Ellis Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins, Irvin Mayfield, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews. Those are just a few of the living legends who keep jazz going strong in the place it all began, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Today, brass bands still invigorate the streets during Mardi Gras, FrenchQuarter jazz clubs deliver the best in live improvisation on any given night,and the Jazz and Heritage Festivalbrings together the past, present and future of American jazz every spring,proving year after year that New Orleans is still the jazz mecca of the world.
It all started around 1819 in Congo Square, an outdoor space in NewOrleans where slaves would congregate on Sundays when they didn’t have to work.According to the Ken Burnsdocumentary Jazz, they would sing,play music and dance, swaying back and forth to the songs of their homecountries. Caribbean music from the West Indies mixed with beats from Africaand church melodies from the United States’ south. Meanwhile, in New Orleanstheatres, the stages were overtaken by racist minstrel shows, in which whiteperformers sang and danced in blackface to upbeat tunes. And all the while, the sound of the brass marchingband provided a soundtrack to the ongoing American Civil War.
When the war ended in 1865, all of these musical styles blended to forma new genre called ragtime, which syncopated the rhythms of previous genres andmade songs that everyone wanted to dance to. Around the same time, formerslaves from other parts of the American south brought the blues to Louisiana,combining spiritual music from the Baptist church with secular lyrics that toldthe painful stories of slaves’ lives.
Blues musicians used the trumpets and trombones left over from wartimemusic to mimic the sound of their voices, literally singing out their painthrough their instruments. It made the blues even more mournful, even morepoignant and even more cathartic for anyone listening.
When ragtime and the blues came together, it created a completely novelstyle of music – a truly American art form. In the late 1890s, syncopationjoined with soulful melodies, upbeat dance tunes united with the sultry soundof brass instruments, and jazz began to emerge.
Buddy Bolden, an African-American bandleader called “the first man of jazz” by historian DonaldM Marquis, was at the forefront of the jazz movement. Bolden played the cornetin dance halls during the day and in the red light district of New Orleans’ Storyvilleat night. Although no recordings of Buddy Bolden exist today, his music issaid to have incorporated the improvisation characteristic of jazz. A heavydrinker with mental health problems, Bolden’s career abruptly ended in 1907, whenhe was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at the age of 30.
Many other African-American jazz legends also rose to popularity in thebeginning of the 1900s, wrote jazz critic and historian Ted Gioia in The History of Jazz. Black musicians included Bunk Johnson, Mutt Carey and Joe “King”Oliver, while Creole musicians (Americans who were descendants from whiteEuropean colonists and their black slave mistresses) included Sidney Bechet,Freddie Keppard and Jelly Roll Morton, who was famous for falsely claiming tohave invented jazz. A talented composer of jazz tunes such as Black Bottom Stomp and Grandpa’s Spells, Mortonalso lied about his birth date to convince contemporaries that he was older andmore experienced than he actually was, Gioia wrote. White musicians who startedplaying jazz included Papa Jack Laine, Sharkey Bonano and Nick LaRocca. Moreoften than not, bands would self-segregate according to race.
Keppard was touring thecountry with his esteemed band the Original Creole Orchestra when the VictorTalking Machine Companyapproached himaboutrecording the world’s very first jazz record in 1915. But the cornet player wasso worried about other musicians stealing his ideas that he turned down theoffer. Instead, a white band called the Original Dixieland Jass Band, led by LaRocca, recorded with the Victor Talking Machine Companyin 1917. This came as a major blow to African-American musicians in particularbecause of LaRocca’soutspoken racism.He claimed that jazz was invented by white musicians and that black musicianswould never play as well. "Since jazzmusic is at the center of the American mythology, it necessarily dealswith race. The more we run from it, the more we run into it," said NewOrleans native and jazz great Wynton Marsalis in the documentary Jazz,
As historianGioia wrote, it wasn’t until local musicians left the city for greener economicpastures in Chicago and New York that most gained fame and success. In 1918, musicianJames Reese Europe took jazz across even greater distances. During World War I,he led an infantry band called The Hellfighters that introduced French andBritish soldiers to the new American sound. Europe then helped stage theinevitable spread of jazz worldwide.
The mostimportant figure for jazz’s future was the great trumpeter and cornetist Louis Armstrong, whose undeniable talent pulled him out of thewreckage of an impoverished and violent New Orleans neighborhood. Under thetutelage of Joe “King” Oliver, Armstrong went from child prodigy to travellinghorn player to illustrious soloist. His impact on the world of jazz can be feltthroughout New Orleans and around the world today.
With strong roots in the tradition of improvisation, jazz continues to evolve,collecting accents from Afropop, Latin dance music, eastern classical music, andpretty much every other music it comes into contact with, all while transformingother genres around the world. And so has been the story of jazz, ever sinceits birth in the vivacious city of New Orleans.
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