New Orleans Jazz

According to Ted Gioia, the author of “The History of Jazz”, New Orleans was the birthplace of the amalgamation of music and culture that became jazz.  New Orleans’ role in the nascence of jazz had many contributing factors; some of them being the emergence of trade and commerce in the city, the French Catholic influences, as well as the following American appropriation.  These elements combined to create a unique culture that was the breeding ground for a new genre of music.

The city of New Orleans in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries was a rapidly burgeoning metropolitan hub of business that ran along the Mississippi River.  The expansion and growth of the city was largely caused by the lifting of trade restrictions on the Mississippi River resulting from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  New Orleans lent itself well to imports and exports because of its placement at the foot of the Mississippi River, therefore all roads led to the city.  It had a swamp-like, sultry feel that encouraged carousal and debauchery, as a port city should. “Indeed, some have suggested that a contagion of vice, more than the contingencies of culture or economics, spurred the birth of New Orleans Jazz” (Gioia 31).  This society of trade, money, and amusement quickly drew people towards the city and it soon flourished as an economic engine of power, as well as a cosmopolitan center.

The French first owned New Orleans, then the Spanish took over, and later the French regained control, but finally it came under American hold in the Louisiana Purchase.  Under the French, the city had a distinctly liberal, and Catholic feel, which infused it with ornate architecture, art, and a mixed race population.  The city viewed slavery with the more permissive Latin system of rules that saw slaves as human souls who were allowed to marry (even intermarry), own property, purchase themselves, and even be freed by their masters.  This broad-minded ideology about slavery differed greatly from the English slavery laws that the Americans abided to, in which none of those rights were possible.

Another aspect of the French influence was exhibited in the mixed race population that included the Creoles of color, who were considered a different class that the white or blacks.  They remained close to their masters and mistresses and immersed themselves in white culture, distanced themselves from black culture, and so their music had distinct European influences.

With the joining of Louisiana with the United States, the uniquely French, Catholic, and racially liberal New Orleans became the New York of the South. There was a certain “vital aliveness” in the city that was a result of the African tradition that was prevalent in the majority black population.  Gioia argues that what made New Orleans so unique was the energy of competition that was palpable in the trade and the society of the city that gave it an air of a fast-paced living.  The liberalism of the area also made it stand out among other cities.  Congo Square in the 1800s was a place designated for slaves to go on Sundays to play music and dance, while white people watched. This caused a more open and inviting atmosphere for the growth of a new culture.  With the passing of the 1898 Louisiana Legislative Code, the joining of the Creoles and the blacks combined ragtime and blues to create jazz.

Some of the sources of New Orleans jazz that Gioia mentioned were: Storyville, Buddy Bolden, Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Jelly Roll Morton.  Storyville was the red light district in the black neighborhood of New Orleans that is largely seen as the birthplace of jazz music.  It’s raucous and sexualized atmosphere contributed to the hot and sultry tones of jazz.  The cornet player, Buddy Bolden was important in the birth of jazz because of his daring lyrics and introduction of “syncopated and blues-inflected sounds that would prefigure jazz” (Gioia 35).  The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was a band of white musicians whose part in playing distinctly black music is a subject of much debate. However, while Gioia does not take a side in the debate, he does say that the ODJB was clearly one of the most wide-ranging of the early jazz bands, encompassing jazz, blues, rag forms, and pop songs, and even swing (Gioia 38). Jelly Roll Morton was considered the greatest of the New Orleans jazz composers, and though, despite what he said, he was not the inventor of jazz,  he was the first to think of jazz music in abstract terms (Gioia 39).

I believe that the most important factor that explains why jazz emerged in New Orleans is the mixture of white and black culture as a result of the Creoles and blacks being forced to come together because of the American's "One Drop Rule". This allowed for the combination of ragtime and blues to find a middle path and created the jazz music that is so enjoyed by the rest of the world.

Work Cited:
Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.