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Overview

African American music-including work songs, spirituals, the blues, and ragtime-are drenched in improvisation and syncopation, those ancient African pillars of music. Improvisation and syncopation therefore remain a constant presence in the creative genius of an oppressed people-an expression "born out of a million American negotiations"(Burns 2001). Jazz music, as we'll discover in this lesson, is next in this chain of connection.

Be ready to:

Outline the significance of Congo Square and Storyville to the African American community of New Orleans.

Trace the lineage of jazz, while connecting to earlier African American music genres.

Describe the unique demographics of New Orleans during the early to late nineteenth century.

List the socio-political events that contributed to the birth of jazz.

Discover Music

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Keywords

Listening Guides

References

Conclusion

Sarah Vaughn 1946

The genre of jazz will continue to grow and develop to include vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, and others. In addition, we will also cover instrumental subgenres created by Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name a few. To date, jazz is the most complex and innovative form of American music, as we will witness throughout this course.

Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.

(Art Blakey)

Heebie Jeebies

Say, I've got the Heebies
I mean the Jeebies
Talking about
The dance, the Heebie Jeebies
Do, because they're boys
Because it pleases me to be joy

Louis Armstrong

Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.