IB Music SL

Jazz – Chapter 3

Roots of Jazz

The Roots of Jazz

• Jazz is also rooted in the cultural trends that reached back far into the nineteenth century.

• Jazz synthesized various kinds of (primarily African American) music making, such as: – folk traditions– popular culture – European concert music

• Radical changes in dance music in the first two decades of the twentieth century

• The new technologies of radio and recording.

• What kind of music is jazz? – Congressional resolution of 1987

• Art form• Popular music• Folk music

• Jazz is an African American music. • musicians may be black or white or any other

ethnicity. • African American: not a race but rather an ethnic

group (cultural) • Ethnic features like music can be learned and

shared. • African American musical principles

• Folk Traditions – Serve to establish a persistent musical identity – Helped create the hybrid nature of American culture – Various Genres

• Ballads• Work songs• Field hollers

• Spirituals: call and response with religious poetry. – Two kinds: polished Fisk Jubilee singers style; orally

transmitted Pentecostal church singing. – By 1920s, gospel music had developed. Spirituals

are highly interactional, which influenced jazz musicians.

• Blues – Three-line (AAB) stanza distinguishes

it from other forms, which usually were structured with two or four lines. Blues also has a distinctive chord progression.

– Unlike the ballad, the blues was personal

– Country Blues • Combination of folk elements and new

technology• Performed by solitary male musicians

accompanying themselves on guitar in the American South; form was loose

– Vaudeville (Classic) Blues • When blues crossed over into pop music, jazz

musicians got involved. • Blues became more codified (twelve-bar

stanzas)• W.C. Handy: Recordings • Bessie Smith (1894-1937)

• Popular Music – Minstrelsy

• Blacks found they could make more money highlighting their blackness.

• Racism made it difficult for black performers to succeed

• In 1843 in New York, the Virginia Minstrels put on a show in blackface

• Racist exaggerations in appearance and behavior were typical.

• White audiences enjoyed these depictions.

• Black performers – After Emancipation, black

performers started to perform in minstrelsy

– Racial stereotypes persisted in vaudeville, film (The Jazz Singer), and radio (Amos and Andy).

– Musicians, such as Louis Armstrong, who acted in film had to play into these stereotypes.

– Dance Music • Early slave musicians used their

music for dance • Nineteenth-century musicians were

hired as servants. – The dancing craze

» Late nineteenth century» Early part of the twentieth

century dancing began done in restaurants and cabarets.

– The Castles and James Reese Europe (1881-1919)

» African American-derived dances became a fad for white America

» The music was not toned down and was often ragtime.

» The Castles' musical director was James Reese Europe

» World War I» Europe died in 1919 » He left two kinds of dance

bands: small and inexpensive, suited for jazz, and large dance orchestra

• Art Music – Learning music theory and notation is

important– Through public education, blacks learned

classical music – Classically trained blacks went to jazz to

make a living – Brass Bands

• Originally from England, they became the "people's" orchestra.

• John Philip Sousa (1854-1932). Took over the U.S. Marine band and made it into a top-notch, world-famous concert ensemble.

• Every town had a brass band made up of local townsfolk to play at parades and dances. – Brass bands and jazz

» African Americans formed their own brass bands

» Influenced jazz directly through march form» The third strain is the trio and is in a new key

• Ragtime – Ragtime embodied the mix of

African American and white art, popular, and folk musics.

– The name comes from "ragged time."

– Coon Songs • Early form of ragtime (later form of

minstrelsy)• Cakewalk: a ragtime exhibition dance

parodying white formal dancing • Ragtime pieces and Scott Joplin (1868-

1917) – Improvised piano ragtime– Born in East Texas– 1894 settled in Sidelia, Missouri, led a

black marching band and studied composition.

– Moved St. Louis then New York; published rags, a ballet, and an opera

– Died in 1917 of syphilis

• The Path to Jazz: Wilbur Sweatman (1882-1961) – Wilbur Sweatman represents the new generation of musicians

– A clarinet player in show business, he became well known around 1910.

– Ragtime composer

– In 1916 he made his first recordings

• When Does Ragtime Become Jazz? – By 1916 recording was taking over from the publication of sheet

music

– Black musicians provided music that offered a new sense of cultural identity

– Jazz as we know it started in New Orleans, as ragtime, blues, march music, and social dance combined.