The history of jazz: how it all began Essay

The Beginning of Jazz
I have always been in awe of Jazz and have held an admiration for it its uniqueness of allowing and encouraging improvisation has always separated it from other genres of music for me. The start of this music genre is also different in that it is more of a combination of different types of music and different combination of culture. These music genres merged in the booming city of New Orleans around the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Both music traditions from African music and European music had a huge impact on this newly forming genre and consequently Jazz has very similar aspects that it pulled from these two other genres at the time.
New Orleans history set it up perfectly to foster this amazing type of music. This city had been under the control of Spain and France in the past. Combine this fact with the huge amount of original slaves in this southern state and you are left with a huge melting pot of different music and culture. Once Jazz began to get popular the location of New Orleans allowed it to spread. The city was a major port city allowing the music to quickly catch on all around the world. The two major contributors to the creation of this music were the Africans, those who used to be slaves, and Europeans, French and Spanish people that arrived at New Orleans before it was a US state.
According to "Jazz in America" Jazz got its "rhythm and feel, blues quality, and tradition of playing an instrument in your own expressive way, making it an extension of your own human voice" from African music (Monk). This rhythm and feel it got from African music comes from work songs sung by blacks including shouts they chanted during work, African sorrow songs such as hymns and spirituals and their folk songs. A lot of African music required their body to participate, clapping and pounding the group with sticks kept their beat that has been interwoven into Jazz music. Blues music was one of the biggest contributors to the new Jazz style. Blues bands only had blacks in them, some parts of their musical form such as blues notes and their chord progressions carried into Jazz. When Africans were freed from slavery many of them turned to entertainment and music as their profession, their creation of ragtime was also incorporated into jazz using this new style of syncopation.
Although Jazz was mainly influenced by African music, European music also had a slightly smaller effect on it. The instrumentation of Jazz is came from the popular instruments in Europe. Saxophones, trumpets and the piano all came from Europe and were almost necessary in an ensemble playing Jazz. The piano usually played chords that accompanied the melody. The harmony created by these chords has a very similar sound to the harmony in classical pieces all around Europe. Aside from aforementioned things, European music had little effect on the origins of Jazz.