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Grade 5 Social Studies · World 3: War and Prosperity · Level 28
The Jazz Age
Describe Louis Armstrong and jazz.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 28
- The war was over, and America wanted to have fun. The 1920s brought new music, new cars, and new heroes. They're called the Roaring Twenties.
- Jazz grew up in New Orleans, out of blues and ragtime from Black communities. Players make up parts as they go. That's called improvising.
- Louis Armstrong grew up poor in New Orleans and learned the trumpet as a child. As a young man, Armstrong moved to Chicago, and soon the whole country knew that sound.
- Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo, played solos no one had heard before and popularized scat singing, using made-up sounds in place of words.
- Radios spread jazz into homes. It's one of America's great gifts to the world. Try it with a grown-up: listen to a Louis Armstrong song.
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:
- SS5H2.b — Describe the cultural developments and individual contributions in the 1920s of the Jazz Age (Louis Armstrong), the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes), baseball (Babe Ruth), the automobile (Henry Ford), and transatlantic flight (Charles Lindbergh).