The Class Name
It`s hard even imagine our current musical life without such magnificent and diverse genre as jazz music, with its light tunes that are easy to listen, on the one hand, but with its possible complexities and progressive ways of composing and playing on the other. The aim of our current research is to discover the history and roots of jazz music, how the genre has developed in New Orleans, what it was influenced with, and what did the cultural and social variety of this city change in the cultures of various nations. Today we`re also about to describe some influential figures and personalities, which contributed in the development of the jazz music and what exactly was their contribution.
All the musicians, critics and art scholars agree on the fact that New Orleans was the only city to fit the development of jazz in the best way because of its national and cultural diversity – many trails of Spanish and French colonial backgrounds, the remaining African impacts on the culture after the slavery age and a wide inflow of European immigrants to America. It`s this mixture of different cultures and nations that evolved and collided together which produced such a great musical genre of the 20th century. "There were opportunities for interaction, in spite of segregation, and many neighborhoods were a crazy quilt with blacks, whites and Creoles living together," says Bruce Raeburn, a historian of jazz and a scholar of Tulane University. Moreover, it was a deep and long cooperation with the city and the development of music and dance to become one of the main reasons of jazz creation in New Orleans. For example, this city has become a home for the first opera house opened in the North America, where the rich European musical traditions were celebrated and embraced.
Nowadays we also know that New Orleans` officials tried their best to regulate the relics of African culture of a slavery era, while the post-war South of America was trying to stamp them out in any possible way. Still, New Orleans` regulations always left a space for African culture to remain alive; for example, the former slaves were allowed to gather, playing music and dancing in Congo Square, an area that is now known as part of Louis Armstrong Park. Moreover, this city was a home for all free people during the age of slavery as many of them could have access to the musical traditions of Europe and even form music bands that played at balls and concerts of the city.
In addition, the appearance of military marching bands with their beats and cadenzas and the appearance of syncopations and the rhythmic breakdowns of the ragtime piano have supplemented the music making it the most popular in America at the beginning of the 20th century. The musicians of New Orleans had such a great palette of tones and melodies that it was hard not to improvise with them creating the music we call jazz nowadays.
The rareripe development of the genre in New Orleans is mainly recognized with the growing prominence of a cornet player named Charles "Buddy" Bolden, whose musical force and personality made him a legend of jazz. He started with the playing with the string band of Charley Galloway in 1894; however, he formed his own band in 1895 and for the next 10 years, he established a wide audience of listeners and dancers throughout the New Orleans. His band is also considered to be the first band of New Orleans to emphasize the musical experiment and improvisation. His style also had a name of "hot jazz" contradicting to the Creoles` "downtown style".
The bands of the most popularity had their soloing instrument as a trumpet or cornet and a clarinet. The bass counterpoints were given by the trombone and the piano, guitar and drums led the rhythm section. Moreover, the appearance of blues, ragtime and jazz later fulfilled the mission to be followed by the majority of listeners and dancers of the time. With the development of the genre, musicians started to change these roles, starting with playing their music by ear; on the one hand there were bands of the wide audience, which danced to their music only, but on the other, the bands with more complex and progressive tunes and melodies started to appear as they started to develop their melodies, experimenting with them and putting into new rhythms. Each member of the band offered his idea to diversify the music and later the jazzmen of New Orleans gained the fame of creating the so-called "collective improvisation".
The band that represented the change of the jazzy tunes from "Buddy" Bolden`s improvisations to the general jazz bands of the 1920s was the Creole band of Kid Ory. In 1901, he was the leader of his own band despite the fact that he was only 14 years old by that time. He was busy organizing the dances for his friends and neighbours by that time; however, he was already looking for a chance to represent himself in New Orleans and he did this in 1907 by representing his Woodland Band to the audience of New Orleans. By the next ten years, he played with the future celebrities of jazz as Louis Armstrong, Joe Oliver, Jimmie Noone and Johnny and Warren Dodds.
The embodiment of his musical triumphs was the Economy Hall – a dance hall standing between the Storyville and the French Quarter that was a popular place for various social clubs of aid and entertainment including the charitable associations. All of these granted an enormous diversity of social services varying from the funerals to the dances, which were new to the black community of New Orleans. Ory represented himself as a talented promoter and entrepreneur by renting the Economy Hall and the Hope`s Hall situate nearby and kept the last closed, while the Economy Hall was opened for every visitor. His career as a bandleader matched with the development of the "collective improvisation" mentioned above and his band became the pioneer of the "black jazz talent", just like Jack Laine`s ensembles did for the white musicians. Ory was the first Afro-American jazz leader of New Orleans to produce a record in 1921 called "Ory`s Creole Trombone".
The year of 1911 was also a remarkable one for the history of jazz music. In this year Bill Johnson, bass player from New Orleans, relocated to California and pursued his band to follow him by chance. During the 1913-1917, the Original Creole Band was the first black orchestra to be touring outside New Orleans. On the contrary, of blues that was only played and composed by the blacks, jazz was a real melting pot of the city as not only blacks played it, there were many Italian, Creole, French and many other European musicians immigrated to America. Despite the fact that the basics of the genre were of African origin, it didn`t stop all the nations in New Orleans to accept and use them in their creation.
However, the majority of touring bands experienced many difficulties in finding a grateful listener outside New Orleans, as the dancers of New York, Chicago, California, etc. were not always ready for the New Orleans jazzy tunes, melodies and rhythms.
This was a brief explanation and depiction of the roots of the jazz era that has found its roots in New Orleans with the help of the great personalities mentioned above and their talent that has brought the genre large audience through over the country and the whole world in the future. This was only the first chapter of jazz history and this genre will develop and change drastically through years, but it will never lose its popularity among the listeners of all the times.
Bibliography
McNulty, Ian. First Notes: New Orleans and the Early Roots of Jazz. n.d. http://www.frenchquarter.com/history/JazzMasters.php (accessed 02 27, 2014).
National Park Service. A New Orleans Jazz History, 1895-1927. n.d. http://www.nps.gov/jazz/historyculture/jazz_history.htm (accessed 02 27, 2014).
Scaruffi, Piero. A history of Jazz Music. London: Omniware, 2007.
