Predecessors of Jazz

• These notes pertain to Jazz and world music, session 6.

The Predecessors of Jazz (2)

• Around 1810, "Coon Songs" and the racist practice of "Blackface" started to mock Southern African-Americans.
• Minstrel shows were full performances by traveling white actors, centered on stereotypes like the "Zip Coon" dandy and "Jim Crow" slave.
• Minstrel shows featured stereotyped "black music" with dance segments like the cakewalk, enjoying popular and economic success.
• From 1865, black musicians integrated into minstrel troupes, enhancing musical quality and engaging with European instruments, orchestras, repertoires, and a broader global audience.
• Ragtime, emerging around 1875-1880, adapted Minstrel tunes into piano pieces, emphasizing syncopation.
• Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was a key figure, composing commercially successful pieces inspired by African-American culture, such as "The Entertainer" (1902).
• Ragtime, unlike jazz, was written music with less improvisation; it was featured in competitions in barrelhouses, juke-joints, and honky-tonks, showcasing performance culture akin to vaudeville and minstrel shows.
• The classic music was influenced by Debussy’s “Golliwog Cakewalk.”
• Between 1890-1910, ragtime became a widespread craze, extending from piano to other instruments, particularly brass bands, with syncopated tunes.
• The inclusion of black musicians in orchestras was crucial for jazz's emergence.

The Role of New Orleans

• New Orleans had a diverse, cosmopolitan mix of African-Americans, Europeans (French, Spanish), mixed-race Creoles, and Acadians.
• The Caribbean influence stemmed from the Haitian Revolution (1791-1802).
• New Orleans' slavery conditions were less strict than the South's and segregation laws were more lenient, resulting in population flows.
• Although New Orleans was a festive city with Storyville's brothels and bars (until 1917) and Mardi Gras, segregation led African-American musicians to leave around 1910.
• Musicians like Jelly Roll Morton moved to cities further north, creating a jazz diaspora in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
• Outdoor music thrived due to favorable weather conditions, with numerous clubs and mutual aid societies since the early 19th century.
• Street brass bands had a powerful sound and collective improvisation on well-known tunes. The cornet, trumpet, and trombone played a central role.
• Louis Armstrong to Trombone Shorty had a big impact, the clarinet, banjo, violins and large percussion instruments were also important.
• Caribbean musical traditions from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti were also highly relevant.
• There were no recordings of black musicians in the 1910s, the first recording was in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, under Nick La Rocca's direction.

Hot Jazz (1917-1929): The Old Style

• In the 1920s, record companies became interested in the New Orleans scene after recording some white bands in the 1910s.
• Recording studios were established there.
• The influence of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (1923), where Louis Armstrong played the second cornet, was representative of the New Orleans style.
• The "improvisation collective" was a key element, where the theme was enhanced with new parts passed between musicians.
• Louis Armstrong formed his orchestra, Hot Five, then Hot Seven, in Chicago in 1925.
• He later moved to New York in the late 1920s and composed and recorded jazz masterpieces.
• Previously he organized the orchestra around a soloist, moving to simple variations of the melody like the solo on “West End Blues, 1928”.
• Solos became architectural structures with distinct rhythm and introductions.
• Armstrong’s influence affected all instruments due to his personalized style, creating wa-wa sounds on the trumpet, slide movements on the trombone, and a percussive phrasing style among saxophonists.

Hot Jazz (1917-1929): The Old Style (Continued)

• The emerging influence of jazz and classical symphonic music led to organized orchestras with sections for trumpets, trombones, woodwinds, and rhythm, like Fletcher Henderson, 1925.
• The arranger became important as a new figure, with record and radio development.
• Duke Ellington created the "jungle" style at the Cotton Club with extravagant and unusual sounds, designed for dancing.
• Orchestration and Modernism were highly prevalent with “Hot and Bothered, 1928”.
• This "hot" jazz had a global impact, leading to the creation of the Hot Club de France in 1932.
• Some considered the music too wild and Adorno criticized its industrial character in the 1930s.