JAM Magazine: October/November 1999 Issue: Roots of Jazz 101

Roots of Jazz 101

by Dr. John Leisenring

Need a refresher course on the roots of jazz? Here is one prof's primer on America's Classical Music

Jazz has been called America's only indigenous art form, emerging in New Orleans around the turn of this century. But the statement begs the questions: Why America? Why New Orleans? And why circa 1900?

These are just the kind of questions we jazz historians love to explore, though many jazz aficionados would rather simply listen and not think and/or talk about the idiom quite so much.

Thus, it was with some trepidation that, last March, I reported to the Club Mardi Gras in Kansas City's 18th and Vine District for the monthly meeting of the KC Jazz Ambassadors, prepared to talk about these very questions. My reception was surprisingly enthusiastic. And with kudos still ringing in my ears, I sat down at the computer to retell my presentation for JAM, trusting that by expanding my audience I would not also expand the potential for boredom.

The only caveat I wish to offer is this: since this as a short essay and not a full semester class, much of what I state here will be gross over-simplification. So, please bear with me.

Let's begin with the music itself. Jazz, by anybody's definition, is an amalgam of two strong musical traditions: European and African. Eurocentric music consists of two main parameters: melody and harmony; Afrocentric music's two main elements are rhythm and timbre. Practitioners of each music often have an historical inability to hear -- and therefore to understand -- much of the other's music.

This explains, in part, the scorn that is often heaped upon various elements of jazz, especially by those fans and performers of so-called Classical Music. They respond well to the melodies and harmonies of jazz (if they are willing to give a serious listen), but they often don't have the ears to hear, and therefore understand, its contrapuntal rhythms and complex timbres.

Understand also that an African musician transported from Africa to a concert hall in, say, Leipzig in 1880, would think that Brahms' Third Symphony sounded like traffic noise. The human brain just doesn't understand what the human ears are not trained to hear.

The Conservatory of Music at UMKC, where I earn my daily bread, spends most of its time teaching students the whys and wherefores of European Classical Music -- the melody and harmony of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. We analyze themes, and follow the harmonic development of symphonies and oratorios and such. European Classical Music has very little of interest when it comes to rhythm, and while the symphony orchestra has within it many interesting timbres, each instrument of the orchestra is not responsible for the production of a wide range of sound. Consistent timbre is one of the givens of fine orchestral playing.

By the same token, the marvelously complex rhythmic structures of African music sometimes elude our ears. I am reminded of the anecdote involving Tony Williams, who at the time was drumming with the second of Miles Davis' monumental quintets. Williams received a government grant to travel to Africa and study African drumming for a time, and when he returned, he is reported to have said, "We in America have only begun to scratch the surface of rhythmic complexities."

Now, if Tony Williams thought that what he heard was pushing the limits of his understanding, that doesn't bode well for the rest of us!

The "why America" question finds its answer in the cultures swirling around New Orleans during the several centuries leading up to 1900. New Orleans has always been a gateway city. It was and is a major shipping port, and through its entrances and exits flowed the myriad cultures of the world. Over the decades and throughout the generations these cultures had a strong tendency to mix, and the resultant culture became a veritable gumbo, simmered and stirred by events as they unfolded with the history of this great city.

Two of the strongest cultures present in the American South were, of course, the European (white settlers from England and France and elsewhere who were the predominant landed aristocracy), and the African (black slaves who had been imported against their will, mainly from the western sub-Saharan regions of Africa).

Most of the agrarian South was not of the French culture, and slaves were uniformly kept in a subservient role. But, in and around New Orleans, where the predominant culture was French, there developed a three-tiered class structure: white aristocracy, black field workers, and persons, often free, of mixed blood, i.e., Creole blacks. It was this Creole class that the culture allowed to become educated to some extent in the French language and, especially interesting to this discussion, in European Classical Music.

There is much evidence during the nineteenth century of African-American symphonies, string quartets and the like, performing various concerts of European classical music, including works by the French Impressionist composers Debussy and Ravel. But all blacks and most Creoles lived and socialized together, away from the white culture. Thus both African-American musical cultures -- that of the blacks, who worked the fields and whose music, made up of field shouts and hollers and work songs of various descriptions primarily rooted in the music of Western Africa, and the Creoles, some of whose music was, to a large extent, Eurocentric in nature -- were pressed together for many generations.

As the generations progressed, and as the various musics were integrated and assimilated, a third kind of music -- on the one hand a combination of both cultures and on the other something that was neither -- began to form.

Before we get to Buddy Bolden and King Oliver, however, there are other factors need to be observed. Most important is Vodou (or Vodoun; also Voodoo), the predominant religion that found its way to America with the enslaved blacks from Western Africa. This is an element of African-American culture little explored even today, and horribly misrepresented by white America in literature, Hollywood films and from the pulpit.

Vodou is a subject that demands far more space than can be given here. Suffice it to say this marvelous Afrocentric theology differs radically from European Christianity in that it glorifies both the mind and the body rather than exulting the mind and denying the body. The strongest religious ecstasy occurs, hopefully, in the circle dance, and the sacred drums and drummers are a major focus of the spiritual experience.

Slave masters throughout the South banned drums and drumming from early in the seventeenth century. They were suspicious that the drums had some pagan, i.e. non-Christian and/or anti-Christian religious significance (they did), and they thought that the slaves were sending messages to other plantations via the drum (they were). The banning of drums and drumming was almost immediate in the eastern South, but took much more time in Louisiana.

"As the generations progressed, and as the various musics were integrated and assimilated, a third kind of music -- on the one hand a combination of both (African and European) cultures and on the other something that was neither -- began to form."

Indeed, there were Vodou ceremonies in New Orleans and at neighboring Lake Pontchartrain throughout the nineteenth century. Finally, circa 1876, the ceremonies -- and thus the sacred drumming -- were banned in New Orleans' Congo Square, and the Vodou went underground.

There are still pockets of Vodou activity in various American cities and throughout the Caribbean (most notably Haiti), but little openly visible since the turn of the century.

But, as Michael Ventura states in his marvelous essay, "Hear The Long Snake Moan," "The drum cannot be squelched forever. It will always reappear in some form." It is no coincidence then that, just a few years after the final banning of the ceremonies in New Orleans, the music we call jazz began to surface. It is also no coincidence that, as jazz became a serious art music with the emergence of bebop in the early '40s, Rhythm & Blues became extremely popular and led directly to the Rock 'n' Roll of the 1950s.

Looking at all of this from another direction, it is also possible to state that jazz is a mixture of Ragtime and Blues. Indeed, Ragtime did find its way, through Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson and the stride pianists, to the composed music of Duke Ellington and beyond. And the Blues was interpreted through Boogie Woogie, the Western swing bands, Kansas City jazz, Count Basie and many others. All of jazz, it can also be argued, is a mixture to some extent of these two basic musical forms as well.

But Ragtime is almost purely Eurocentric. Scott Joplin was one of the greatest composers of rags, and his compositions were absolutely rooted in the military marches brought to America in the form of the European band traditions. Joplin's melodies and formal structures were highly reminiscent of marching band music; only the rhythms were "ragged." It was these "raggedy" rhythms that gave his compositions the name Ragtime.

Joplin had studied classical piano while growing up in Texarkana, Texas; but he was also an African-American, and therefore heard much black music as a youth. It was easy for such a composer to combine various elements of both to produce an as yet unheard type of musical hybrid.

The Blues, on the other hand, is almost purely Afrocentric. Never mind that we make a big deal of its 12 bar form and basic three chord harmonic structure. The Blues is black storytelling, the pouring out of emotions in the fields and juke joints and on the porches of the rural South. The Blues is homemade guitars and harps and shouting lyrics which tell the stories of grinding poverty and racism and woe unknown and unfathomable to persons outside of the environment from whence the Blues springs. But it too is the natural amalgam of musics both Eurocentric and Afrocentric which had been bedded down with each other for many generations and over several centuries by the time it surfaced throughout the South, near the turn of this century.

And so our initial questions have been answered, however cursorily. There were certainly other instances of slavery throughout the history of mankind. African slaves were shipped to other parts of the world besides America. But jazz did not begin there. Numerous other cultures and populations have been enslaved throughout the history of mankind, yet no jazz emerged. Only in America did that occur, and really only in and around New Orleans did the two musical traditions from Europe and Africa merge throughout a long enough gestation period to produce a perfect blend. It couldn't have happened anywhere else. And it couldn't have happened at any other time, what with the timing of the various bannings of drumming, religious dancing and Vodou.

But jazz didn't necessarily "begin" then and there, despite Jelly Roll Morton's statement that he invented jazz in 1902 (or 1903, depending on which account you read). Again, its roots are deeply embedded in both Africa and Europe, and the jazz stew needed much time to simmer and steep before becoming recognizable as such.

Nearly 100 years later, jazz remains on-going. It continues to develop and expand, helped along its path by influences and artists who themselves have roots in the musical morass the world has produced and continues to produce. It will continue to unfold, with unimaginable twists and turns.

World music elements have been added and will continue to influence jazz. The music is no longer merely African and European, but a much broader genre, with more diverse roots.

I am reminded of a line attributed to Duke Ellington a number of decades ago. It was timely then and timely now. Said Duke, "Pretty soon now, they will stop calling it jazz, and just start calling in music."

Whatever it is called, then, now or later, it is America's music and it remains an art form well rooted in the cultural mists of two of the world's major continents.

Dr. John Leisenring is Professor of Jazz Studies in the Conservatory of Music at UMKC, and taught trombone there from 1971 to 1999.

RETURN TO OCTOBER 1999 MAIN INDEX

------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved.






	Search our site:		Roots of Jazz 101 by Dr. John Leisenring Need a refresher course on the roots of jazz? Here is one prof's primer on America's Classical Music Jazz has been called America's only indigenous art form, emerging in New Orleans around the turn of this century. But the statement begs the questions: Why America? Why New Orleans? And why circa 1900? These are just the kind of questions we jazz historians love to explore, though many jazz aficionados would rather simply listen and not think and/or talk about the idiom quite so much. Thus, it was with some trepidation that, last March, I reported to the Club Mardi Gras in Kansas City's 18th and Vine District for the monthly meeting of the KC Jazz Ambassadors, prepared to talk about these very questions. My reception was surprisingly enthusiastic. And with kudos still ringing in my ears, I sat down at the computer to retell my presentation for JAM, trusting that by expanding my audience I would not also expand the potential for boredom. The only caveat I wish to offer is this: since this as a short essay and not a full semester class, much of what I state here will be gross over-simplification. So, please bear with me. Let's begin with the music itself. Jazz, by anybody's definition, is an amalgam of two strong musical traditions: European and African. Eurocentric music consists of two main parameters: melody and harmony; Afrocentric music's two main elements are rhythm and timbre. Practitioners of each music often have an historical inability to hear -- and therefore to understand -- much of the other's music. This explains, in part, the scorn that is often heaped upon various elements of jazz, especially by those fans and performers of so-called Classical Music. They respond well to the melodies and harmonies of jazz (if they are willing to give a serious listen), but they often don't have the ears to hear, and therefore understand, its contrapuntal rhythms and complex timbres. Understand also that an African musician transported from Africa to a concert hall in, say, Leipzig in 1880, would think that Brahms' Third Symphony sounded like traffic noise. The human brain just doesn't understand what the human ears are not trained to hear. The Conservatory of Music at UMKC, where I earn my daily bread, spends most of its time teaching students the whys and wherefores of European Classical Music -- the melody and harmony of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. We analyze themes, and follow the harmonic development of symphonies and oratorios and such. European Classical Music has very little of interest when it comes to rhythm, and while the symphony orchestra has within it many interesting timbres, each instrument of the orchestra is not responsible for the production of a wide range of sound. Consistent timbre is one of the givens of fine orchestral playing. By the same token, the marvelously complex rhythmic structures of African music sometimes elude our ears. I am reminded of the anecdote involving Tony Williams, who at the time was drumming with the second of Miles Davis' monumental quintets. Williams received a government grant to travel to Africa and study African drumming for a time, and when he returned, he is reported to have said, "We in America have only begun to scratch the surface of rhythmic complexities." Now, if Tony Williams thought that what he heard was pushing the limits of his understanding, that doesn't bode well for the rest of us! The "why America" question finds its answer in the cultures swirling around New Orleans during the several centuries leading up to 1900. New Orleans has always been a gateway city. It was and is a major shipping port, and through its entrances and exits flowed the myriad cultures of the world. Over the decades and throughout the generations these cultures had a strong tendency to mix, and the resultant culture became a veritable gumbo, simmered and stirred by events as they unfolded with the history of this great city. Two of the strongest cultures present in the American South were, of course, the European (white settlers from England and France and elsewhere who were the predominant landed aristocracy), and the African (black slaves who had been imported against their will, mainly from the western sub-Saharan regions of Africa). Most of the agrarian South was not of the French culture, and slaves were uniformly kept in a subservient role. But, in and around New Orleans, where the predominant culture was French, there developed a three-tiered class structure: white aristocracy, black field workers, and persons, often free, of mixed blood, i.e., Creole blacks. It was this Creole class that the culture allowed to become educated to some extent in the French language and, especially interesting to this discussion, in European Classical Music. There is much evidence during the nineteenth century of African-American symphonies, string quartets and the like, performing various concerts of European classical music, including works by the French Impressionist composers Debussy and Ravel. But all blacks and most Creoles lived and socialized together, away from the white culture. Thus both African-American musical cultures -- that of the blacks, who worked the fields and whose music, made up of field shouts and hollers and work songs of various descriptions primarily rooted in the music of Western Africa, and the Creoles, some of whose music was, to a large extent, Eurocentric in nature -- were pressed together for many generations. As the generations progressed, and as the various musics were integrated and assimilated, a third kind of music -- on the one hand a combination of both cultures and on the other something that was neither -- began to form. Before we get to Buddy Bolden and King Oliver, however, there are other factors need to be observed. Most important is Vodou (or Vodoun; also Voodoo), the predominant religion that found its way to America with the enslaved blacks from Western Africa. This is an element of African-American culture little explored even today, and horribly misrepresented by white America in literature, Hollywood films and from the pulpit. Vodou is a subject that demands far more space than can be given here. Suffice it to say this marvelous Afrocentric theology differs radically from European Christianity in that it glorifies both the mind and the body rather than exulting the mind and denying the body. The strongest religious ecstasy occurs, hopefully, in the circle dance, and the sacred drums and drummers are a major focus of the spiritual experience. Slave masters throughout the South banned drums and drumming from early in the seventeenth century. They were suspicious that the drums had some pagan, i.e. non-Christian and/or anti-Christian religious significance (they did), and they thought that the slaves were sending messages to other plantations via the drum (they were). The banning of drums and drumming was almost immediate in the eastern South, but took much more time in Louisiana. "As the generations progressed, and as the various musics were integrated and assimilated, a third kind of music -- on the one hand a combination of both (African and European) cultures and on the other something that was neither -- began to form." Indeed, there were Vodou ceremonies in New Orleans and at neighboring Lake Pontchartrain throughout the nineteenth century. Finally, circa 1876, the ceremonies -- and thus the sacred drumming -- were banned in New Orleans' Congo Square, and the Vodou went underground. There are still pockets of Vodou activity in various American cities and throughout the Caribbean (most notably Haiti), but little openly visible since the turn of the century. But, as Michael Ventura states in his marvelous essay, "Hear The Long Snake Moan," "The drum cannot be squelched forever. It will always reappear in some form." It is no coincidence then that, just a few years after the final banning of the ceremonies in New Orleans, the music we call jazz began to surface. It is also no coincidence that, as jazz became a serious art music with the emergence of bebop in the early '40s, Rhythm & Blues became extremely popular and led directly to the Rock 'n' Roll of the 1950s. Looking at all of this from another direction, it is also possible to state that jazz is a mixture of Ragtime and Blues. Indeed, Ragtime did find its way, through Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson and the stride pianists, to the composed music of Duke Ellington and beyond. And the Blues was interpreted through Boogie Woogie, the Western swing bands, Kansas City jazz, Count Basie and many others. All of jazz, it can also be argued, is a mixture to some extent of these two basic musical forms as well. But Ragtime is almost purely Eurocentric. Scott Joplin was one of the greatest composers of rags, and his compositions were absolutely rooted in the military marches brought to America in the form of the European band traditions. Joplin's melodies and formal structures were highly reminiscent of marching band music; only the rhythms were "ragged." It was these "raggedy" rhythms that gave his compositions the name Ragtime. Joplin had studied classical piano while growing up in Texarkana, Texas; but he was also an African-American, and therefore heard much black music as a youth. It was easy for such a composer to combine various elements of both to produce an as yet unheard type of musical hybrid. The Blues, on the other hand, is almost purely Afrocentric. Never mind that we make a big deal of its 12 bar form and basic three chord harmonic structure. The Blues is black storytelling, the pouring out of emotions in the fields and juke joints and on the porches of the rural South. The Blues is homemade guitars and harps and shouting lyrics which tell the stories of grinding poverty and racism and woe unknown and unfathomable to persons outside of the environment from whence the Blues springs. But it too is the natural amalgam of musics both Eurocentric and Afrocentric which had been bedded down with each other for many generations and over several centuries by the time it surfaced throughout the South, near the turn of this century. And so our initial questions have been answered, however cursorily. There were certainly other instances of slavery throughout the history of mankind. African slaves were shipped to other parts of the world besides America. But jazz did not begin there. Numerous other cultures and populations have been enslaved throughout the history of mankind, yet no jazz emerged. Only in America did that occur, and really only in and around New Orleans did the two musical traditions from Europe and Africa merge throughout a long enough gestation period to produce a perfect blend. It couldn't have happened anywhere else. And it couldn't have happened at any other time, what with the timing of the various bannings of drumming, religious dancing and Vodou. But jazz didn't necessarily "begin" then and there, despite Jelly Roll Morton's statement that he invented jazz in 1902 (or 1903, depending on which account you read). Again, its roots are deeply embedded in both Africa and Europe, and the jazz stew needed much time to simmer and steep before becoming recognizable as such. Nearly 100 years later, jazz remains on-going. It continues to develop and expand, helped along its path by influences and artists who themselves have roots in the musical morass the world has produced and continues to produce. It will continue to unfold, with unimaginable twists and turns. World music elements have been added and will continue to influence jazz. The music is no longer merely African and European, but a much broader genre, with more diverse roots. I am reminded of a line attributed to Duke Ellington a number of decades ago. It was timely then and timely now. Said Duke, "Pretty soon now, they will stop calling it jazz, and just start calling in music." Whatever it is called, then, now or later, it is America's music and it remains an art form well rooted in the cultural mists of two of the world's major continents. Dr. John Leisenring is Professor of Jazz Studies in the Conservatory of Music at UMKC, and taught trombone there from 1971 to 1999. RETURN TO OCTOBER 1999 MAIN INDEX ------------------------------------------------------------------------ © Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved.