From Folk to Popular Music. Jazz

Jazz as a form of popular music is derived from the folk music of African-American slaves in the American South. African-American folk music is derived from several antecedents. In general, African-American music embodies a culture torn from its African roots and forcibly trans- ported across the Atlantic Ocean to North America. African, Caribbean, and European influences are evident in the traditional folk music of African-Americans.

The oppression and misery of slave life furnished much of the content of African-American folk music. Blues songs described the poverty, drudgery, and conflict that were part of the slave's everyday experience. Spirituals evoked images of an afterlife in which the shackles of slavery would be broken and the weary could rest.

African-American folk music has inspired the development of several major genres of popular music. In addition to jazz, it has evolved into the rhythm-and-blues and rap that are so popular in urban African-American communities today. Its influence on country music and rock-and-roll is considerable. The first of these traditions to develop and become a part of popular culture, however, was jazz.

Most music historians of jazz recognize New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz (Figure 6-4). In New Orleans, traditional African-American music of nearby rural areas was integrated with the folk music of the Creole population whose ancestors had come from France and Spain. The evolution of jazz was also influenced by the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the North and West.

Figure 6-4 Preservation Hall. Contemporary jazz has its roots in the folk music of African-American slaves in the rural South. Most historians recognize New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz. The Preservation Hall is one of the famous jazz clubs in New Orleans

Many jazz musicians who had been exposed to the music in the South moved northward during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bringing their music with them. Steamboats plying the Mississippi River and its tributaries during the late nineteenth century often carried jazz orchestras. As the steamboats stopped in towns along the river, local residents met the musicians and heard their music. Several prominent jazz musicians of the early twentieth century were born and raised in Mississippi River towns such as Davenport, lowa and Winona, Minnesota. At that time, New Orleans flourished as a port city, and its transportation network was oriented to the Midwest, rather than the East.

By 1920, Chicago and Kansas City had supplanted New Orleans as the leading center of innovation for jazz music. Not until the late 1920s did jazz achieve as much popularity in the Northeast, but by the 1930s Chicago's dominance in jazz innovation had been eclipsed by New York. For many years, New York music critics, publishers, and recording executives had ignored or panned jazz records and performances. In the 1920s, jazz in New York was flourishing only in the city's African-American communities. By the mid-1930s, however, New York had embraced jazz. New York's dominance of the American communications media ensured that jazz as a form of popular music would continue to develop.

The increased acceptance of jazz in the Northeast is reflected in the changed distribution of the birthplaces of jazz musicians. Of those born during the first decade of the twentieth century, the largest share came from Louisiana, with neighboring Mississippi and Arkansas producing significant numbers along with Illinois and Indiana. A substantially higher share of those born in the 1920s came from the Northeast, while fewer came from the Southwest.