These inventions were put to use in airplanes, automobiles, the telephone, radio, refrigeration, everything electric, and everything mobile. Cities and factory production mushroomed. Until 1914, the century was something of a golden age.
From 1914-1918 Eastern and Western Europe with support from American troops from 1917, fought the first modern war with motorized vehicles and airplanes.
The American Civil War
1. Ended the bondage of slavery, and freed people began to try to figure out what this new status could actually do for them, and how to live as free people, and, just how free could they be?
2. Former slaves poured into the cities looking for work, up and down the Mississippi River.
3. Many musicians, who had learned instruments for entertainment on the plantations, or played in military bands,went south to New Orleans to join or form a band in this port city.
4. Their music was eclectic; European harmonies, African rhythms, folk songs, spirituals, gospel hymns, dance music, and work songs.
Call and Response
1. African work songs accompanied the ordinary chores of work in this style: One person would sing out a line of song and be answered by the others. The US Marine Corps uses this type of vocal music for marches.
Certain habits when playing music got to be called "jazz"
1. Musicians took off on the tunes, the harmonies, the accompaniments, making up variations that extended the length of the tune, and that was improvisation.
2. African American musicians put together European harmonies and African rhythms to creat new forms of music, including ragtime and blues.
3. Jazz is an original American art form created by African Americans in the early 20th century.
4. Early jazz music was mostly meant for dancing, making the beat most important.
5. In band music, musicians 'talked' to each other on their instruments using the style of call and response.
6. One early form of music related to jazz is Ragtime.
What is Ragtime?
1. Musicians "ragged" the music by playing some of the music on the beat and some of the music just after the beat had started. Piano players did it by making the left hand play on the beat and ragging the tune in the right hand.This is called syncopation.
2. In 1897 the town alderman, Sidney Story, had made prostitution legal in the what came to be known as the Storyville district of New Orleans, where these businesses were called sportin' houses.
3. Sportin' houses were bars on the first floor where a resident piano player showed his stuff on an upright piano, kept everybody dancing and drinking. The other thing happened upstairs.
4. There was competition between the piano players from one house to another, each wanting to be known as the best, and their technique was often exceptional (virtuoso).
5. There were also ragtime bands and banjo players. The banjo is an instrument that originated in Africa.
6. Ragtime was an early jazz form with limited improvisation and the beat didn't swing. (more on that later).
What made New Orleans one of the primo sites for jazz to grow?
1. Storyville made New Orleans a seaport party-town where there was so much demand for music that musicians had to find new material out of all the previous music they knew or knew about, stretching it into various original sounds and directions.
Bands, Improvisation, Dixieland Music.
1. When small bands (combos) played music originally written for bigger groups such as a parade band, the few musicians had to figure out how to fill in the sound. How to make five or six pieces sound like more.
2. They improvised, playing a lot more notes than there were in the tune, and as time went on musicians took pride in their ability to improvise and this became a necessary part of jazz.
3. In New Orleans-style combos of 5-8 musicians, where everyone improvised, the music came to be called Dixieland.
Links to History pages and Sound Files
For this one open the page, scroll down and click on My Web Pages,
scroll again to Jazz and Literature Sources for various topics on The Roaring 20's
The Red Hot Jazz Archive
Ragtime and Stride Piano
The Billy Taylor Jazz Lectures
Kansas City Jazz
Latin Jazz History
The Influence of Africa: Sound files Syncopation, Call and Response, Timbre
Stride Piano Sound Files
NEXT: THE BLUES