Cool Music

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Wynton Marsalis - Spring Yaounde

New Orleans Jazz

Jazz in New Orleans emerged initially as a counter culture movement. The new music form was played in underground venues, particularly in the Storyville “red light” district of the city. New Orleans was critical for the genesis of jazz because the city’s pre-existing culture allowed musicians to rebel against the folk norm without alienating the essential influences of European classical music and, of course, the blues.

In the late 1800’s, New Orleans had a unique racial dynamic due to the Catholic, rather than protestant, influences in the city. “Creoles of color,” a pidgin ethnic group consisting of people with both white and black heritage, were able to establish themselves as a wealthy people of purely European decent. However, in 1897, the Louisiana legislature, swayed by the protestant south, passed Jim Crow laws which classified mixed-race Creoles as second class citizens along with all other blacks. Suddenly thrown out of white society and into black districts, former creoles of color, along with blacks, had reason to artistically rebel against the white Cajun culture they had previously emulated and developed.

  

The Cajun environment contrasts to the cultural influences felt by black jazz musicians who moved to New York City during or after reconstruction. These musicians were trained in the blues style sung by slaves and, later, sharecroppers. Yet the blues was not a relevant expressive outlet for the white collar atmosphere of the northern city. Once reaching the north, the black musicians played for venues in which European classical music was the pre-existing norm. Their blues training functioned more as a technical base that allowed them to compete with white, classically trained bands, than as a stylistic continuum on which to build.

In New York, the combination of these influences resulted in a fusion of traditionally white styles with blues technique and ragtime syncopation to create an exciting and economically lucrative entertainment option. Were the black migrants to rebel against the standing musical styles of the region in order to synthesize a new genre, they would have been forced to alienate both the heralded structure of classical music and the excitement of ragtime. Jazz needed both these elements as they provide the artistic base and commercial viability for its sustenance.

The new second class tier of blacks in New Orleans included many musicians trained in Creole brass bands, and the Creole influence on jazz was immense. Buddy Bolden, himself a cornet player, was the first to play the blues with brass instruments. As he incorporated ragtime and gospel influence, jazz was born. However, he fundamentally rebelled against the Creole style by playing melodies in a loud, virtuosic style, which contrasts with the austere rigor to which marching bands must adhere. This style was incorporated by other cornet players like King Oliver, and developed into the improvisational format which remains in modern jazz. Though the Creole culture contributed to jazz by virture of proximity and exposure, jazz ultimately was born to reject and replace its mores.

The jazz rebellion was a social effect in addition to its expression in musical format. Buddy Bolden’s lyrics attacked the judicial and police establishment responsible for segregation and the abolishment of the “Creole of color” culture. His lyrics were consequently banned by the authorities under punishment of arrest. 

The red light districts of New Orleans provided black and Creole musicians a font of rebellion against a segregating society. The critical element of these districts for the formation of jazz was that musicians rose against formulaic white and formerly Creole styles of marching band playing, and not the classical, ragtime, or blues styles that backed the character of jazz.