How did jazz begin in New Orleans?

Jazz did not have a single inventor or a single starting day. According to the National Park Service, it emerged in New Orleans from the 1890s as part of a broad musical shift that included ragtime, blues, spirituals, marches, and popular songs, and it reflected the deep contributions of people of African heritage. The New Orleans Jazz Museum describes the city as a cultural crossroads where African, Caribbean, French, Spanish, and American traditions met. The Park Service also notes that researchers are still learning about jazz history and hold many differing opinions about what matters most in it. [1] [2] [3]

Music was part of everyday life in the city. Through the nineteenth century, French, Spanish, African, Italian, German, and Irish residents all made music, and European classical and folk influences mixed with African and Caribbean elements. Black Americans moving into uptown neighborhoods brought blues, spirituals, and rural dances. Enslaved people had gathered on Sundays at a market outside the city, later known as Congo Square, where African dance and drumming were preserved. Dancing there ended before the Civil War, but a related tradition appeared in the Mardi Gras Indians by at least the 1880s, with drumming and call-and-response chanting. Louis Armstrong and Lee Collins said they were affected by these processions as youngsters. [1] [3]

National trends mattered too. Brass bands were popular across America in the late 1880s, interest grew in syncopated styles such as cakewalks and minstrel tunes, and by the 1890s ragtime piano was a sensation. Brass bands began adding ragtime to their march repertoire. [3]

Brass bands worked closely with mutual aid and benevolent societies, which helped the sick and buried the dead at a time when Black Americans were generally barred from commercial insurance. Their funerals and parades developed the tradition of the second line, in which community members joined the procession. Bands also played at picnics, weddings, political rallies, and neighborhood halls, so early jazz was a normal part of community life. [3]

Dance work had long been led by string bands playing waltzes and quadrilles. By the turn of the century, bands combined brass and string traditions, usually with cornet, clarinet, and trombone in front of guitar, bass, and drums. Younger dancers wanted more excitement, and musicians moved from reading music toward playing by ear and memorizing parts. The result was a blended, collectively improvised style with a polyphonic sound. [1] [3]

Cornetist Charles "Buddy" Bolden, who formed his band in 1895, is the figure most associated with early jazz. Between 1895 and 1900 he added improvised blues and faster tempos to familiar dance tunes, and many early jazz musicians credited him as the first with a distinctive new style. He collapsed during a parade in 1906. Segregation laws passed in the 1890s ended the special status of Creoles of color and pushed Black and Creole musicians together, combining the uptown improvisational style with the more disciplined Creole approach. The Park Service notes that the roots were largely nourished in the African American community but drew on many groups. White bands such as Papa Jack Laine's, active around 1890 to 1913, were part of the early scene, and Laine's bands were integrated before segregation pressures increased. [3] [1] [4]