The Construction Of Double Identity: Jazz And Afro-Americans (1920s-1970s)

Cultural identity has always been a hot topic in culture studies. What is identity?Who need identity? How do those individuals or groups construct their culturalidentity? Those questions have been studied in many aspects of the academic fieldand many outstanding scholars have done and been doing the related research fromdifferent perspectives, such as identity of any individual in a country, the relationsbetween history or geography and identity or music and identity, the identity ofimmigrants or the minority groups, etc. There are some researching works aboutAfrican Americans cultural identity, but seldom has focused on the combination of thestudy about African American music and their identity.This thesis is going to analyze the relations between jazz and the identity ofAfrican Americans and demonstrate a double identity that the black have beenconstructing.The thesis starts from three chapters, and each chapter refers to the illustration ofone characteristic of jazz and the double identity that the black was constructing. Inchapter one, the territorial transition of jazz will be introduced. This chapter willdemonstrate how different regions had an impact on the construction of the black’sdouble identity. Chapter two mainly states the artistic distinctions of jazz and how theAfrican Americans struggled for freedom and fairness in the process of spreadingtheir cultural legacy and construct their double identity at the same time. Chapterthree will mainly state how the Afro-Americans tried hard to construct their identity inthe atmosphere of black music, especially jazz. The author also put forward to someadvice of how the black should do and find their real identity in the white world.Hopping this thesis will have little effect on Culture Studies.