Page - (000165) - in Knowledge and Networks

158 Results: The History of Jazz from a Structural Perspective The Pre-swing Era: 1930 to 1934 In the early thirties, jazz was considered a dead style, alive only in the memories of connoisseurs nostalgic for a pre-Depression America (Lopes, 2002). “Sweet” bands, headed by classical-music-educated maestros such as Paul Whiteman, controlled the emerging phonographic industry of the period. Nonetheless, some sidemen musicians such as Benny Goodman, who played for big bands and had contact with early jazz musicians, started to introduce “hot” elements. The musical style they were developing would be eventually called swing. It is worth noting that more than 90 % of the recording sessions were concentrated in three cities: New York, Chicago, and London (Fig. 8.3). This geographic concentration was reinforced by the record- ing industry structure. It is evident that during this period Ivory Tower and Ivy League musicians domi- nated the network’s core (Fig. 8.1a in the Core and Core Intermediary blocks). Both generations of the Elite Cluster were already present, but they played a minor role, which can be observed by the limited number of musicians in these categories (Table 8.4). In Fig. 8.4 it is apparent that betweenness centrality was higher than degree centrality, indicating that few musicians were instrumental in playing the role of brokers. Figure 8.2a shows the relationship between trajectory types. It is interesting to observe that despite the large number of ties between trajectory types, only three Fig. 8.3 Distribution of recording sessions by major city (Design by author) C. Kirschbaum