Moore Wine & Music Podcast
Season 2 premiere Episode 1
The History of Jazz
“It don’t mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing, doo wop de wop”, Famous lyrics by “Sir Duke” himself, Duke Ellington. Those lyrics pretty much summarize the elements of jazz; swing, bepop, smooth, classy, mellow, etc. Jazz creates an atmosphere that makes you feel these adjectives. I’m sitting here imagining being in a smoky-type club with Eugene (my husband) in the early 20s, 30s 40s or 50s listening to a sound that causes me to sway back n forth, while dressed to the nines. Or being on the dance floor doing the Charleston, swinging to the Bebop sound of music. Yes, jazz takes me there. In another life, living in that era I may have been right in the thick of it, playing jazz piano. But to play any type of jazz, we have to understand it, understand where it came from and how it became a form of genre that is still alive and well today.
Jazz was first started in the United States in the early part of the 20th century in New Orleans. Where the term “jazz” is basically unknown. It maybe came from back in the 1860s where African Americans used the slang “jasm” which means, vim or energy. Maybe that’s where the name jazz came from. Because New Orleans was by far the most culturally diverse city in the south, it would stand to reason the jazz sound would be created there. The blend of ragtime and blues essentially created by Black Americans created the sound of jazz. Around the 1890s brass bands in the New Orleans area began to form, particularly in the Black community. Marching bands began to form within the different communities in New Orleans. These bands were formed in collaboration with different associations for the purpose to help the sick and bury the dead, because generally, Blacks were prevented from commercial healthcare and life insurance. The parades and marching bands still carry on today in New Orleans and is used for funeral services. There’s nothing like going out, New Orleans style. New Orleans became the mecca of entertainment within the turn of the 20th century. Illegal clubs or establishments throughout the French Quarters in New Orleans were formed which were eventually known as the “Red Light District”. Musicians who basically played music by ear began to improvise ragtime and blues music. The improvisation of music began to draw audience and became popular. For example, uptown cornet player, Charles “Buddy” Bolden began to take the sound of the blues and improvise the sound to create a more up-tempo style. The sound became more popular with the audience, and they wanted more. Also, this was a time, as stated in the “History of Jazz” by the Natural Park Service, Also, repressive segregation laws passed in the 1890s (as a backlash to Reconstruction) increased discrimination toward anyone with African blood and eliminated the special status previously afforded Creoles of color. These changes ultimately united black and Creole of color musicians, thus strengthening early jazz by combing the uptown improvisational style with the more disciplined Creole approach. According to the source “The mysterious Origins of Jazz”, The musical DNA in Livery Stable Blues comes from black artists and shows that jazz is a fundamentally African American music, even if an all-white band was first to record it. The mix of African-style drumbeats and the Caribbean rhythm, found in jazz, points to the time from 1817 to 1843, when black slaves – some from Africa, some from the Caribbean, some from the interior of the American South – would gather on Sundays in New Orleans’ Congo Square to play music and cross-pollinate their traditions. New Orleans Creoles After the Jim Crow laws of 1890 classified the city’s mixed-race Creoles as ‘black’, they were only allowed to play with other black musicians, and this brought a greater musical fluency and technical skill to black music because many Creoles of color were trained in classical music. Jazz emerged from this merger of forms.
From the early 1900s to 1920s instruments consisted of drums, horns, brass & piano. There were no vocals, just the sound of music; up tempo music that makes people get up and dance to the beat. The main stable instrument in a jazz music composition is the piano. The piano creates the foundation, the melody and the other instruments joins in and creates the beat and the icing in conjunction with the melody and you get this mixture of instruments coming together and creating music that makes you want to say things like, cool, daddy-o, on the scene, okay, okay, I digress. For over a hundred years, the jazz sound as evolved. In this second season, I will be exploring the early artists who created the tone, and the beats that people danced and swing to. Next week I will introduce the man who was recorded as one of the first artists who played jazz music; his name was Jelly Roll Morton.
“The Mysterious Origins of Jazz” www.bbc.com.
“What is Jazz”? www.study.com
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