How Jazz, Rag, and Blues Began

Jazz Consisted of: • Folk and blues styles • Emphasis on: • simple harmony • rhythm • and improvisation (based on melody) • Mostly ensemble playing with all instruments playing together except for solos • syncopation The special conditions that gave rise to its development in New Orleans were: • Brass band marches were popular • The red-light districts known as "Storyville" had clubs where dance bands played • French quadrilles, ragtime and blues were popular there • The Afro-Creole and vaudeville shows were influences there • Tourists came to New Orleans and that is how the "jazz" style of the area spread • Many Africa-Americans were hired to perform in brothels and bars: Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and many others With so many different ethnicities and cultures gathering together in one urban location, people latched onto their community traditions and introduced their folk music trends into American society.

Irish, German, Italian, and Afro-American styles of music were all mixed into these areas. Much of the music also grew out of the uniquely American-Protestant movement -- the "spirituals" that served as basis for many movements -- jazz, blues, bluegrass, etc. French-African music of the Louisiana Creoles was heard by tourists in New Orleans, who took it back home to their own cities; the African-American migration of the same time was also responsible for spreading this music.

3 The TPA (Tin Pan Alley) music industry originally referred to West 28th Street in Manhattan in 1885 when music publishers established their shop there. The name comes from the sound the pianos made -- a percussive sound like tin pans banging together. Eventually, the whole of New York City music publishing (including publishers and songwriters who produced popular music that was heard around the country) was characterized under the TPA umbrella. Some of the music published was known as "Race Music" -- code for music by blacks.

Vaudeville stage actors used Tin Pan Alley music for their skits. TPA also published ballads, comic songs, ragtime, jazz and blues. Racial codes were still followed by the publishers, so many songs composed by blacks were published as though written by whites. 4 The blues had root in the same traditions as folk while merging with the Southern American spirituals genre. In the post-Civil War period, blacks were moving around the country, leaving the South because of Jim Crow and heading to urban areas.

Their travels and experiences are reflected in blues, which emphasizes the isolated and individualistic experience of the African-American. Their songs were about their lives, the poverty and trials they dealt with, what they suffered, what they did, how they took joy, how they viewed relationships, how the spirit moved them. It was music that examined the black identity at a time when the question of black identity was becoming more and more important in a nation led by WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants).

It really took off, however, with the vaudeville stage acts, which used the stage to sing the emotion-laden solo pieces that turned Rainey and Smith into stars. It was still coined "race music" by the music industry. The stage and the popularization of "race music" with the rise of jazz during this time made blues a hit in the clubs as well. 5 Ragtime emerged in the 1890s from southern and Midwestern regions in America and spread into Europe.

Ragtime was not strictly defined and, like jazz, was understood differently by different people. Essentially it consisted of music composed for piano with a syncopated treble over a steady, rhythmic base. It was different from cakewalks and "coon songs" in that these latter were meant for dancing to but ragtime was meant for listening to. The term, however, began to be applied to more than just the style of music and was used to define a way of life and an era.

The Chicago World's Far in 1893 introduced the world to rag in which a "coon song" was used to make fun of the emerging black identity -- the song was "All Coons Look Alike to Me." Rag Time literally referred to the rags worn by the vaudeville actors who mocked black people, as these actors would perform these songs.

Ragtime can be considered a forerunner of jazz because it was the kind of music that African-Americans produced for entertainment after the Civil War when they were freed and allowed to move around from city to city. This was a popular form of music and was like swing and blues in that it had regional influences that also impacted the development of style which fed into the jazz style. Brass bands using rhythms from swing and ragtime thus helped to fuse all of these.