Lecture Jazz (Tenth edition) Chapter 2 Jazz heritages

After studying this chapter you will be able to understand: Important to jazz are the emphasis on rhythm taken from African music, harmonies taken from European music, melodies added by the improvisation from the American culture, all these elements fuse to make jazz an American music rather than a music solely of the African Americans (who remain its pioneers and innovators).

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African and European Influences

 The basic premise of this chapter is that jazz did

not develop from any one musical culture

 Emphasis is placed on the fact that the rhythmic

feeling of jazz came from Africa…but that other

aspects of jazz derive from European music

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African and European Influences

 Separate traditions…(one white and the other

black)

 Used both musical and cultural traditions to establish this

new musical genre

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African and European Influences

 One tradition is predominantly literate and

reflects that interest in its performance practice

 Another tradition works through an expressive

language typical of the oral tradition

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African and European Influences

 The balance of this compositional concern and

spontaneous expression was set in motion that

ultimately shaped jazz

 Jazz began with a blending of African and

European musical cultures

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Interpretation and Content

 All musical styles and traditions have an

interpretive system of presentation

 Some presentations cannot always be fully described in terms of the musical elements that make up a

performance

 Jazz as a hybrid of musical traditions, reflects a

blend of music interpretations as well as a blend

of musical elements

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Interpretation and Content

 Writing music down is useful as a compositional

device but is not as important in a spontaneous

improvisation

 Outside of the musical elements themselves,

there is also the expressive context in which the

elements are presented

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African Influences

 Music was a vital and demonstrative form of

express in the life of Africans

 Music performed a vital role in maintaining the

unity of the social group

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African Influences

 Music was for a whole community, and everyone

participated from the youngest to the oldest

 Music was used to work, play, and social and

religious activities

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African Influences

 African slaves brought these traditions to the

United States and nurtured them in the woe and

hardship of slavery

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African Influences

 Slaves did not intentionally invent a new music

at this point

 Rather the new music arose unconsciously from

the transplantation of the African culture and the

African Americans’ struggle for survival

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African Rhythms

 One major misconception about the origins of

jazz is that its rhythms came from Africa….

 It is only the emphasis on rhythm that can be truly

designated African

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Call and Response

 The call and response pattern heard recurrently

in jazz can be traced directly to African tribal

traditions

 In jazz, a “call” is usually by a solo singer or solo

instrumentalist and is followed by a “response” from one instrument, or an ensemble

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European Influences

 The melodic feature of jazz is directly from

European music

 The diatonic and chromatic scales used in jazz

are the same as those used for centuries by

European composers

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European Influences

 The harmonic sonorities are also derived from

European sources

 Such as polkas, hymns, and marches

 Musical forms of Europe became standard in

jazz works

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African Americans in the Early Colonies

 The evolution of African music in the colonies

depended greatly on the particular colony to

which the slaves were brought

 Latin-Catholic colonies – their musical life was allowed

 British Protestants – tried to convert the slaves to

Christianity

 Result: slaves in these colonies were required to conceal their “pagan” musical inheritance

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Congo Square

 Congo Square was a large field in New Orleans

where slaves were allowed to gather on Sunday

to sing, dance, and play their drums in their

traditional native manner

 Significance of Congo Square is that it gave original African

music a place to be heard, and where it “could influence and be influenced by European music”

 Name was later changed to Beauregard Square (1893)

 Again changed to Louis Armstrong Park (1974)

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Creole Music

 The Creoles – people with Negro and French or

Spanish ancestry – were not accepted by white

society and joined the ranks of the African

Americans

 The combinations of these musical talents

resulted in an early form of jazz:

 Conservatory-trained Creoles

 spontaneous oral tradition of African Americans

 interchange of musical expression

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Creole Music

 The Creoles contributed harmonic and formal

structure to this early jazz music

 The Creole music was a blend of the oral

tradition and the European musical tradition

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Filed Hollers (Cries)

 American slaves were often not allowed to talk

to one another in the fields while working

 Singing was permitted while working

 American slaves established communication

between themselves by field hollers (cries)

 The whites could not understand this garbled

singing

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Filed Hollers (Cries)

 Outstanding elements of the field hollers was

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Work Songs

 Works songs were sung without instrumental

accompaniment

 Work songs were associated with a

monotonous, regularly recurring physical task

 Some work songs would include grunts, groans

 Work songs placed emphasis on rhythm and

meter

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Minstrels

 Minstrels were shows (entertainment) performed

by the slaves for the white people

 Slaves would act in such away as to much the

whites

 The whites enjoyed these shows so much that

they would imitate the slaves by putting on the

same kind of show and don black make up

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Minstrels

 Beginning of the 20 th century, traveling minstrel

shows were the main form of entertainment for

both races

 These shows featured the top blues singers of

the day such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and

others

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Religious Music

 The African American church was a central

contributor of jazz expression

 The religious expressions commonly associated

with the African American church grew out of a

marriage of preaching and singing

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Spirituals

 Around 1800 was the Great Awakening

 Spirituals and revival hymns carried a great

amount of emotion and were sung at camp

meetings

 Spiritual, often called “hymns with a beat” were

the 1 st original songs created by Protestant

African American slaves on American soil

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Spirituals

 Spirituals are an excellent example of the blend

of African and European cultures

 Spirituals employed a call-and-response pattern

 Great emphasis on rhythm with hand clapping

and foot stomping

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Spirituals

 Early African American church music can be put

into three categories:

 1 Many of the selections were improvised (made up by the

preacher and his congregation)

 2 Adoption of European church music and the addition of

their own rhythmic concepts and variations

 3 African ritual music was altered so that it could be used

in these services in America

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Spirituals

 The spiritual was:

 a type of folk song

 Helped in the development of the popular song and to

vocal jazz

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Gospel

 Gospel music is performed

in African American church

 Important that the

audience actively respond

to the performer

 The singer improvises and

embellishes the melodic

line by bending, sliding, or

adding tones

 Gospel songs and

spirituals are often

considered religious forms

of the blues

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Mahalia Jackson and the African American Church

 Jackson never performed in a jazz situation

 She sang only songs that she believed served

her religious feelings

 Influenced by Bessie Smith

 Jackson learned much about the phrasing of African

American folk music

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Mahalia Jackson and the African American Church

 For many years, Jackson’s singing was not

accepted in the middle-class African American

churches

 Later on, Jackson became one of the stirring,

sought-after singers in the world

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Marching Bands

 Early African American music in the United States

was predominantly vocal

 After the Civil war, African Americans were able to

make or by some instruments

 By the turn of the 20 th century, the most publicized

use of marching bands was for funerals

 These bands were not only found in New Orleans

but also in the Southeast and as far west as

Oklahoma

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Marching Bands

 Funeral procession music consisted of a

traditional funeral music drone

 After the burial ceremony, a couple of blocks

from the cemetery the band would break out into

a jazz type of march

 Such as: “When the Saints Go Marching In”

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Marching Bands

 The small size of these marching bands made

the groups adaptable for various functions like:

 Advertising campaigns

 Weddings

 Serenades

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Marching Bands

 A group might even perform in a horse-drawn

wagon

 Thus, the name tailgate trombone was used to

describe how the trombone player sat at the end

of the wagon

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Conclusion

from African music

American culture

music rather than a music solely of the African

Americans (who remain its pioneers and innovators)