The Prehistory of Jazz: From Congo Square to Ragtime

Congo Square and the Africanization of American Music

• The Scene of Congo Square: In 19th-century New Orleans, the area known as Congo Square (the site of modern-day Louis Armstrong Park) served as a venue for enslaved people to perform music and dance.

• Primary Account (1819): Benjamin Latrobe, a noted architect, witnessed these dances on February 21, $1819$. He documented the event with vivid written accounts and sketches of the instruments, which were found to be virtually identical to those used in indigenous African music.

• Instrumental Details:

  • Large cylindrical drums (around a foot in diameter) made of animal skin, played with rapid, sharp strokes using fingers and the edge of the hand.

  • Small drums held between the knees with a staccato attack.

  • Stringed instruments fashioned from calabashes with plucked strings.

  • Calabash drums beaten with two short sticks.

• Nature of the Performance:

  • A "moving hieroglyph" of massive proportions involving circular groups of $500$ or $600$ individuals.

  • The music and dance represented an "African ritual" transferred to the New World.

  • Ned Sublette's Perspective: He notes that playing a hand drum in $1819$ was a "tremendous act of will, memory and resistance," as manifestations of Africanness were being deliberately erased elsewhere in the U.S.

• Syncretism and Cultural Collision:

  • The gatherings eradicated the Western division between performer and audience.

  • The separation of song from dance was nullified, creating a congruence of sound and movement.

  • The barrier between secular and spiritual was broken; an account from $1808$ used the word "worship" to describe these events.

• The Ring Shout:

  • Definition: Clusters of individuals moving in a rotating, counterclockwise pattern (typically less than $10$ feet in diameter).

  • Ritual Purpose: Scholar Sterling Stuckey argues it was the primary context in which Africans recognized common values.

  • Longevity: Recorded by John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana in $1934$; witnessed by Marshall Stearns in South Carolina as late as the $1950s$.

• Timeline of Congo Square:

  • Traditional accounts say activities continued until around $1885$, except for a break during the Civil War.

  • Recent research suggests a cutoff date closer to $1870$.

  • The Second Line Connection: Samuel Floyd suggests the a set destination away from the cemetery.

Syncretism and the "Spanish Tinge"

• Syncretism Definition: The blending of cultural elements that previously existed separately.

• Sidney Bechet's Oral History: The renowned reed player wrote in his autobiography, Treat It Gentle, that his grandfather was a musician at Congo Square who did not need notes or rhythms explained, as they were "all there inside him."

• The African-European Blend (Pre-New Orleans):

  • The blend began at least over $1,000$ years before New Orleans was founded ($1718$).

  • Historical Turning Point: In $732 \text{ A.D.}$, Charles Martel repelled Moorish forces at the Battle of Tours. Had he failed, historian Gibbon suggests the Koran might have been taught at Oxford.

  • Impact on Spain: North African conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the $8th$ century left a lasting impact on Spanish architecture, painting, and music.

• Latin Affinity in New Orleans:

  • Hybrid styles like salsa, calypso, samba, tango, and cumbia suggest a "residual magnetic attraction" between African and Latin cultures.

  • Jelly Roll Morton's Claim: He asserted that if a musician cannot manage "tinges of Spanish" in their tunes, they will never get the "right seasoning" for jazz.

• Historical Examples of the Latin Tinge:

  • A massive Mexican cavalry band performed at the $1884$-$85$ World's Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans.

  • Basile Barès (1845–1902) used Cuban habanera rhythms in "Los Campanillas."

  • Louis Moreau Gottschalk achieved success with the composition "Bamboula."

  • Hart's music store on Canal Street published over $80$ Mexican compositions in the late $19th$ century.

The Melting Pot of 19th-Century New Orleans

• Colonial Shifts:

  • $1718$: Founded by France.

  • $1764$: Ceded to Spain.

  • $1800$: Returned to France under Napoleon.

  • $1803$: Passed to the United States (Louisiana Purchase).

• Diverse Population:

  • Black inhabitants included people brought directly from Africa (specifically Senegambia) and refugees from the Caribbean.

  • In $1808$, $6,000$ refugees fleeing the Haitian Revolution arrived via Cuba.

• Legal Systems: Under Spanish law, slaves had more rights than in Anglo-Protestant colonies, including the right of coartación (purchasing their freedom based on a contract).

• The "Cultural Gumbo": New Orleans fostered hybrid musics like jazz, Cajun, zydeco, and the blues.

• Creative Underclass: Most decisive creative currents came from the African American underclass, following the tradition of performers as "outsiders" or "pariahs."

Suppression and Resilience of African Traditions

• Historical Arrivals: The first recorded arrival of Africans in Jamestown was in $1619$ ($1$ year before the Pilgrims).

• Demographics: By $1807$, roughly $400,000$ native-born Africans had been brought to America, mostly from West Africa.

• Suppression of Percussion:

  • Drums were used to signal during the Stono Rebellion of $1739$.

  • South Carolina subsequently banned drums.

  • The Georgia code prohibited drums, horns, and other loud instruments.

• Africanization of European Idioms:

  • Lining Hymns: Alan Lomax notes that Black singers prolonged and quavered hymn texts (like those of Dr. Isaac Watts) to the point they became a "mysterious African music."

  • Lomax's Quote: The harmony was a "polyphony of many ever changing strands—surging altogether like seaweed swinging with the waves."

• Hybrid Genres: African influence gave rise to gospel, spirituals, soul, rap, minstrelsy, ragtime, jazz, blues, R&B, rock, samba, reggae, and salsa.

• Work Songs: Inherently African; encouraged by overseers to increase productivity. Variants included field hollers, levee camp hollers, and street cries.

Five Shared Characteristics of West African Music

1. Call-and-Response: A method of social integration as much as musical performance.

2. Integration into the Social Fabric: Music is functional and tied to ritual, rather than being a "pure" aesthetic object.

3. Cross-fertilization of Music and Dance: John Miller Chernoff notes that "understanding" the music means knowing the dance it accompanies.

4. Focus on Sound over Notes: Instruments are used to emulate the human voice (e.g., the kalangu, or talking drum).

5. Improvisation and Spontaneity: Central to both African traditions and the subsequent jazz tradition.

The Core of African Music: Rhythm

• Henry Edward Krehbiel's Account (1893): At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he noted that African drummers combined double and triple time ($\frac{2}{4}$ or $\frac{4}{4}$ vs. $\frac{3}{4}$) with syncopations that surpassed the best contemporary composers.

• Ingenuity in Instumentalization: African Americans extracted music from the "detritus of day-to-day life."

  • Wash Wilson's Oral History: Drums made from sheep's rib, cow's jaw, iron, hollow gourds, or tree trunks. Flutes made from buffalo horns. Mule's jawbones used as scrapers.

• Polyrhythms: The superimposition of different pulses, creating a counterpoint of implied time signatures.

• Rhythm as Discipline vs. Liberation:

  • Work Songs: Represent rhythm as an African approach to disciplined labor.

  • The Blues: Represents the "Dionysian" side of rhythm that offers release and catharsis.

Structure and Origin of the Blues

• The Blues Form: A repeating $12$-bar pattern typically built on three chords:

  • Tonic ($I$)

  • Dominant ($V$) l

  • Subdominant ($IV$)

• Lyric Form (Stanza): A statement (line A), a repetition (line A), and a rhyming resolution (line B).

• Blue Notes: The use of "bent" notes, emphasizing the major and minor third alongside the flatted seventh and flatted fifth.

• Griot Comparison: While some link blues to West African griots (musical bards), Samuel Charters notes that griots served as historical record-keepers for the tribe, whereas blues performers expressed individualistic perspectives.

Country Blues Masters

• Blind Lemon Jefferson (Wortham, Texas):

  • Pioneer of the Texas blues sound, characterized by thin, high tones.

  • Recorded around $100$ tracks for Paramount ($1926$-$1929$).

  • Known for "Matchbox Blues" and "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean."

• Charley Patton:

  • Delta tradition master; known for showmanship (playing behind the back, between legs).

  • Recorded "Pony Blues" in June $1929$.

• Eddie "Son" House:

  • Recorded "Preachin' the Blues"; style was foreboding and apocalyptic.

• Robert Johnson (1911–1938):

  • Legend says he sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads.

  • Key recordings: "Hellhound on My Trail," "Cross Road Blues," "Me and the Devil Blues."

  • Codified the blues guitar tradition (turnarounds, passing chords, boogie patterns).

  • Recorded in $1936$ and $1937$; died at age $27$, allegedly poisoned by a jealous husband.

Classic Blues and the Race Record Boom

• Definition: Primarily female vocalists fronting a band, strictly following the $12$-bar form.

• Commercial Success:

  • Mamie Smith: "Crazy Blues" ($1920$) sold $75,000$ copies in the first month and over one million within a year.

  • In $1926$, over $300$ blues and gospel records were released.

• Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886–1939):

  • Columbus, Georgia native; the first generation of blues divas.

  • Toured with traveling minstrel shows and brought lavish costumes.

  • Recorded with Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins.

• Bessie Smith (1894–1937):

  • Known as the greatest of the classic blues singers.

  • Started on street corners in Chattanooga; toured with TOBA (Theatre Owner’s Booking Agency).

  • Her $1923$ hit "Down Hearted Blues" reportedly sold over $500,000$ copies.

  • Style: Powerful voice that did not need amplification; used sexual double entendres (e.g., "Empty Bed Blues," "Kitchen Man").

  • Friction with Jazz: Unlike Louis Armstrong's faster, baroque style, she preferred languid tempos (e.g., $60$ beats per minute for "St. Louis Blues").

  • Death: Killed in a car accident in the Deep South on September 26, $1937$.

Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era

• Definition of Ragtime: A syncopated style of composition that emerged at the end of the $19th$ century.

• Classic Rag Form: Typically AABBACCDD, consisting of four $16$-bar themes.

• Rise of the Piano: U.S. piano production grew from under $100,000$ instruments per year in $1890$ to over $350,000$ in $1909$.

• Missouri Center: Sedalia, Carthage, and St. Louis were the focal points for composers like Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden, Louis Chauvin, and James Scott.

• Scott Joplin (1868–1917):

  • Born in Texarkana, Texas. His father was a former slave who played violin.

  • Maple Leaf Rag (1899): The first piece of sheet music to sell over one million copies.

  • Compositional Range: Used parlor waltzes ("Bethena"), habanera rhythms ("Solace"), and self-parody ("Stoptime Rag").

  • Opera Ambition: Wrote Treemonisha, a folk opera published in $1911$ with a $230$-page score. It failed in its only performance ($1915$ Harlem) but won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize after a $1970s$ revival.

  • Admonition: He famously instructed: "note: Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast."

• Death: Died of syphilis on April 1, $1917$, having outlived the peak of his fame.

Questions & Discussion

• The "Spanish Tinge": Why did Jelly Roll Morton emphasize the Spanish influence in Jazz?

  • Response: Morton argued that this "seasoning" was essential for the right rhythmic and melodic feel of jazz, likely due to the long-standing cross-fertilization of African and Latin cultures in New Orleans.

• Transition to Big Bands: How did the line between ragtime and jazz blur in the $1930s$?

  • Response: Jelly Roll Morton claimed that even virtuoso pianists like Fats Waller and Art Tatum were just "ragtime pianists in a very fine form," highlighting that the keyboard techniques (striding bass and syncopation) remained fundamental across genres.