[1][2] The rent party played a major role in the development of jazz and blues music, alongside forms of swing dancing.
[3] The Oxford English Dictionary states that the term skiffle means "rent party", indicating the informality of the occasion.
Rent parties were often the location of so-called cutting contests, which involves jazz pianists taking turns at the piano, attempting to out-do each other.
Many at the time sought out new employment opportunities, as well as a means to escape Jim Crow laws in the south.
[4] African Americans were still faced with social and economic discrimination within these urban areas, most notably when it came to rental payments.
While this was the original intent of these sorts of parties, eventually, they grew so popular that tenants started to throw them to supplement their salaries.
Parties were typically held on Saturdays, which was when many of the laborers were paid, or on Thursdays, which was when most domestic workers were off duty.
Nevertheless, rent parties were also seen as means of building Black community and a creative way to tackle economic hardship.
The play style emerged due to the crowded nature of the parties, with the tenants wanting to hire as few musicians as possible.
The style was referred to as the "Harlem Stride" and was popularized by several notable jazz musicians, such as James P Johnson, Fats Waller, and Willie "The Lion" Smith.
Due to the disappearance of paid gigs during the lockdown in the United States, pianist and Harlem resident Emmet Cohen started his version of the rent party as an online streaming concert on Monday nights to provide income for his trio with bassist Russell Hall, drummer Kyle Poole, as well as other musicians living or traveling through New York.
One of the uploaded concert videos featuring singer Cyrille Aimee has accumulated over 4 million views.