It’s time to get jazzy

In the late 1800s while parts of America were stomping their feet to military marches, people in New Orleans were dancing to VooDoo Rhythms.  New Orleans was the only place that allowed for slaves to own drums.  They used European horns and the rumble of the African drums and it was like lightening meeting thunder. The local people of New Orleans took that sound and put it with music they heard in barrooms and churches. This new music was wild and jubilant. People felt free and alive, so they expressed themselves by dancing wherever they were. New Orleans is a city where people dance down the middle of the street in the day time and people would join you.

Jazz was produced in 1885 by Papa Jack Laine’s band in New Orleans circa when it was noted that he played with a “ragged time”. That meant that musicians played variations on the tempo to make it swing. Papa Jack Laine’s Reliance Brass Band was the training base for many white, black and creole musicians who went to pioneer Jazz in their own ensembles.  New Orleans was a place that had many different cultures, for example; French, Spanish, Caribbean and Cuban.  The split of the social classes into White, black and Creole is what influenced the making of Jazz music. Once the Jim Crow segregation laws were established, New Orleans was influenced by it as well. The Creole social class was removed and the creoles were placed under the class or Black people.

Later, a lot of African Americans and New Orleans musicians moved to Chicago. Im the 1920s, the clubs on the South side of Chicago because a place of racial mixing where the white people joined in the music. White people were able to go to black clubs, but; black people couldn’t go to any white clubs. This was because of the Jim Crow Laws.  Jazz music is often improvisational, more instrumental and has complex harmonies. There is also walking bass, scat singing, a 12 bar blues chord pattern and brass instruments involved. The social implications of Jazz were the racism, the civil rights movement, more cities were starting to become urban and the recording technology.

Important Jazz performers are Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bobby Bolden, and Ella Fitzgerald.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWzrABouyeE

 

 

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