Chapter 5 - 2

02 History

listen to a lecture in a history class. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

M: Okay, let’s talk about an important force that helped shape.

American society in the 1920s and 1930s.

Any guesses about what it might be? No? Well, anyone ever heard of the Charleston?

How about the jitterbug? They’re different kinds of dances that were popular during that era.

You see, the dance halls of that time drew crowds from all over and began to shape society in a lot of different ways.

Let me first give you an idea of what these dance halls were.

Dance halls first cropped up in the major metropolitan areas after World War I.

A lot of the dance craze was fueled by a desire to forget the war, you know, to forget about the hard times.

Big cities like Chicago, New York, Boston and Detroit opened up huge venues where people could congregate and dance.

These dance halls hosted popular bands, which helped encourage people to come.

Actually, in New York, about ten percent of the people joined the dance craze once a week.

All together, about six million people attended, a dance hall in 1924.

Now, I don’t know if that sounds like many to you guys, but let me put this in perspective for you.

That was just in one city.

six million people, in dance halls, in one city, in one year.

That’s a lot.

So, what did dance halls do for culture? First, dance halls gave society a different view of entertainment.

Now, I know we don’t normally think of dance craze is shaping society, but if you think about it for a minute, it’s really true.

Just like rock and roll affected American culture, the dance halls that started opening up in the 1920s really influenced young people’s ideas of entertainment, relationships, and different beliefs.

What do I mean by that?

Um… during the early twenties in the United States, a lot of people thought dancing was evil or inappropriate.

They thought that it encouraged the young people to be irresponsible and reckless, but the teenagers and people in their twenties were really drawn to this form of entertainment because it was fun!

So they develop different beliefs about dancing and entertainment in general.

This, of course, it… uh, it changed American culture.

It gave people a place to go and socialize.

Now, dance halls also had an effect on… hmm, what’s the best way to put this?

Dance halls gave people a different idea of what proper behavior was.

Now, today we would think dance halls were not at all morally offensive.

It was just people dancing. But it was actually rather progressive for the time.

In a way, it allowed people to get away from their very proper, um, some would say boring lives.

They got to go out and dance, to be with strangers.

And I think eventually it led to the idea that such behavior was just fine, even if it was shocking for some at the time.

1) How is the professor organize the information he presents to the class?

2) Why does the professor mention World War I?

3) Why does the professor mention rock and roll?