Saturday, October 29, 2016

Early Development of Jazz: 1890 to 1917




Brass bands had become enormously popular in New Orleans as well as in the rest of the country. In the 1880s, New Orleans brass bands, such as the Excelsior and Onward, typically consisted of formally trained musicians reading complex scores for concerts, parades, and dances.
A special collaborative relationship developed between brass bands in New Orleans and mutual aid and benevolent societies. Mutual aid and benevolent societies were common among many ethnic groups in urban areas in the 19th century. After the Civil War such organizations took on special meaning for emancipated African Americans who had limited economic resources. The purposes of such societies were to “help the sick and bury the dead”—important functions because blacks were generally prohibited from getting commercial health and life insurance and other services.
While many organizations in New Orleans used brass bands in parades, concerts, political rallies, and funerals, African-American mutual aid and benevolent societies had their own expressive approach to funeral processions and parades, which continues to the present time. At their events, community celebrants would join in the exuberant dancing procession. The phenomena of community participation in parades became known as “the second line”—second, that is, to the official society members and their contracted band.
By the turn of the century, New Orleans was thriving not only as a major sea and river port but also as a major entertainment center. Legitimate theater, vaudeville, and music publishing houses and instrument stores employed musicians in the central business district. Less legitimate entertainment establishments flourished in and around the officially sanctioned red-light district near Canal and Rampart Streets. Out on the shores of Lake Ponchartrain, bands competed for audiences at amusement parks and resorts. Street parades were common in the neighborhood, and community social halls and corner saloons held dances almost nightly.
New Orleanians never lost their penchant for dancing, and most of the city’s brass band members doubled as dance band players. The Superior Brass Band, for instance, had overlapping personnel with its sister group, the Superior Orchestra. Dance bands and orchestras softened the brass sound with stringed instruments, including violin, guitar, and string bass. At the turn of the century string dance bands were popular in more polite settings, and “dirty” music—as the more genteel dances were known—was the staple of many downtown Creole of color bands such as John Robichaux’s Orchestra.
Pops Foster, Pops Foster: The Autobiography of a New Orleans Jazzman:
From about 1900 on, there were three types of bands playing in New Orleans. You had bands that played ragtime, ones that played sweet music, and the ones that played nothin’ but blues. A band like John Robichaux’s played nothin’ but sweet music and played the dirty affairs. On a Saturday night Frankie Duson’s Eagle Band would play the Masonic Hall because he played a whole lot of blues. A band like the Magnolia Band would play ragtime and work the District . . . All the bands around New Orleans would play quadrilles starting about midnight. When you did that nice people would know it was time to go home because things got rough after that.
Earthier vernacular dance styles were also increasing in popularity in New Orleans. Over the last decade of the 19th century, non-reading musicians playing more improvised music drew larger audiences for dances and parades.
Baby Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story:
[Big Eye Louis Nelson] lived downtown, and I lived uptown. He was on the north side of town, and I was living on the south side. In other words, he was a Creole and lived in the French part of town. Canal Street was the dividing line and the people from the different sections didn’t mix. The musicians mixed only if you were good enough. But at one time the Creole fellows thought uptown musicians weren’t good enough to play with them, because most of the uptown musicians didn’t read music. Everybody in the French part of town read music.
All of that began to change. For example, between 1895 and 1900 uptown cornet player Charles “Buddy” Bolden began incorporating improvised blues and increasing the tempo of familiar dance tunes. Bolden was credited by many early jazzmen as the first musician to have a distinctive new style. The increasing popularity of this more “ratty” music brought many trained and untrained musicians into the improvising bands. Also, repressive segregation laws passed in the 1890s (as a backlash to Reconstruction) increased discrimination toward anyone with African blood and eliminated the special status previously afforded Creoles of color. These changes ultimately united black and Creole of color musicians, thus strengthening early jazz by combining the uptown improvisational style with the more disciplined Creole approach.
The instrumentation and section playing of the brass bands increasingly influenced the dance bands, which changed in orientation from string to brass instruments. What ultimately became the standard front line of a New Orleans jazz band was cornet, clarinet, and trombone. These horns collectively improvising or “faking” ragtime yielded the characteristic polyphonic sound of New Orleans jazz.
Most New Orleans events were accompanied by music, and there were many opportunities for musicians to work. In addition to parades and dances, bands played at picnics, fish fries, political rallies, store openings, lawn parties, athletic events, church festivals, weddings, and funerals. Neighborhood social halls, some operated by mutual aid and benevolent societies or other civic organizations, were frequently the sites of banquets and dances. Early jazz was found in neighborhoods all over and around New Orleans—it was a normal part of community life.
Sometime before 1900, African-American neighborhood organizations known as “social aid and pleasure clubs” also began to spring up in the city. Similar in their neighborhood orientation to the mutual aid and benevolent societies, the purposes of social aid and pleasure clubs were to provide a social outlet for its members, community service, and the opportunity to parade as an expression of community pride. This parading provided dependable work for musicians and became an important training ground for young musical talent.
New Orleans jazz began to spread to other cities as the city’s musicians joined riverboat bands and vaudeville, minstrel, and other show tours. Jelly Roll Morton, an innovative piano stylist and composer, began his odyssey outside of New Orleans as early as 1907. The Original Creole Orchestra, featuring Freddie Keppard, was an important early group that left New Orleans, moved to Los Angeles in 1912 and then toured the Orpheum Theater circuit, with gigs in Chicago and New York. In fact, Chicago and New York became the main markets for New Orleans jazz. Tom Brown’s Band from Dixieland left New Orleans for Chicago in 1915, and Nick LaRocca and other members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band headed there in 1916.

1.  A typical member of a brass marching band in 1880 was probably
a.                   formally trained.
b.                  incapable of reading music.
c.                   interested in playing “dirty music.”
d.                  African American.
2. How was an African-American funeral procession different from more traditional ones?
a.                   African Americans were not allowed to attend funeral processions.
b.                  African Americans joined in processions by dancing alongside them.
c.                   African-American funeral processions were solemn and quiet.
d.                  African Americans could not afford funeral processions.
3. In what way were mutual aid and benevolent societies charitable to the African-American communities?
a.                   They gifted impoverished African Americans with money and food.
b.                  They provided commercial health and life insurance to African Americans.
c.                   They created the “second line.”
d.                  They helped African Americans bury their dead.
4. In 1900, entertainment in New Orleans could best be described as
a.                   festive.
b.                  funereal.
c.                   drab.
d.                  illegitimate.
5. In late nineteenth century New Orleans, if you wanted to go out dancing to the beat of wild and improvised music, you would probably have gone
a.                   downtown.
b.                  uptown.
c.                   onto a riverboat.
d.                  to the central business district.
6. Early jazz improved when
a.                   Charles Bolden was born.
b.                  north end musicians began reading music.
c.                   classical married improvisational.
d.                  desegregation occurred.
7. Brass bands
a.                   added the sound of the cornet to the other horns of early jazz.
b.                  added the sound of percussion instruments to early jazz.
c.                   changed the sound of early jazz from instrumental to vocal.
d.                  changed the sound of early jazz from string to horn. 
8. The word polyphonic means
a.                   having many sounds.
b.                  being made of brass.
c.                   having one distinct sound.
d.                  being danceable.
9. Explain the African-American influence on early jazz. 


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