The Origins of Early Jazz

Jazz music has its roots in the culture of African-American slaves. Millions of people from Sub-Saharan Africa had been brought to the United States by the first half of the nineteenth century. The indigenous culture these people brought with them from their native Africa included their own musical traditions. African music was derived from the native languages spoken by the indigenous people of the continent. The music included a rhythmic style that reflected the conventional African way of speaking. The music of the Africans played an important role in community rituals and was often used for inspirational purposes when performing work.

In the antebellum South of the early 1800s, the music of the enslaved people was often performed at public festivals. The city of New Orleans became a focal point for these performances. These festivals became popular public events. As African slaves were settled into the Western hemisphere, they were increasingly exposed to the teachings of Christianity. Many slaves converted to the Christian faith, and began to incorporate elements of African music into their religious worship. Black slaves began to form their own churches, often with individual slaves serving as lay pastors, and the black church began developing its own music. This music not only borrowed heavily from the rhythmic nature of African music, but also began to integrate the European concept of musical harmony into songs that would come to be called “Negro spirituals.” The style of music associated with the Negro spiritual also became the basis of much African-American popular music during the era. The origin of the blues as a specific musical style is not entirely known, though it is believed by most musicologists to be the secular counterpart to the religion-themed music of the Negro spirituals.

African-American music continued to develop during the course of the nineteenth century, and African-American musical performers began to incorporate Western instruments, such as the “fiddle,” into their music. A popular form of entertainment during this time was the “minstrel show.” Some of these minstrel shows featured African-American performers, and others featured white performers in “blackface,” which was intended to be a racist parody of the appearance of Africans. By the middle part of the nineteenth century, white composers had learned to adapt the rhythms of African music to their own instruments, such as the piano. Out this synthesis of piano music and African rhythms so-called “salon music” began to develop . Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, the city of New Orleans became a focal point for the performance of a variety of styles of African music derived from the music of both North American slaves, and the music of Afro-Caribbean people in places such as Cuba and other Latin America countries.

When African-Americans were released from slavery following the U.S. Civil War of 1861-1865, the white elites of the Southern states of the USA feared a black uprising. As a response, the so-called “Black Codes” were enacted that subjected African-Americans to severe forms of repression. One of the provisions of the “Black Codes” was a ban on the performance of African drumming. The white elites feared drumming would be used to provide musical signals with which to instigate an insurrection. However, African-Americans continued to perform their rhythmic indigenous music in a cappella style through such methods as slapping and stomping, and by the use of household items as percussion instruments. The “Black Codes” were relaxed somewhat after a few decades following the close of the Civil War. The rhythmic drumming musical culture of African-Americans subsequently began to reassert itself. African-American music began to take on a unique character of its own that was independent of the styles of Afro-Caribbean music. One of the original features of African-American music was its ability to incorporate both Caribbean percussion styles and the patterns of European rhythmic music into its own styles. The frequent back-and-forth travel of African-American musicians between New Orleans and Cuba added a distinctively Latin flavor to their sound. And additional factor affecting the development of African-American music during this time was the fact that blacks were often faced with severe obstacles when it came to procuring education and employment for themselves. Often the lines of work most frequently open to blacks were those in fields related to performing and entertainment. African-Americans would frequently work as singers, dancers, and musicians in bars and nightclubs. Out of this arrangement a new form of music known as “ragtime” developed, with the Ragtime King leading the pack. This style started to become popular as the twentieth century began.

Ragtime was a more sophisticated form of music than what had previously existed among African-Americans, and the use of formally written sheet music became much more common. The blues also began to develop during this time. One of the characteristics of the blues was its use of pentatonic scales that later became the basis for many kinds of music that would subsequently become popular in the later part of the twentieth century, including rock n’ roll, blues rock, psychedelic rock, and heavy metal. In its simplest and earliest forms, the blues had its roots in both Negro spirituals and in songs sung by slaves while working in the fields. The blues began to develop as a more formalized style in the Mississippi Delta region, and musicians such as W.C. Handy began to use the guitar as a form of musical accompaniment while performing blues songs.

The performance of the blues began to spread to other parts of the United States, including Memphis, Chicago, and St. Louis. In the early twentieth century, “blues clubs” began to emerge that featured musicians and singers performing this style of music. The key role played by the blues in the development of jazz is the way in which it incorporated the harmonic styles of European music into African-American music, and to a much greater degree than previous styles of African-American music had done. It was in the New Orleans area that jazz music first began to appear. In its early years, jazz was often considered a disreputable form of music by respectable society, and the first jazz musicians often performed in venues such as places of prostitution, shady bars, and nightclubs inhabited by underworld figures.

Public celebrations in the New Orleans area began to feature spectacular marching bands including both white and black performers. The common instruments used by these bands were horns, drums, and wind instruments. Smaller bands using these instruments also formed, and frequently featured African-American performers. These bands would travel to other cities in the United States to perform, thereby spreading their particular styles. Among the more influential musicians in this genre were Buddy Bolden, who played the cornet, and “Jelly Roll” Morton, who played the piano. Musicians such as these were often featured in turn of the century vaudeville shows. It was around the year 1915 that the first sheet music for the new jazz style emerged.

It is not exactly known how the term “jazz” came to be the descriptive term for this new form of music. It was originally a slang word that was in somewhat common usage on the West Coast of the United States, and was not necessarily used in a musical context or to refer to styles of music. The first newspaper articles referring to jazz as a form of music appeared around the year 1915 as well, primarily in the Chicago and New Orleans areas. The term jazz to describe the new styles did not take hold in a comprehensive way as the new music spread. Some performers still referred to their particular styles as “ragtime,” for instance. Jazz was in part defined by its use of a loose rhythmic style known as “swing” of the kind popularized by legendary musicians such as Louis Armstrong. In its early years, New Orleans was certainly the center of the jazz style. The first recording by a jazz band was made by a New Orleans-based ensemble in 1917.

As World War One unfolded and the United States entered the war, American musicians serving in the armed forces began to export this style to the European countries. When alcoholic beverages were prohibited by law in the United States beginning in 1920, illegal bars, taverns, and nightclubs began to appear which engaged in the illicit sale of alcohol. This turn of events proved to be of major benefit to jazz music and the “Jazz Age” began. This was the era of the “Roaring Twenties” and a great deal of economic prosperity in the post-World War One period. Even as alcohol prohibition remained in force for the rest of the decade, jazz experienced its golden age and peaked in terms of its popularity as a musical style.

Like rock n’ roll music a few decades later jazz was seen by some as a morally questionable form of entertainment. Some older people, clergymen, politicians and others denounced jazz as a source of youthful corruption, and as a threat to the moral fiber of society. This perception was enhanced by the fact that jazz was often associated with the underworld of illegal alcoholic beverages. Jazz was frequently criticized in the newspapers as an incitement to disorder, and denounced by more conservative forces in society as a mere cacophony of sound rather than an actual musical style. It was even claimed that the sound of jazz would scare away wild animals, and could cause a human being to experience a heart attack.

A variety of performers became particularly well-known during the Jazz Age. These included Kid Ory’s Original Creole Jazz Band, an ensemble from New Orleans that was among the first African-American bands to become actual recording artists. The jazz scene in Chicago also became increasingly prominent and some Chicago blues artists, such as the singer Bessie Smith, ventured into the world of jazz as well. Racially integrated bands of jazz musicians were also prevalent during this time. One of these was “Jelly Roll” Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. Elements of the jazz style began to be incorporated into the large dance bands with predominantly white audiences during the 1920s as well. Duke Ellington became a particularly recognized performer during this time.

During the 1930s, the ensemble style format represented by New Orleans jazz began to evolve into the swing sounds of the “big band” era. Ellington continued to remain popular during this era along with new performers such as Cab Calloway, the Dorsey brothers, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Fletcher Henderson. This music was intended for dancing and was performed by large, traveling, orchestra-like ensembles. Late night radio programs throughout the United States also featured this kind of music and helped contribute to its popularity. One aspect of the big band style was the prominence of a featured soloist on a particular instrument. The popularity of this music also contributed to the loosening of restrictions regarding racial segregation as many big bands would feature a multi-racial line up of performers and musicians.

Jazz styles of a distinctively European flavor began to appear in numerous European countries during the 1930s, particularly in France and Belgium. When the Nazis rose to power in Germany during that decade, the leadership of the Nazi regime was aware of the origins of jazz in African-American music. The Nazis considered jazz to be degenerate and racially unacceptable, and jazz was subject to repression by their regime. New styles of jazz or forms of music that were derivative of jazz continued to develop. These new forms included bebop, Cuban jazz, a continued interest in the Dixieland style, and so-called “cool” jazz began to emerge in the 1940s. Jazz music would continue to expand in terms of variety and complexity as the twentieth century progressed, especially with the likes of jazz trombonist Carl Fontana, and as technological innovations made an ever greater level of experimentation with different sounds possible.

Bibliography

Burns, Ken, and Geoffrey C. Ward. Jazz—A History of America's Music. New York:Alfred A. Knopf., 2000.

Porter, Eric. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists,Critics and Activists. University of California Press, Ltd. London, England, 2002.