A Jazz Appreciation Month is celebrated each year in the United States during the month of April, and International Jazz Day is celebrated worldwide every year on the 30th April. The month of April is an important month in jazz and it is therefore no coincidence that a number of notable jazz musicians were born in April. We therefore want to take this opportunity to share with our esteem readers a brief history of jazz and why it has become an international phenomena.
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. 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 (a
cornet player) 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 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, its history and the people who helped shape it.
In
recent years, Corea has shown rising interest in classical music and composed a
few piano concertos. In 2008, Return to Forever came back together for a world
tour. The band consisted of Corea on keyboards, Stanley Clark on bass, Leny
White on drums and Al DiMeola on guitar. They also toured extensively and
recorded re-releases of earlier songs on a compilation album entitled – Return
to Forever: The Anthology.
Chick
Corea is still around writing songs and occasionally playing the music he
love-JAZZ. We hope you are enjoying reading about jazz as much as I enjoy
sharing with you the little I know.
