Classic jazz from New Orleans - The brass bands
November 16th, 2008 | by Tom |In the last decades of the nineteenth century it was hard to avoid music in the city of New Orleans for too long. Sounds hung in the air, whether in the begin cool of winter or the hot humidity of summer, mingling with the sights and sounds of this fascinating cosmopolitan city.
From the beginning of its history, the population from New Orleans was jumbled mixture of backgrounds and races. There were French, Spanish, British, and American whites and their families, slaves and descendants. There were Creoles who were the product of interbreeding among all these groups.
New Orleans seems to have used music to observe and celebrate a larger number of high days and holidays than any other American city.
Earlier in the year, the start of Lent would have been marked by the Mardi Gras celebrations, paralleling the festivities of the Hispanic Catholic world. In addition to the music that accompanied such major festive events in city’s social calendar, the African-American, Creole and white communities all made music of their own, for picnics, weddings, funerals, and weekly dances.
Many accounts of music in New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century present this apparently idyllic setting itself as the major reason for jazz to have developed. One man who was an eyewitness to the birth of jazz in New Orleans, and who become expert on it, was Roy Carew, later a friend and confidante of Jelly Roll Morton and of jazz historian William Russell.
All sections of society, white or black, turned out to hear brass bands as they passed, especially as the new, intangible elements of swing and improvisation began to be added to the mix. The typical New Orleans brass band had a smaller instrumentation than might have been the case elsewhere in the US.
There were white brass bands as well as Creole or African-American groups. The white New Orleans jazz is also called as Dixieland. “Papa Jack Laine” is generally credited in the city with being the father of Dixieland, or white New Orleans Jazz.
Tags: classic jazz, new orleans