Where Did Jazz Originate

[Admin]

In the blues section we're discussing the origin of blues. In that section, we've briefly introduced the question of whether or not Jazz originated in New Orleans as most people believe.

I would like to throw in a hypothesis - that Jazz, except for improvisation, wouldn't be Jazz. So, if that be true, the thesis on Improvisation might be of interest.

Improvisation

[Deleted]

If by "improvisation" you mean variation on a canvas, I think it is correct... but not necessarily extending to instant improvisation by the performer, "unable to play the same thing twice" as my grandfather used to say out of jest. Whiteman, Ellington, or Charlie Mingus relied on written scores, and the variants in their soloists' performances often reveal that what we call improvisation was based on readymade formulae they had in stock. As long as jazz remained dance music, such performances as the long, continous melodic creations of Coleman Hawkins (or later, Lester) were comparatively rare, and the breaks did not allow much time to take risks. The degree of actual improvisation is why we appreciate Bix or Armstrong, but even "written", or quite expected, conventional choruses were still jazz.
One thing which has been written and repeated about New Orleans music in particular is the pure legend of the "cosmic soup", and "collective improvisation" out of which jazz is supposed to have emerged (always the more or less racist need of considering early 20th century black musicians as "primitive"). A few minutes' listening to real early jazz (1922-1929) from one of these excellent albums reveals that these tunes were far from improvised as a whole, and carefully rehearsed, if not written.

[Deleted]

I might briefly add one element, as important as improvisation IMO, which is the somewhat unorthodox approach of the instrument, resulting in a degree of expressionism (which I think historically derived from caricature, but this is a different discussion). The "sound" of jazz has been a typical, sometimes disturbing one from the start. It is probably less obvious nowadays, in particular with the talented pianists who have been "classically" trained and achieve the jazz feeling by other means... but whatever his latest investigations, and the obvious fact that he learnt a lot of harmony since the time he recorded Malcolm!, Archie Shepp still sounds like Archie Shepp.

[muddylives]

OK, I will bite, although I already stated my opinion in the other thread.

Improvisation is certainly important in jazz, although using it as a defining element is complicated. We have acknowledged masterworks of "jazz" that have little or no improvisation, including Duke Ellington's "Harlem" and Charles Mingus' "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady." Conversely, quite a number of musics in the world feature a lot of improvisation.

On the other hand, I think that jazz and other African-influenced musical traditions do tend to emphasize musical performance as communication in real time, as opposed to a pre-planned recital. Part of Ellington's genius was arguably to make the music feel like it was spontaneous, even if it really wasn't.

As for the question posed in the title of the thread, I gave my opinion in the other thread that jazz originated in New Orleans, even if Patrice insists that this opinion is naive.

[Admin]

Mar 29, 2013 8:25:39 GMT -5 muddylives said:

OK, I will bite, although I already stated my opinion in the other thread.

Improvisation is certainly important in jazz, although using it as a defining element is complicated. We have acknowledged masterworks of "jazz" that have little or no improvisation, including Duke Ellington's "Harlem" and Charles Mingus' "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady." Conversely, quite a number of musics in the world feature a lot of improvisation.

On the other hand, I think that jazz and other African-influenced musical traditions do tend to emphasize musical performance as communication in real time, as opposed to a pre-planned recital. Part of Ellington's genius was arguably to make the music feel like it was spontaneous, even if it really wasn't.

As for the question posed in the title of the thread, I gave my opinion in the other thread that jazz originated in New Orleans, even if Patrice insists that this opinion is naive.

Going back to a comment by Patrice, if you believe Ragtime was simply an earlier form of Jazz, then no doubt it originated in New Orleans. I agree. The reason I bring up improvisation is that I believe the creole culture which was instrumental in the formalization of New Orleans music would not have evolved into jazz without improvisation.

The Creoles—people with Negro and French or Spanish ancestry—were not accepted by white society and joined the ranks of the African Americans. Their association allowed for an interchange of musical expression. The formal music training of the Creoles and the spontaneous oral tradition of African Americans resulted in an early form of jazz. Creole music, a blend of oral and European musical traditions, contributed harmonic and formal structure to this early jazz music. highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/007297642x/student_view0/chapter2/

[muddylives]

Right, although conversely. If Ragtime is considered to be jazz, then it would be hard to say that jazz originated in New Orleans. Jazz can be defined in different ways. When we talk about the origins of jazz, it is natural to focus on the origin of those elements that we particularly love in the music. I can enjoy listening to ragtime, but I love jazz. So I associate with the origins of jazz those elements that transformed ragtime into jazz proper. That is what I associate with New Orleans.

I should also note that, ironically, New Orleans was one of, if not the, last place where the word "jazz" was used to describe the music. They continued to use the word Ragtime until WWII.

[Deleted]

In fact, I have no reply to this question because I do not believe it can be seriously asserted that jazz was born in any definite place.

I assume the "ragtime" background which everyone is referring to here is not the classical, pianistic art of Scott Joplin, but the popular type of syncopation and arrangements which still prevailed when James Reese Europe visited the old continent, or W.C. Handy composed his first blues. If the comparatively late example of King Oliver's Chicago recordings in 1923 provides a significant number of blues songs, no such thing can be said of New Orleans music actually recorded in New Orleans (Sam Morgan's jazz band, Piron's New Orleans Orchestra , Fate Marable's Syncopators, Celestin's Tuxedo Jazz Band, Sidney Arodin, Louis Dumaine, etc.) in which the proportion of blues was quite the same as in New York or Chicago jazz of the time (not to mention Paul Whiteman's early works, which could sound more "blues" than any the previously mentioned bands).

New Orleans had a long story as a cultural melting pot, but its music was not separated from other urban influences. Fate Marable, born in Kentucky in 1890, started playing on the steamboats which linked St Louis to New Orleans at the age of 18, before Freddie Keppard's Original Creole Orchestra fancied traveling out of New Orleans.

Charles "Doc" Cooke was not from New Orleans, but from Kentucky, he moved to Chicago in 1910 and ran his own orchestra since 1922. Ernskine Tate, from Memphis, was another star of the Chicago jazz scene and had been there since 1912. Perry Bradford (from Atlanta) had been playing in Chicago since 1909. Can we seriously assume that King Oliver taught them all what jazz should sound like after he had moved to Chicago by himself, not even running his own band until 1920?

I, for myself, was born in 1949, and when I discovered jazz, things were beautifully simple: jazz was the natural offspring of a defunct African music called blues, it had been created by poor, illiterate Blacks as the only type of music they were able to perfom, attempting to imitate Whites, and no real New Orleans music could be heard because all musicians had moved to Chicago in 1917 after the Storyville red light district had been closed, period! We know the story was thoroughly wrong, but its stigmates are still there.

I am no specialist, but early jazz in New York City, with quite different influences, was just as important as Chicago in the process, there were excellent jazz bands, and I cannot figure out how they could have owed anyhing to New Orleans; Fletcher Henderson was leading his band years before he met Armstrong, and ragtime had already evolved to stride piano with the likes of James P. Johnson.
I mentioned his mentor Eubie Blake, from Baltimore, because he introduced the first known prefiguration of what would be later called swing, in Charleston Rag which he initially called Sounds of Africa, and copyrighted in 1899. This was not swing yet, but the same anticipation of the beat which can be heard in Blind Blake's "double thumbing" rag guitar style. Early forms of boogie-woogie were already there in the 1920's (the most outstanding being the obscure Clarence Johnson), and this essentially "African" type of syncopation was totally absent from New Orleans.  

Maybe I am wrong, but I do not think we can separate the birth of jazz from the evolution of African American popular music as a whole, or ignore the amazing number of prefectly unknow musicians whom W.C. Handy mentioned throughout his autobiography, performing in minstrel shows or on the vaudeville stages. What did New Orleans marching and dance bands sound like at the turn of the century? Should the number of musicians who later escaped from N.O. make us assume that the place had more "jazz" than any other? I claim the right to remain in doubt. 

[muddylives]

Patrice - You are right that there is much that we don't know. All we can do is consider the evidence that we do have and come to conclusions. The problem is that, in this case, what was recorded does not give us anything close to the full picture. So we have to look at information from other sources, including that of researchers who began to investigate the origins of jazz largely through interviews in the 1930s.

Yes, early jazz incorporates a lot of elements that did not come from New Orleans. Ragtime itself, as far as I know, did not come from New Orleans. Nor did the stride piano tradition, as you write.

You mention James Reese Europe. There are those who consider what he was recording in 1914 to already be jazz. By some definitions, it could be. (There is also the complicating factor for this discussion that his drummer, Zutty Singleton, came from New Orleans). For me, however, what Europe's band recorded in 1914 and 1919 was straight ragtime, albeit a particularly highly charged and exciting variant of it. The rhythms are just not loose enough to feel like jazz to me. The music is also all but devoid of blues feeling. Yes, the band could play blues in the sense of compositions in the blues form, but not THE blues.

I would say the same about most other early brass band recordings that we have of proto-jazz.

At the same time, I would venture to say that we have fairly convincing evidence, even without recordings, that something resembling "real" jazz with looser rhythms and strong blues feeling was being played in parts of New Orleans at this time, and even earlier. It would seem that this was not yet the only, or even the dominant, brass band sound in New Orleans. Many of the educated musicians who played in the respected straight ragtime bands in New Orleans looked down upon those who were playing a "dirtier" variant of the music, often by ear as opposed to reading sheets. Many of the New Orleans bands cited by Patrice above are closer to this "respectable" tradition (although not Sam Morgan).

Sure, it is hard to separate the myths from the serious evidence for the case of Buddy Bolden, although I think that Donald Marquis made an admirable attempt in that regard. When we try our best to throw away the myths, what we are left with is still quite striking. This is a musician who was already off the scene in 1906, but remembered well by many musicians and residents in New Orleans as being primarily a great low down blues player. Even the comments of his distractors, like Peter Bocage, are revealing in that regard. Bocage dismisses Bolden as a primitive blues player who couldn't even read music. The question is, who outside of New Orleans was playing "primitive" blues in a brass band in the late 19th century? Of course, Jelly Roll Morton always included "the blues of Buddy Bolden" as a primary ingredient for the creation of jazz. It is also notable that Bolden did not use a full New Orleans brass band, but essentially augmented a country string band with horns (in the only existing picture of the Bolden band). It is true that, judging from the lists of Buddy Bolden songs compiled, Bolden did not seem to play the blues in the 12-bar form, as that form had yet to be standardized.

After Bolden left the scene in 1906, his band continued under the name of the Eagle Band. Soon the front line of this band had Bunk Johnson on trumpet and Sidney Bechet on clarinet. It is interesting that Sidney Bechet writes in his autobiography that the early Eagle band was "just about the only band in New Orleans that played the blues" at one time. So this was far from the only sound in New Orleans. Very soon afterwards, King Oliver developed a reputation as a great blues player. There is a fascinating essay on King Oliver written by a doctor who lived in New Orleans in the early 20th century (Unfortunately, here in Nigeria I do not have access to my library and am doing this by memory. I am sure that Patrice knows the essay that I am talking about.) He writes that the music Oliver was playing in New Orleans at that time was slower and more earthy than what was recorded later in 1923. It leads me to believe that it may have sounded a bit like the music that Bunk Johnson et al began to record in the 40s, although that is admittedly only supposition. Dr. SXXX actually suggests that the success of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band had an effect on the sound of King Oliver's band, which is an interesting thought.

At any rate, I believe that it was no accident that almost all of the artists and musicians who originally put jazz on the map outside of New Orleans were themselves from New Orleans: Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Sidney Bechet, Baby Dodds, Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, etc. They never had any doubts about where jazz came from, and had a profound influence on virtually every non-New Orleans musician who took the development of jazz further in the 1920s.

[Deleted]

 Very interesting, Muddy, I think at least you and I are aware that we respectively know what we are talking about
I am sorry the author you are mentionig does nor come to my mind, but I am not much of a reader, I rather let the music tell me what I should be looking for in books to confirm or invalidate my instant impressions. This discussion actually encouraged me to get hold of whatever my brother still has on his shelves, things I might have read in the 60's and forgot a while ago.

If I have read your post properly, we seem to agree on most historically checkable points, with the exception of your personal preference for blues being played "dirty", in the sentimentalish way Mezzrow defined it. This is of course my joking approach, French jazz critic (playwright, novelist, poet, singer, composer, and jazz player) Boris Vian made great puns on the guy who did all he could to pass for... black, and we can instantly recognize in his sessions with Bechet because he's the one who plays out of tune  .
However, Really the blues ("La rage de vivre", which I suspect was mostly written by Hugues Panassié and Madeleine Gauthier) was the "mouldy figgs" Bible for half a century, and introduced many a French reader to jazz.

On the more serious side, and rejoining my previous remark regarding sound, I fully agree that a typical way of playing whatever type of song, including blues, is a very important and distinctive feature of jazz. The expressionnist accents of the Creole clarinet could be found in New Orleans, and also in Alexandre Stellio's bands (I recently happened to work on a still unpublished project by John Cowley which helped me discover the music of the French-speaking West Indies), but as a coincidence, nearly identical features could be found in the klezmer, and we know what great contribution New York Jews brought to jazz.
I have a temporary theory about this, which I should keep to myself, but roughly: I already said that caricature was an important element of African American music. Not only because derision had always been part of African traditions but, regarding Northern America, because the derogatory imitations of black music by "blackface" stage performers were the first, biased form under which secular black music was appreciated. Just like, in France, the racist image of the Senegalese soldier on Banania cocoa boxes was the very first *positive* image of the African! Ex-slaves were fond of so-called "coon songs" for the same reason, they got hold of the racist caricature and made it their own, much better than white parody had ever done. So I think the "dirty" approach was part of the appeal for the new "jazz" music, at first with animal cries or whatever "novelty" effects, then with the fully mastered sound of a Louis Armstrong, and ultimately with the very conscious experiments carried by Duke Ellington, with his intended confrontations of human voice and musical instruments.  Consciously or not, the jazz process was fullfilling the wish of such different people as W.E.B. Dubois, W.C. Handy, or the writers from the Harlem Renaissance who all claimed the need for a type of music which expressed "the genius of their people".
Jazz was the intrusion of the most unexpected, middle or lower classes instrumentists on the musical scene, who fullfilled the long-time admiration for "Negro" music expressed by New Orleans-born Louis-Moreau Gottschalk, or French Claude Debussy... only in a much more vernacular way than any of them would have imagined, but it was there at last, and kept on living. With traces of approximative and careless, "uneducated" musical features they turned into a superior form of art.

[muddylives]

Thanks, Patrice. As you can see from my post above, I always put words like "dirty" and "primitive" in quotation marks. It is not a designation of a personal preference, but an attempt to reflect a particular social environment of the time. The fact is that a good part of those elements that helped transform ragtime into jazz in New Orleans came from black musicians, most of whom did not have access to the same sort of education and other opportunities as did the white and creole populations. Consequently, they were often looked down upon as "primitive." Yet, as with the blues more generally, their musical contribution was profound and timeless, actually containing musical elements that were far from primitive (in the absence of quotation marks).

[Admin]

Back to the discussion of Jazz versus Ragtime. Was Ragtime the earliest form of Jazz?

In his book "Jazz - then and Now" Frank Leanza writes:


Ragtime is a term which originated from the black culture. During the days of ministrelsy, the minstrels would sing spirituals and work songs unlike the form the music was written in. They added embellishments here and there around the melody in a fanciful and lively manner, and called it "r agging."

From this ragging style of performance, came syncopation in its early stages. From syncopation came ragtime, which eventually opened the way for jazz.

The ragtime era from 1896 to 1917, was a welcome relief from the long depression that began in 1893 and continued for four years. The mood of ragtime was cheerful and exhilarating. The popularity of the music contributed to its longevity, and it was popular because it was a happy, joyful music. It continued on for the next twenty years.

Ragtime also had its origins in slavery. It was not until Scott Joplin, introduced it in modern form in the 1890s, however, that it became popular with American audiences. Almost immediately, it was heard everywhere. Be it a band concert, a picnic, an outing, a dance, a parade, a rally or a boat cruise, brass bands were constantly playing ragtime music with its syncopated rhythms.

"What is ragtime music?" very simply put, it is a syncopated melody played against a strict rhythm accompaniment. With the combining of these two rhythmic factors, a ragtime character is created. Syncopation is defined as the placing of strong accents where normally the weak or after-beats would be.