The Roots of Jazz

1
The Roots of Jazz

• European influence on Jazz
• Church hymns
• Folk songs and dances
• Military marches and airs
• Classical compositions

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The Roots of Jazz
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Instruments

• African instruments
• Banya Banjo
• European instruments
• Slaves brought no property
• Varied scales and tuning

4
Styles

• Military bands and marching bands
• Christian hymns
• Transformed into Spirituals
• Spiritual a religious folk song an expression
  of hope for release from oppression and sorrow
• Secular songs, the forerunners of the 12-bar
  blues, began to appear
• Orally passed
• The blues are fundamental to jazz

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Minstrel Show Music

• The interchange of cultural elements between
  whites and blacks
• 1840s - white stage companies
• After the Civil War, African-Americans created
  minstrel companies

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Cakewalk and Ragtime

• Sundays
• Parody dancing
• Walkaround
• The prize was often a cake
• Strutting, high-kicking dance to syncopated music
  became the cakewalk, a craze in the 1890s

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Cakewalk and Ragtime

• Cakewalk to Ragtime?
• Ragtime to Cakewalk?
• Jazz originated from a mix or African and
  European music and probably could not have
  developed anywhere but in the United States

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The Influence of Jazz on Classical Composers

• Louis Moreau Gottschalk American - 1812-1860
• Night in the Tropics (c.1858)
• second movement (allegro molto) is a rumba, a
  Cuban dance unknown in the United States until
  the 20th century

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Debussy
Claude Debussy French - 1862-1918 Golliwogs
Cakewalk from Childrens Corner (1908) the
cakewalk illustrates the stride left hand
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Stravinsky

• Igor StravinskyRussian (1882-1971)
• Piano Rag Music (1919)
• dedicated to Artur Rubinstein
• Ebony Concerto (1945)
• commissioned b y Woody Herman
• written for jazz ensemble

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Gershwin

• George GershwinAmerican (1898-1937)
• Rhapsody in Blue (1924)
• 1924 performance by Gershwin
• Porgy and Bess (1935)

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Others

• Darius Milhaud (French)
• La creation du monde (1923)
• influenced by Harlem jazz
• jazz saxophone
• George Antheil (Polish-American - 1900-1959)
• A Jazz Symphony (1927)
• William Albright (American - 1944-1998)
• Grand Sonata in Rag (1967-1970)

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Todays ReviewThe Roots of Jazz

• Musical forms
• the Spiritual
• a transformed Christian hymn
• began about 1780 with the Great Awakening
• lined out
• Secular songs
• loneliness
• infidelity
• rootlessness
• repression
• not written down
• forerunners to the 12-bar blues

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The Roots of Jazz

• Minstrel Show Music
• the interchange of cultural elements
• white companies in blackface
• after the Civil War, black stage companies in
  blackface
• The Cakewalk, Ragtime, and the influence of Jazz
  on European Music and visa-versa
• parody of European dances
• contests, with the prize often being a cake
• very popular in the 1890s
• probably resulted in the development of Ragtime

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The Roots of Jazz

• Rhythm
• Polyrhythms
• Field Hollers
• Call and Response
• Instruments
• no property
• African instruments were reconstructed in America
• the bandora became a guitar
• the balafou became a marimba
• the banya became the banjo
• European instruments were adopted
• military bands
• social bands

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Suggested Additional Listening

• New World Records (RAAM)
• 205 White Spirituals from the Sacred Harp
• 224 Brighten the Corner Where You Are Black
  and White Urban Hymnody
• 294 The Gospelship Baptist Hymns and White
  Spirituals from the Southern Mountains

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The Roots of JazzEpisode One - Gumbo

• People
• Wynton Marsalis
• Buddy Bolden
• Louis Armstrong
• Caruso
• Sousa
• Jelly Roll Morton
• Vern and Irene Castle
• James Reese Europe

• Places, Recordings, Styles
• Original Dixieland Jazz Band
• Storyville
• Ragtime
• New Orleans
• Creole

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Notes from

• Ken Burns JAZZ
• Episode One- Gumbo

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Notes from

• Ken Burns JAZZ
• Episode Two - The Gift

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The Gift

• Louis Armstrong - the embodiment of Jazz
• Jazz becomes an art form
• 1917 - 1st jazz recordings reached the public
• Chicago and New York became the centers after WW
  I
• Duke Ellington called The Greatest of all
  American composers (?)
• Louis Armstrong said there are two things in
  music - one is good, the other, bad
• Louis Armstrong followed Joe King Oliver to
  Chicago - the Creole Jazz Band

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The Gift

• Davenport, Iowa, Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden
• The Hellfighters, James Reese Europe, The
  Memphis Blues, trick instruments
• Duke Ellington
• An elegant dresser
• Soda Fountain Rag - 1st piece
• Chicago - the Great Migration
• Gennette Records recorded the Creole Jazz Bands
  first tune the Chimes Blues

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The Gift

• Jazz is a disease
• Piano in Harlem
• Stride Piano - James P. Johnson - Charleston -
  Willie The Lion Smith
• Cornettist Bubber Miley joins Duke Ellington
• Will Marion Cook advises Duke Ellington to find
  the logical way and avoid it
• The Austin High Gang, a white band, learns the
  jazz style
• Eddie Condon develops the Chicago style

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The Gift

• Violinist Paul Whiteman called the King of Jazz
• First big hit is Whispering
• 2/12/24 Carnegie Hall, Rhapsody in Blue

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The Gift

• Fletcher Henderson
• Working on a graduate degree in chemestry
• The two greatest bands in NYC
• Paul Whiteman and Fletcher Henderson
• Henderson hires Louis Armstrong and jazz is
  changed
• Armstrong stayed with Henderson for 2 years
• Hendersons band played at Roseland
• Armstrongs greatest contribution to jazz was
  swing