Both musical genres also marked a thriving underground arts scene among not only African-Americans but also European-Americans. Whites became increasingly interested in and involved with both jazz and blues, and by the 1920s, jazz had especially made waves in Europe. As Kirchner points out, Eastern European folk music and some European classical music in fact shared much in common with American jazz. The acceptance of jazz in Europe came earlier than acceptance of the blues. Therefore, jazz retained a more cosmopolitan aura than the blues in the early 20th century. Even though African-American jazz musicians were treated as second-class citizens in the cities where they were born, they were on the cutting edge of the international music scene.
With great band leaders like Duke Ellington jazz gradually became mainstream American music, changing its form for different audiences. Jazz shared instrumentation, structure, and tonality with some European music (Kirchner). Therefore, jazz was perhaps more palatable to the Caucasian ear than the blues were early in that genre's evolution. European-Americans like Frank Sinatra entered the Big Band scene with a bang, and whites as well as blacks performed jazz. The blues, for the most part, remained mostly an African-American cultural tradition.
However, it would be the blues that rose to the forefront of musical innovation during the middle and later part of the century. The invention of electric instruments, especially the electric guitar, greatly changed the blues. "Chicago bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters were the first to electrify the blues and add drums and piano in the late 1940s," (Kopp). When the blues became electric, rock and roll was born. Both American and European musicians jammed to blues scales, creating a stunning fusion of sounds...
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