Origins of jazz
Jazz is a musical genre born in the second half of the century. XIX, United States, which expanded globally throughout the XX century.
The genus developed in embryo from the traditions of West Africa, Europe and North America that found its crucible among the African American community settled in the south of the United States.
In the words of ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax, jazz is a musical gumbo, a result of the melting pot, of the melting pot that was the south of the country.
Geographically, jazz arises in the state of Louisiana, specifically in the area of influence of New Orleans (cradle of the musical style and main jazz center during the early days of jazz i>), where large consignments of slaves from Africa arrived, mainly from the western part of Africa, south of the Sahara, the area called the Ivory Coast, "Gold Coast" or "Slave Coast".
The word jazz, in a sense related to music, was not used in the early stages of jazz's formation. In fact, it appears written for the first time on March 6, 1913, in the newspaper San Francisco Bulletin, when, when reviewing the type of music played by an army orchestra, it pointed out that its members trained rhythm of ragtime and jazz. According to Walter Kingsley, a contributor to the New York Sun, "the term is of African origin, common on the African Gold Coast and in the interior lands". Much later still, in January 1917 in New York, the word jazz appeared as a definition of the music contained on a record, recorded by the Original Dixieland Band; During that year, moreover, the term would become popular, which had probably already been in common use in oral language between 1913 and 1917.
Historical background
Before the Civil War
It is little that we know about the musical life that was among American blacks during the first century of the nation's independence.(...) Already in America, slaves managed to improvise drums and other instruments such as "banjar", with the few elements they had at their disposal.
- Music of African tradition
In many areas of the American South, drumming was specifically prohibited by law, so black slaves had to resort to clapping and foot-beating percussion to enjoy their parties and their music. However, the prohibition was not enforced in the so-called Place Congo (Congo Square) in New Orleans, where slaves were free to meet, sing and be accompanied by real people. percussion instruments such as dry gourds filled with pebbles, the birimbao, the jaws, the thumb piano or sanza, and the four-string banjo. Between 1825 and 1845, street dancing was totally prohibited, although from this last year it was authorized again, between 4 and 6:30 p.m. The Sunday meetings in Congo Square were maintained until the mid-1880s, with a certain ritual character.
The music that was developed in these sessions, and in others of a more reserved nature, was very varied. Prominently were the songs and dances of the Antillean voodoo, a syncretic religious rite of Dahomean origin. Also other rhythms and dances previously developed in the Caribbean islands, such as the calinda, the bamboula or the dance called congo.
One of the most important manifestations of the music of the slaves, of which there is already evidence in 1770, are the Negro spirituals, whose evolution lasted almost a century, "since the beginning of the War of the Independence at the dawn of the civil war". It is important to note the fact that, despite divergences in rhythm, harmony, and performance style, the European musical tradition that slaves met in the United States offered points of contact with their own tradition: thus, the diatonic scale was common to both cultures. If we add to this the relative cultural isolation in which a large number of slaves lived and the tolerance of their masters towards their music, the consequence was that they were able to maintain a large part of their musical legacy intact when they merged with the compatible elements. of European and American music, thus achieving a hybrid with notable African influence.
Much more African in character were the musical manifestations related to work and daily life. Especially the work songs, the hollers, the shouts and ring shouts and, finally, the street cries (street shouts), which included both merchants' cries, as well as celebratory songs, news, etc. and that they used to be sung in patois or gombo (Creole dialect of French).
- Music of entertainment
Not only in the preservation of their traditional music was the musical character of the population of African origin manifested. As Sablosky points out, "from the 17th century to the XIX, in plantation houses, it was familiar to see a black fiddler", who was in charge of playing gigas, minuets and other danceable music at family parties. The figure of the violinist would have great importance in the early days of jazz.
One of the most successful musical manifestations originating in the south in the pre-war period was the minstrel, a show that mixed elements of operetta with musical numbers based on & #34;edges of the plantations". They were generalized from 1820, interpreted by white actors and singers who acted with smudged faces, and their music came rather from English operas, without any real relationship with music of African origin, except for the use of instruments such as the banjo., the tambourine and other percussion instruments, as well as the essential violin. The first great success of the minstrelsy was "Jim Crow", a supposed dance of the blacks of the plantations, much closer, however, to the Scottish dances, which Thomas Dartmouth Rice even carried to Europe, in 1836, with his Virginia Mistrels group. Songs of great projection and influence in the early days of jazz, such as those of Stephen Foster, were composed in this framework.
Strictly white until the Civil War, marching bands, especially military bands, also had a significant presence in the American musical world of the first half of the century XIX.
Postwar
The Civil War marked an important change in American musical life, seeing the birth of new practices and the disappearance of old institutions (voice schools, for example) that had been decisive in the evolution of music in the country until then. In African-American music, the impact was even greater, since the war completely destroyed the social structure in which, until then, it had developed, so the basis on which it evolves is completely different. In the words of musicologist Irving Sablosky:
The scattered musical energies that had been spreading randomly in the first 50 years of the century, now focused and consolidated into netly American institutions.
The minstrel, although it remained almost until the end of the XIX century, lost its character as a parody of black music and incorporated truly African-American actors, singers and musicians, introducing dances like the cakewalk. Some of these songs have remained jazz standards, such as "Carry me back to old Virginia" by James Bland (1878). From this process, and especially from the rhythm of the cakewalk, together with elements of European classical music, a new style called ragtime was born, which was initially performed by groups of blacks, although it has remained in history as an eminently piano style, thanks to the published scores and the pianola rolls. Its birth seems to be in the Midwest, in the San Luis area, and its success came from the honky tonks and barrelhouses, cabaret shows of notorious and a lot of clientele. Its rise corresponded with the fall and disappearance of the "minstrel" itself.
On the other hand, the war gave a strong boost to military music, and the incorporation of the black population into music bands. The end of the war meant the arrival on the market of a large number of musical instruments at low prices, accessible to recently freed slaves, many of whom took up music as a way of life. Then the 'civilian bands' flourished, which swarmed throughout the south, as 'marching bands'; and music bands that, in the second half of the XIX century, were the usual format for popular music concerts. it means.
The tightening, at the turn of the century, of the "Jim Crow laws" in Louisiana, which promoted racial segregation with the sadly famous "equal but separate", caused many African-American musicians to be expelled from various bands that mixed whites and blacks. The ability of these musically trained artists, able to transcribe and read what was largely improvisational art, made it possible to preserve and disseminate their musical innovations, a fact that would become increasingly important in the development of jazz.
The Blues
Among the new manifestations of music of Afro-American origin, the most original and surprising, at the time, was the appearance of blues. Most of the musical forms of the black songbook of the 19th century stand out for their purely choral character, even in those that were performed in isolation, since "they represent the genuine expression of a sector of the people". The blues, however, was conceived from its inception as songs intended to be sung by a soloist and to express individual opinions or feelings. Its musical origin is undoubtedly in the spirituals, shouts and work songs, although its appearance is due precisely to the rupture of the strong connection that these music had in the music itself. slavery, and the appearance of a new social type of African American, more urban and less rooted in their community. link between the old songs and the blues.
The most specific of the blues finds was the blue note, which is an augmented fourth interval, and which has been present since the beginning of the genre's appearance, even earlier still, in some "hollers".; and others, as is the case of its melodic structure, pick up the formula "call and response", traditional of almost all Afro-American music.
It is difficult to specify the moment in which the blues appears as a defined musical form, although its birth tends to be between 1870 and 1900. Paul Oliver cites a text by Charlotte Forten, from 1862, in which he already speaks of blues as a state of mind and how some work songs were sung in a special way, to overcome the blues.
The birth of jazz
Many historians of jazz are reluctant to delay its birth beyond the turn of the XX century, and some even show even more prudent:
Most of the musical considerations relating to jazz prior to 1917 are subject to speculation, as there are hardly any recordings of what is now known as jazz.
However, various authors have shown that, even before this turn of the century, there were bands and musicians who played music that was certainly composed of hymns, marches, mazurkas or waltzes, but which was played in a hot way, to please an audience made up of Afro-descendants, largely recent arrivals from the countryside. Ortiz Oderigo cites, based on the works of musicographers such as James Monroe Trotter or Rudi Blesh, a series of gangs that had been in operation since long before the turn of the century: that of Louis Ned, in 1874-75; Sam Thomas' Young Man's Brass Band, in Memphis, Tennessee, around the same time; the Kelly's Band and the Saint Bernard Brass Band, both from New Orleans, circa 1878; James L. Harris' Bluff City Band, which performed on the riverboats; or the "Brass Band" by Robert Baker, assembled in 1880. These bands of Afro musicians performed at street parades, social and political events (according to Blesh, a dozen of them were present at the funeral of President James Garfield in 1881), as well as at funerals and burials of prominent people from the African-American community. Also the fact that, according to the musician W. C. Handy, in places like Memphis (Tennessee) there were already many bands that played primitive jazz in 1905, and that they were unaware of what was done in New Orleans, it is indicative that both derived from a previous common process, at least in several decades.
The different authors do agree, in general, in considering that the appearance of jazz was the consequence of the "prodigious conjunction of diverse historical, racial, social, religious and musical elements" that occurred in New Orleans, in the last decades of the XIX century. Among these, not the least was the development of a Creole social group, originating from the relations of members of high society of Franco-Spanish origin with their slaves, who lived in a central neighborhood of the city, with access to a "classical" musical education; and that, at the same time, they maintained their link with traditional African-American music. The city was also populated by a large number of emancipated slaves who left the rural plantations and came in search of work that, from very early on, as early as 1877, the withdrawal of the unionist army from the southern areas and the hardening of the laws segregationists had become difficult to obtain. This new black community did not have, at least initially, a good relationship with the Creoles.
The critic Joachim E. Berendt summarizes the series of reasons why New Orleans became the main cradle of jazz:
- The Spanish-French culture settled in the city long ago.
- The tensions and differences caused by the presence in New Orleans of well differentiated and confronted black communities.
- The rich musical life of the city, with a large number of musical activities of European tradition, vedadas to Afros, who opposed their own.
- The concentration of all these facts in a single neighborhood, Storyville, with a large number of spatially established leisure establishments without differentiation of rank.
According to many New Orleans musicians who remembered the era, the key figures in the development of the new style were trumpeter Buddy Bolden and his band members. Bolden is remembered as the first to take the blues—until now folk music sung and accompanied by guitar or harmonica—and arrange it for brass instruments. Bolden's band played blues and other songs, "varying the tune" constantly (improvising), creating a sensation in the city and they were quickly imitated by many other musicians. Around the turn of the 20th century, travelers visiting New Orleans remarked on the ability of local bands to play ragtime with a vitality that was not heard elsewhere.
By 1917, when jazz began to be recorded on sound recordings, the process of formation of the genre had already been completed and had even jumped north (Chicago, especially) and was ready to go global.
The early days of jazz
Most relevant features
The first musical groups that played music that we can now undoubtedly consider jazz, at the beginning of the XX century, were characterized by having:
- A rhythmic section whose function was not melodic and that, initially, was formed by bench or guitar, tuba and percussion (box and pump, basically), but that would quickly evolve with counter bass and drums and, later, piano.
- A melodic section composed of several instruments, usually the own of a band of music (corneta, which used to lead the melodic line, trombone and clarinet), to which the violin often joined, due to the great tradition that this had among the African Americans of more educational level.
The use of these instruments was very gender-specific:
While the pianist of ragtime operated as a self-sufficient entity that simultaneously executed the melodic, harmonious and rhythmic elements of the piece, the pianist inscribed in a jazz group specialized in two of these three functions: the harmonic pattern and the propulsive rhythm.
On the other hand, the percussionist added liveliness and syncopation to these early jazz combos:
The rhythm of the groups of New Orleans (...) was characterized by three levels: the pulse of black, the harmonic group of white and the melodic or ornamental group of corchea. (...) The improvised polyphony of the first line consisted of ornamentation, obliggate and countermelodic invention. (...) The musical set included formal elements.
Rhythmically, the two characteristic features of New Orleans jazz were the break, originator of homophony, and the stomp, with polyphonic features, and that in some way maintained the crossed character of African rhythmics.
The first jazz musicians
At the end of the XIX century, there are already some musicians who have a certain renown in the world of incipient jazz, and not only the aforementioned Buddy Bolden (1863-1931), perhaps the most famous of them all. Manuel Mello, who played in the first bands of the time, told "Basin street", the magazine of the National Jazz Foundation in New Orleans, in 1945, that he already heard jazz before Bolden appeared on the local scene, especially the group led by violinist Johnny Schenk, which was formed in 1893 and disbanded in 1898. It is known that, in addition to Schenk, it included cornetist Batt Steckler, John Weinmunson (guitar) and Albert Bix (double bass), and who used to play at parties and Mardi Gras celebrations.
Authors such as Robert Goffin and André Hodeir also state that cornetist Manuel Pérez (1879-1946) formed his first band before Bolden did. The truth is that the latter organized his band at the beginning of the 1890s, ranging from five to seven members: Bolden, on cornet; Willie Cornish or Frankie Dusen on trombone; Frank Lewis or William Warner, sometimes both, on clarinet; Tom Adams, violin; Brock Mumford, guitar; Jimmy Johnson, double bass; and Louis Ray, percussion. Like many other bands at the time, it still lacked a piano, billing itself as Buddy Bolden's Ragtime Band. These bands worked in nightclubs in New Orleans, but often played tours on the riverboats, which linked the delta city with St. Louis, up the Mississippi. Cornet player Bunk Johnson joined his band around 1895, which did not yet have a piano. Since Bolden was committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1907, he did not make any records.
Also before the end of the 19th century, the violinist John Robechaux maintained a band between 1895 and 1900, in which there were James Williams (cornet), Ed Cornish (trombone), Lorenzo Tio and George Baquet (clarinets), Buddy Scott (guitar), Henry Kimball (double bass), and Dee Dee Chandler (drums). Between 1900 and 1909, the Olympia Band stood out, directed successively by trombonist Joseph Petit and cornet player Freddie Keppard, and which also included Alphonse Picou (clarinet), among others. The band reunited in 1912, with various changes, including Sidney Bechet. On his part, Frank Dusen maintained Bolden's band, after Bolden's withdrawal in 1907, including figures such as Louis Ned and Papa Mutt Carey on cornets. Also the Imperial Band of Manuel Pérez, founded in 1909 and running until 1912, with George Filhe on trombone, among others.
In addition, it is worth mentioning the bands of the violinist Armand Piron, who used to work in the riverboats, staying until 1923; the Onward Brass Band, in which Pérez was also a member; the Tuxedo Brass Band led by cornetist Papa Celestin; trombonist Kid Ory's Brown Skinned Babies, on which King Oliver and, later, Louis Armstrong began their careers; the Noone-Petit Orchestra, by Jimmy Noone and Joseph Petit, which also included Richard M. Jones (piano); Papa Mutt Carey's band, and many others who never recorded. Among these stands out the Original Creole Orchestra led by double bassist William Manuel Johnson, who is reputed to be the pioneer in the style of playing the instrument without a bow, and cornetist Freddie Keppard, who toured the country before their separation in 1917. According to William Russell, the Victor company offered Keppard to make a recording in 1916, but he refused so that they would not copy his style. It would be Nick LaRocca, a white trumpeter, who had the honor of making the first jazz recording, with his Original Dixieland Jass Band, back in 1917.
It is interesting to note that, at that time, popular dance music was not jazz, although precursor forms were already found in it, for example with the incorporation of elements of blues or the ragtime. New York composers (those known as the Tin Pan Alley group, including Irving Berlin), incorporated the influence of ragtime into their compositions, although they hardly used the specific mechanisms that were natural to jazz artists (rhythms, blue notes). Few things did more to make this fledgling jazz popular than the Berlin hit of 1911, called 'Alexander's Ragtime Band', which became a true craze both in the United States and in Europe. (especially in Vienna). Although the song was not written as ragtime, the lyrics talk about a marching band turning popular songs into jazzy rhythms – as in the verse where it says: "if you want to hear 'Swanee River' played in ragtime... . 4;-.
Other foci of jazz development
It wasn't just in New Orleans that new music developed. W. C. Handy claimed that, as early as 1905, in Memphis, there were jazz bands. The same thing happened in other parts of the country.
African-American pastor Daniel J. Jenkins, of Charleston, South Carolina, was an unlikely figure of great importance in the early development of jazz. In 1891, Jenkins established the Jenkins Orphanage for Boys and, four years later, he instituted a rigorous musical program in which the youth of the orphanage were educated in contemporary religious and secular music, including overtures and marches. Early orphans and runaways, some of whom played ragtime in bars and brothels, were sent to the orphanage for "salvation" and rehabilitation, and also for them to make their contribution to music. Following the fashion of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Fisk University, the bands from the Jenkins Orphanage toured extensively, earning money to support the orphanage. Jenkins received approximately 125-150 "black sheep" at the orphanage annually, many of whom received formal musical training. Less than 30 years later, five bands were performing nationally, and one of them was traveling to England – contrary to Fisk tradition. It would be hard to overstate the influence of the Jenkins Orphanage bands on early jazz, as its members went on to play with such legends as Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. Among them were virtuoso trumpeters Cladys "Cat" Anderson, Gus Aitken, and Jabbo Smith.
In the northern United States, a "hot" of playing ragtime, centered on New York City, although this style can be found in African-American communities from Baltimore to Maryland. Some later commentators have categorized this musical form as an early form of jazz, while others disagree. It was characterized by its jovial rhythm, but lacked the blues influence of southern styles. Solo piano versions of the norteño style were typified by pianists such as celebrated composer Eubie Blake (a son of slaves whose musical career spanned eight decades). James P. Johnson took the norteño style and in 1919 developed his own style of playing called stride, also known as barrelhouse piano. In this style, the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand walks or "hops" from a faster beat to a slower beat, keeping the rhythm. Johnson influenced later pianists such as Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Art Tatum, and Billy Kyle.
The main orchestral leader of this style was James Reese Europe, and his 1913 and 1914 recordings preserve a rare glimpse of the style's pinnacle. It was during these times that the music of Europe influenced a then young George Gershwin, who would compose the classic "Rhapsody in Blue" jazz inspired. By the time Europe recorded again, in 1919, Gershwin in turn incorporated the influence that the New Orleans style had had on him. Tim Brymn's recordings gave subsequent generations a different look at the "hot" Northern style without the New Orleans influence being too obvious.
In the early 1910s in Chicago, dance bands followed the New Orleans fashion, although they began to introduce a hitherto unusual instrument, the saxophone. Bud Freeman was one of their top names. With the arrival of successive consignments of musicians from the delta, the city began to develop its own style, which was called "Chicago Jazz".
On the banks of the Mississippi from Memphis, Tennessee, to Saint Louis, Missouri, another style of bands developed that incorporated the blues as a main element. The most famous composer and leader of this style was the so-called "Father of Blues", W. C. Handy. While in some ways similar to the New Orleans style (Bolden's influence spread along the river), it lacked the free improvisation of more southern styles. Handy himself, for many years, accused jazz of being unnecessarily chaotic, and in his style improvisation was limited to short fillers between phrases as inappropriate to the main melody.