As
we continue our journey into the world of jazz, we want to take this
opportunity to share with our esteem readers a brief history of jazz. We begin
with a synopsis of the history of jazz in order to put it in proper perspective
and to recognize the invaluable contribution of African Americans to the development
of America’s most recognized cultural art form. We are encouraged in our effort
by the opening of the museum of African American history by the first African
American President, Barack Obama which was done sometime before the end of his
term. This is not a coincidence, but a
natural development in the evolution of America’s history.
In
previous notes, we traced the origins of jazz to the slave dances at Congo
Square, now called Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans. Although there is an
inclination to view the intersection of European-American and African currents
in music as something theoretical or metaphysical, the storied accounts of the
Congo Square dances provide us with a real time and place of an actual transfer
of a complete African ritual to the native soil of the New World.
In the Americas, the dance became known as the
“Ring Shout” which describes the clusters of individuals moving in a circular
pattern, chanting and wailing as they danced around. It has been observed that
this tradition persisted well into the 20th century, and was still practiced in
South Carolina as late as the 1950s. In fact, the Congo Square dances were
hardly so long-lived, as there are indications that the practice continued,
except for a brief interruption during the Civil War, until around 1885. Such
chronology implies that their disappearance almost coincided with the emergence
of the first jazz bands in New Orleans. It should be noted here that this
transplanted African ritual lived on as part of the collective memory and oral history of the black community in
New Orleans, which in turn, shaped the “self-image” of the early jazz
performers as to what it meant to be an African-American musician.
Historical accounts credit Buddy Bolden as the
earliest jazz musician, but it is also said that by the time Bolden and another
musician Sid Bechet began playing jazz, the Americanization of African music
had already began, and with it came the Africanization of American music.
(Bechet was a clarinet player from New Orleans who was at that time compared to
Louis Armstrong as a great improviser during those transitional years.)
The
story of jazz and its development is directly linked to the founding and growth
of New Orleans as a city. New Orleans went through a few hands before it became
an American city. Almost less than half a century after the city’s founding in
1764 by the French, it was ceded to Spain, and it was not until 1880 when
Napoleon succeeded in getting it back. However, this renewed French control did
not last long, for in 1883, the city of New Orleans was transferred to the
United States as part of the “Louisiana Purchase”. The early settlement of
French and Spanish migrants played a decisive role in shaping the distinctive
ambiance of New Orleans in the early part of the 19th century. Other European
migrants from countries like England, Italy, Ireland and Germany also settled
in New Orleans and made substantial contributions to the development of the
local culture. The city’s black inhabitants were equally diverse, many coming
from West Africa and many more from the Caribbean joining native-born
Americans. It is said that in 1808, as many as 6000 refugees from Haiti arrived
in New Orleans fleeing the Haitian revolution. This ensuing amalgam blending an
exotic mixture of European, Caribbean, African and American elements, made New
Orleans and the state of Louisiana the most seething ethnic melting pot in the
New World.
In this society, the most forceful creative
ingredient came from the African-American underclass. This should be of no
surprise, for by 1807, about 400,000 native born Africans were transported to
America mostly from West Africa, deprived of their freedom and torn from the
social fabric that gave structure to their lives. They struggled hard to cling on
to elements of their culture, and music and folk tales were the most resilient
of these.
The
drum became a very powerful means of communication and African elements in the
slaves’ music became evident. This unfortunately led to the banning of drum use
by the slaves in states like Georgia. It was a turning point in the evolution
of the slave songs, and out of this development, came the “work songs” which
were more African in nature. This ritualized vocalizing of black American
workers with total disregard for Western systems of notation and scales, came
in various forms, and the history of jazz is closely intertwined with many of
these and other hybrid genres of music.
Generalizations about African music are tricky
and can be confusing. Many pundits have treated the culture of West Africa as a
homogenous and unified body of similar practices. As a matter of fact, many
different cultures contribute to the traditions of West Africa. However, there
are a few shared characteristics amid this plurality which always stands out,
and appears repeatedly in different guise, in jazz. One good example, is the
call-and-response forms that predominate in African music, and is also found in
the ‘work songs, the blues and jazz.’ It
should be noted here that the most prominent characteristic, i. e. the core
element of African music in its contribution to the development of jazz, is its
extraordinary richness in rhythmic content. The ability of African performance
arts to transform the European tradition of composition while assimilating some
of its elements, is perhaps the most striking and powerful evolutionary force
in the history of modern music.
The
relationship between jazz and the blues is always a subject of discussion among
scholars of music, and the early accounts of slave music are strangely silent
about the blues. Research has been done by some scholars to discover the
surviving traces of the pre-slave origins of this music. The music called Blues
is often associated with any sad or mournful song, but this is a misnomer as
the term blues is a technical word which refers to a twelve-bar form that
relies heavily on dominant tonic sounds and subdominant harmonies. This
particular technique is known to have spread beyond the blues idiom into jazz
and many other forms of popular music.
There
have been attempts to trace the lineage of early blues singers as a
continuation of the West African tradition of griot singing, but blues
historian Samuel Charters summed it up in his findings in the book entitled,
“The Roots of the Blues” as follows, “ Things in the blues had come from the
tribal musicians of the old kingdoms, but as a style the blues represented
something else. It was essentially a new kind of song that had begun with the
new life in the American South.” As the blues progressed and started leaving
its mark on this musical transition, so also was Ragtime developing with equal
importance or more, as a predecessor to early jazz. With ragtime came the
stride piano and indeed in the early days of New Orleans jazz, there was a thin
line between ragtime and jazz performance and the two terms were used
interchangeably.
After
the advent of ragtime, the development and transition of jazz music took a
different and progressive direction, encompassing all other forms and styles of
music to make it universal and far-reaching.
The story of this transition cannot be
exhausted in this little piece but we hope you have enjoyed reading about jazz
as we continue to share with you some valuable information about this beautiful
music and its history.