Lecture 12 Early American Jazz

What is Jazz? It is the irrepressible expression of freedom and individual rights through musical improvisation. It is a way people express themselves and their emotions by means of music. It is a music built on individualism and compromise, independence and cooperation.

Early New Orleans Jazz It first appeared in the 19th century. It was a blend of folk music, work chants, spirituals, marches, and European classical music. All jazz bands use such instruments as a trumpet, a clarinet, a trombone, and percussion instruments like the drum, banjo, and guitars.

Louis Armstrong Born in New Orleans in 1901, Louis Armstrong learned to play the cornet since his childhood. After an apprenticeship in several bands in New Orleans, he joined a jazz orchestra in Chicago, where he set the style later indentified as the Chicago style. He is now remembered as America’s foremost jazz musician.

Ragtime music Ragtime music refers to a type of piano music of black US origin, popular in the 1920s. Originally based on tunes for marching bands ragtime music is marked by a syncopated melodic line with a regular accented bass. Ragtime music has been popularized by such composers as Scott Joplin whose “Maple Leaf Rag” published in 1896 was hailed as the first popular ragtime tune, still listened to with pleasure by all jazz fans.

Boogie Woogie Boogie Woogie refers to a piano music style in jazz music, which emerged in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. Jimmy Yancey standadized the style to a 12 bar blues melodic line with 8 beats to the bar. Like ragtime, Boogie Woogie is represented by specific pieces of music as well as an approach to nearly any tune, and a Boogie Woogie piece was in the repertoire of every jazz band of the 1930’s.