The lineage of jazz music can be traced back to the New World slave trade. By 1807 nearly 400,000 native born Africans, most from West Africa, were forcibly taken from their homes and enslaved in the Americas (Gioia, The Africanization of American Music). These transplanted individuals clung to elements of their home culture, bringing them to the New World and melding them with European and Latin cultural influences. This melding of Western and African culture could be witnessed firsthand in nineteenth century New Orleans. 

      Traditionally African music emphasized polyphony, as an ensemble of individual musicians would contribute to a multilayered rhythmic pattern. Polyphony and polyrythm could be constructed by intertwining percussion and vocal rhythms, creating richness of harmony. This polyphonic, polyrythmic African musical form manifested itself in the slave dances witnessed in New Orleans’ Congo Square.

      The slave dances of Congo Square were first documented by the architect Benjamin Latrobe on February 21, 1819 (Gioia, The Africanization of American Music). In these slave dances, an ensemble of African-American musicians would play percussion and string instruments in a polyphonic manner. The slave dances of Congo Square mark a transplantation of African ritual culture into North America. The laissez-faire attitude of New Orleans permitted a synergy of African culture and Latin culture, with the combination of the two cultures birthing many modern hybrid musical forms such as Cajun, zydeco, blues, and jazz. But the history of jazz continues as its rich West African roots melded with African-American slave culture to produce the work song and call-and-response melody.

      The work song is distinctly African in nature, as slaves would sing in unison to escape and transcend their horrific daily existence. The work song can be broken down into its constituent forms, such as the field holler, levee camp holler, prison work song, and street cry. All types of work song rely on a ritualized vocalization of the African-American worker. The call-and-response melody too was vocalization on the part of slave laborers, but with a single individual call followed by a group vocal response. These two embodiments of slave cultural expression relied on the rich rhythmic content of their West African roots, taking on a functional nature as its musicians strove to transcend daily hardships. In this regard, the African-American work song, and call-and-response melody integrated musical performance into social functions, and in doing so connected the audience with its performers. The transcendental nature of these two forms of African-American music was later echoed in the blues.

      The blues relied on the organic structure of slave melodies to echo a similar expression of pain, longing, and oppression. The blues style combined African pentatonic scales with a Western diatonic scale to yield the viscerally impacting “blues note” (Gioia, Country Blues and Classic Blues). The blues relied on a dialogue between the musician and his guitar which harkened back to the tradition of call-and-response melodies. This vocal and string interaction combined to convey an individual statement of pain. Musicians such as Robert Johnson and Leadbelly brought the blues’ expression of African-American life in the south from the street-corner to the concert hall. African-American female blues musicians such as Gertrude “Ma” Rainey combined the mass entertainment of blues music with a front band.

      Rainey, with her accompanying front band, transformed the informal blues into a formal presentation of music for mass audiences. The front band, with its ensemble of percussion, string, brass, and wind instruments formed the same polyphony witnessed in West African traditions. As Rainey and her contemporaries began selling records, spreading the blues and its African undertones to mainstream America. Jazz would emulate the same African polyphony and incorporate a front band to create a rich synergy of vocal and instrumental music. The history of jazz returns again to New Orleans as ragtime begins to hit the scene at the turn of the twentieth century.

      Ragtime’s influence on jazz music is immense, as both musical forms were born out of the ethnic cauldron of New Orleans. The two were at times nearly indistinguishable at the beginning of the 1900’s. Both styles shared a melody, at times both wild and crazy, based on repeated syncopations. Ragtime rhythms relied heavily both on the left and right hands of the pianist. Jazz too relied heavily on the piano to set the beat, but in a less frenetic style. African-American jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton commented that a jazz pianist of the 30’s was just a “ragtime pianist in a very fine form” (Gioia, Scott Joplin and Ragtime). 

      Jazz as music has grown out of predominantly African-American roots, incorporating traditional West African polyrhythms in an American cultural framework. As time continued, distinctly African music morphed to become the freedman’s expression of hardship through the blues. America at large began to take notice of the rich rhythm and soul embodied in the blues and ragtime. The history of jazz encompasses the early ring dances of Congo Square up to its distinct divergence from musical forms a century later in New Orleans. Jazz would disseminate from the cultural melting pot of New Orleans, and take up shop in large metropolitan cities such as Chicago.

      

WD

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