Introduction to Lesson 21

While no one knows the exact origins of jazz music, many say it began as the result of the first known recorded jazz music was by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a White band from New Orleans. However, by studying the musical characteristics of the song "Livery Stable Blues (1917)," it's clear they borrowed (or stole) musical techniques practiced by African Americans in New Orleans. "Livery Stable Blues"♫   is structured around three chords and into twelve bars, like most blues songs emerging from the African American tradition. Other sounds connect it to the setting of the work songs of enslaved Africans and field laborers. Its "habanera beat, common to so much of jazz, reflects the influence of bouncy Caribbean melodies on New Orleans music" while its repetition "indicates the call-and-response tradition of black Baptist churches" and "its piano comes from the tradition of ragtime, the musical form that directly proceeded jazz" (Blauvelt 2017, n.p.). Swing music was the first jazz style that proved commercially successful, taking jazz out of the brothels of New Orleans into ballrooms.