Jazz music first appeared sometime in the
1890s, and is typically thought to have originated in
New Orleans. This is not strictly true; though most of
the elements that combined to create jazz were present
in the city around this time and the history of music
in New Orleans is fairly well documented, it is very probable
that much the same thing was taking place throughout the
American south, southwest, midwest, and even in California.
One reason to use New Orleans as a model is precisely
because of the documentation that exists about the music
and its early practitioners.
Some of the elements of jazz which originated
in African music include the very vocal nature of the
music, particularly the use of tonal coloration, sometimes
called "blue notes". These are notes which fall
somewhere between two notes in the Western scale and therfore
cannot be precisely notated. African languages rely on
the way in which phrases or words are said as much as
on the word itself, something that is not as important
in English and European languages. So, it was only natural
for musicians to attempt to imitate the human voice with
their instruments, something which can still be heard
in jazz music today. Another element that African music
bequeathed to jazz is that of polyrhythm, the superimposing
of one pattern of beats on top of another with each having
equal importance.
The European influence on jazz includes
the very instruments that have typically been used to
play it. Trumpets and trombones were, of course, well-established
in the symphony orchestra by this time. The saxohone,
invented by Adolphe Sax in 1840, was a mainstay of the
marching and military bands that were heard at this time.
The harmonic structures used by European composers were
also taken as a starting point for jazz, and many of the
forms used in European music as well as dance rhythms
were influential as well. It is important not to think
that the European influences on jazz were all harmonic
and the rhythmic influences were all African. The cross-pollination
between these two influences was much more subtle than
that.
Marching bands were very important in New
Orleans and other cities for at least two reasons. The
first was that many of the first jazz musicians learned
how to play their instruments and, in some cases, read
music while playing in such bands. The other reason for
marching bands' importance is the fact that the music
they played helped inspire one of the important precursers
to jazz, ragtime.
Ragtime
Ragtime was music composed for solo piano,
but it took as its inspiration marches and other European
musical forms such as the polka. It also derived from
dance music of the 1890s, such as the cakewalk (so named
because the best dancers would win a cake-go figure) and
owed its structure and "oom-pah" bass figures
to European music like the mazurka and polka. Ragtime
later influenced the development of the stride and boogie
piano styles, but ragtime itself was not yet jazz. It
didn't really swing and there was no room for improvisation,
since the composition was intended to be played as notated
by the composer. Even though the first instrumental ragtime,
"Missisippi Rag" wasn't published until 1897,
the music developed well before that. Many black performers
were earning good livings playing ragtime music in bars
and on vaudeville stages where they received tips for
their playing. Once the music became popular, music publishers
became interested in it, but many of the leading players
didn't bother publishing their compositions because they
didn't need the money, so great were their tips.
The
best known composer of ragtime music was Scott Joplin.
Joplin was born in Linden, Texas on November 24, 1868,
but his family moved to Texarkana when he was around 7
years old. He learned a great deal about musical harmony,
style, and structure from his teacher, Julius Weiss. By
his teens he was working as a pianist, travelling and
playing in saloons and brothels across the midwest, settling
in St. Louis around 1890. He was already playing and composing
ragtime, and three years later he relocated to Sedalia,
Missouri. There he worked at the Maple Leaf Club, where
he composed one of his best-known compositions, "Maple
Leaf Rag", which was published in 1899. Over the
next fifteen years, he composed more than sixty rags and
various other pieces as well, including his grand opera,
Treemonisha. Though the opera failed in its first
performance, it was highly successful when staged in the
1970s, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1976. Joplin died
on April 1, 1917 in Manhattan State Hospital of syphilis
which he had contracted many years earlier.
Blues
Blues is an American musical form that has
no known direct ancestors in either African or European
music. It is a unique blend of both musical traditions
that did not exist anywhere else before its emergence
in this country. alan Lomax has cited some examples of
similar music found in Northwest Africa, but it is generally
believed that they are not direct ancestors of the blues.
Blues can be traced through the African-American oral
tradition back to the 1860s. It is music that conveys
the reality of human suffering but is filled with redemption
and transcendence.
The influence of the blues on jazz cannot
be overemphasized. Although many other influences have
existed and continue to influence the development of jazz
music, blues is the basis of jazz. Blues was the first
music to emphasize improvisation, and its unique tonal
coloration became an integral part of the jazz vocabulary.
Any attempt to trace the roots of jazz music must take
into account the influence of the blues.
The first blues composer to gain recognition
was W.C. Handy, composer of "Memphis Blues"
(1912) and "St. Louis Blues" (1914). Interestingly,
Jelly Roll Morton met Handy in Memphis in 1908, and he
later stated that the music Handy was publishing was certainly
around for many years before Handy got around to putting
it down. He also took exception to the fact that, many
years later, Ripley's Believe it Or Not declared
that Handy was the "originator of jazz, stomps, and
blues", writing a letter which declared:
