We have had another great week for new listeners tuning in to our THREE RADIO SHOWS on the different platforms from all over the world, and it seems like you like what we are playing as many of you are tuning in ALL DAY.
THANK YOU, and PLEASE PASS ON OUR LINKS, the more new listeners who hear our music the better it is for the JAZZ GENRE and THE ARTISTS.
There are a lot of TV, Radio, Internet and Live shows available for people to listen to, so getting listeners to tune in to our project which has no budget, BUT it is legal with licencing from our host LIVE365, is very gratifying.
Thanks to all of the ARTSITS who continue to SUBMIT THEIR MUSIC to our project and for recording LINERS TO SUPPORT THEIR MUSIC. I have been working with many of them for 15 years plus so I am delighted to try and help them showcase their latest projects in an overcrowded market where competition is fierce.
The History Of Jazz Series
Here is Part 1 of my take on where it all began, a 10 Part Series on how jazz evolved to the musical styles that we hear today :-
New Orleans is and was an exceptional place, originally a French settlement it only became part of the USA with the purchase of Louisiana in 1803. Sited on the banks of the Mississippi river it looked south to Latin America and the Caribbean, hence this element in New Orleans music which Jelly Roll Morton dubbed 'The Spanish Tinge'.
Throughout the nineteenth century, New Orleans retained a French-speaking upper class called 'The Creoles', who looked to Paris for their culture. It was tough, the street parades were still an essential part of city life and might result in pitched battles between the inhabitants of the rival areas. Jelly Roll Morton recounted " If they'd have ten fights on a Sunday, they didn't have many."
No doubt the reality could be squalid but with hindsight, old-time New Orleans sounds wonderful. the street parades, Mardi Gras, picnics, dances, funerals, brothels in the memories of those who lived through it, all of these merged into one enormous party.
Consequently there was a tremendous demand for one commodity, 'music'. It was met largely by two groups:- working-class blacks and the Creoles of colour. It is in this interaction between these two that many have seen to be the 'origin of jazz'.
The Creoles were craftsmen and small tradesmen, cigar-makers, shoemakers, tailors and jealous of their status who played with a conventional, legitimate technique.
As against the Creoles' well-trained fluency, the black musicians had one great asset, the rhythmic flair which came from Africa. They didn't, and generally couldn't, read musical scores, but instead played 'head music', i.e. by ear and memory.
When they got to New Orleans the black players took up the instruments of the creole bands e.g. cornet, trombone, clarinet, tuba, bass, but at moments of emotional climax they continued to roughen their instrumental sounds as a gospel or blues singer would, and like an African drummer - 'they swung'.
The exact sequence of events i.e. 'who contributed to what and when' we are never likely to know as no recordings were made of New Orleans jazz until 1917, and none by black or Creole musicians until several years after that.
The first major player of whom we hear was a black barber and cornettist named Buddy Bolden (1877-1931), but Bolden made no records and was committed to a mental hospital in 1907 where he remained for the rest of his life. He was noted for his forceful sound and blues playing, but probably he remained closer to ragtime rhythm than to fully-fledged jazz.
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If you can pass on our links to your like minded friends that would be a great help to the jazz genre, today's artists, and to me. Thank you.
