The American Sound: The Evolution of Jazz
By
Cecilia Padilla
There is nothing so uniquely American as jazz music.
In its simplest form, jazz embodies the essence of the American people: bold
and inventive. The improvisation of the jazz ensemble can even be seen as a
metaphor for the American democratic ideal: musicians playing solos have the
liberty to express themselves as long as they adhere to the overall structure
of the tune—individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. The
evolution of jazz music also carries with it the social development of our
nation from slavery to the swinging songs of World War II. Musically, jazz
contributed immensely to the way contemporary musicians approach
instrumentation, composition, and vocal arrangements. It is difficult to find a
popular tune today that does not derive from such jazz icons as Joe Oliver,
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. Jazz is the great
equalizer; for more than a hundred years, it has been the common ground between
blacks and whites, men and women, radicals and conservatives.
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| African American man sitting outside playing a banjo. Photo by V.G. Schreck, 1902. Courtesy Library of Congress. |
The early origins of jazz trace back to two sources in
New Orleans history: African slaves and Creole descendants. By 1808, the
Atlantic slave trade had brought half a million Africans to the United States,
where they were forced to work on southern plantations. While working in the
fields, slaves sang work songs that combined African tribal chants with
Christian hymns incorporated from the Southern Baptist Church. Together, these influences
created Negro spirituals that had strong, percussive beats and were accompanied
by intense physical dancing. White slave owners felt that this music and dance
distracted slaves from their work, and in New Orleans, slaves’ participation in
Negro spirituals was confined by law to Congo Square in 1817. The strong,
rhythmic music played in Congo Square remains a distinctive tone in jazz today.
After the abolition of slavery in 1865, the United
States was confronted with the need to rebuild the nation out of the wreckage
of the Civil War. The Reconstruction Era was a period of revitalization of the
U.S. economy and government, as well as the redefinition of race relations
between blacks and whites. In New Orleans, this racial reconsideration influenced
the sound of jazz. Creoles, the light-skinned descendants of white French and
Spanish colonists who had had sex with their black female slaves, identified
more with their European roots than with their African ancestry. They often looked
down on their dark-skinned counterparts and avoided association with slave
stereotypes. Many Creoles were classically trained in music and played with the
elegance of European orchestras, which became a means of distancing themselves
from “crude” slave music. The blending of Negro spirituals and Creole classical
music, along with Civil War military marches, would contribute to a new genre:
ragtime.
In the 1890s, pianists in New Orleans took to playing
this new style of music set to syncopated rhythms—previously unaccented beats
were now strongly accented. This gave the tunes ragged rhythms, hence the term
“ragtime.” First circulated by itinerant musicians, ragtime songs were
eventually printed as sheet music, something that had not been done for Negro
spirituals. Ragtime was popularized by Scott Joplin, who composed the iconic
tune “The Entertainer.” The genre’s syncopated musical meter remains one of
jazz’s defining characteristics.
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