made sure their own didn’t break the barriers. But everything changed when the Hennessy Nation attacked…
The 1920s were not as liberal as people say. Flappers et al were a small subculture at a time when other parts of the country were more conservative than they’d ever been. The Klan was growing again, Jim Crow was at its height, immigration was cut extremely thin, and yes even though it was enforced by women and only vaguely tolerated by most men, temperance was another conservative movement. But that sort of low urban subculture had an outsized influence on the modern perception of the 20s
Thank you for your thoughts, and for giving this article a thorough read.
The jazz thing is real. I think it’s still possible to enjoy jazz without a guilty conscience. But I always find that any jazz I do enjoy, it’s peripheral within the genre and I really only enjoy the parts of it that are the least jazz-like.
I thought of speaking in greater detail about the 1920s reaction, all the Warren G. Harding “Return to Normalcy” stuff, but figured the article had gone on long enough. There was definitely a lot of pushback to the 1918 Brave New World type stuff and most women were still modest and well-mannered. But I do think that society was already set down a track by that point, and that there’s a noticeable gap between the pre-WWI and post-WWI worlds.
One time a libtard wine aunt played “Ethiopian jazz” to me. I told her that Ethiopians aren’t black so she didn’t have to pretend this garbage was good for SJW brownie points. She asked me what I listened to and I played some sonic OSTs and the whole facility laughed at me
For some reason that reminds me of that iFunny text post about the guy whose coworker was going to name his infant son “Odin.” And the iFunnier said “you could also name him Woden, that was his name in the Old English language.”
“What? No, I’m talking about Odin from Norse mythology.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The Anglo-Saxons also used to be Germanic pagans.”
“Huh? Who are you talking about? What’s a Germanic? You’re kind of freaking me out, dude.”
Heh, I was just listening to Maple Leaf Rag. It's a shame stuff like fallout and dr. strangelove has turned old music into this heccin scary psychological horror apocalypse music for zoomers. "This music ain't rap + dubstep? Nahhh blud no cap dats gon' play when all da nuclear bombs go off fr fr but don't yall DARE enjoy wyteboi entertainment like skibidi toilet"
Woah even now I can't escape a TNO refrence.
But great point on the Progressive era. I find it strange how most normie conservatives point to the 1950s as the high point of the USA, when I've always seen the 1880s-1910s as our Golden age, a Golden age for Europe as well, Belle epoque and all that. Not that it was perfect by any means but to me it has always shined as a great, beautiful, Romantic period for the west. An age of High adventure!
The era certainly had major problems, because it was filled with people searching for answers and offering radical solutions. But it was also an age of wonders and beautiful things, with a lot of hope for the future that would go unrealized. I love the early 1900s and have been very captivated by this decade for many years. Probably the only pieces of modern media that cover it are the Titanic movie and Bioshock: Infinite, both of which fail to do it justice.
I think much of the revolutionary miasma that gripped the world from ww1 onwards finds it's roots in this era for certain. However standards of living were developing rapidly enough that the vast majority of the population did not take these ideologies seriously. Despite what Turgenev and Dostoevsky would have you believe, not every young man from the 1860s onward, we're radical terrorist. I believe, perhaps naively, that without ww1 the societal ills that bred these revolutionary movements would have slowly been resolved and the revolutionary nervous would have never spread to the wider public as it did in 1918.
On a side tangent mens fashion from the 1910s, particularly among the upper and middle classes of the American East coast are some of my favorites, very wholesome.
Great stuff. For me it's Fred Karno.
This could be a gem, but I am quite tired so I will have to read it tomow..
You'll never take me alive, copper!
Thank you for reading it! I’m glad this resonated with some people. I have a few other articles planned, most of which revolve around music, namely opera and comic opera. I’d like to be a kind of cultural supplement to the mostly political iSubstack community.
As for Marion Harris, she’s a far cry from basically anything that followed her. 1920s music sounds innocent and wholesome to most people today, but it was a very stark departure from what came before. It wasn’t lost on people back then. It’s a little beyond the scope of the article to write this, but the 1920s and 30s is also when you start seeing references to drug use in popular music, chiefly through jazz.