1. Jazz – Chapter 3 Roots of Jazz
IB Music SL
Jazz – Chapter 3
Roots of Jazz

2. 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.

3. 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

4. Spirituals: call and response with religious poetry.
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.

6. 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 ( )

9. 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.

10. 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 ( )
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

12. 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 ( ). 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

14. 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 ( )
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

15. 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.