Jazz

Jazz is "Between old Africa and old Europe. It could only have happened in an entirely new world. It is an improvisational art, making itself up as it goes along, just like the country that gave it birth. It rewards individual expression but demands selfless collaboration. It is forever changing but really always rooted in the blues . . . it is brand-new every night. . . . Above all, it swings. . . . the creative process incarnate" (Ken Burns, Jazz).

Events that led to the creation of Jazz:

New Orleans in the 1800s encouraged improvisation. Slaves and immigrants needed to improvise to survive.

In 1817, New Orleans permitted slaves to sing and dance in Congo Square. Most of these slaves were from the Caribbean. Other groups of slaves were from the American South, straight from Africa, and brought with them the tradition of "work calls" used in the fields and the Baptist Church "call and response" which eventually turned into Gospel music.

The Creoles of color (people with the mixed blood of blacks and whites of Spanish and French descent) were educated in the European tradition, identified with European ancestors and looked down at Africans. Many were classically trained musicians whose function was to provide dance music for white audiences.

The Minstrel Shows were composed of blacks and whites, and as a popular entertainment spread all over America. Whites exploited black culture; they misinterpreted black culture but they popularized it.

After the Civil War, and the freedom of slaves, there was a burst of creativity. For a while there was the military rule of Reconstruction enforcing the laws of freedom. Then laws began to be passed called Jim Crow and segregation began and civil rights collapsed.

In the 1890s, there were two styles of music in New Orleans:

1) Ragtime which drew from everything that went before it.

2) Blues. The Blues came to New Orleans with ex-slaves fleeing the Jim Crow South and bringing with them the blues. Musically, the blues consist of 3 chords, but it is not just the technique but a feeling.

"The blues was the profane twin of the sacred music of the black Baptist Church, filled with call and response, shouts, moans, exhortations, and signifiers" (Burns). 'One prayed to god and one prayed to what was human,' " a singer said. The blues were intensely personal, meant to make the listener feel better not worse.

Jim Crow laws eventually spread to New Orleans and Creoles of color were declared legally black; consequently, Creole musicians could no longer play white venues and had to play with the blues musicians of the black community. The horn-playing Creole musicians filled in the pauses in the blues.

Buddy Bolden led the first jazz band.

No one really knows how the word Jazz came to be. The best guess is that the prostitutes in New Orleans wore jasmine perfume, the best music came from the houses of prostitution in New Orleans' Storyville section of town. White men came there to be entertained in the best style and loved the hot, new music. Perhaps originally the word was Jass and changed to Jazz because Jass was too risqué.