Always thought this came from Africa or Caribbean ...actually it was New Orleans

[get these nets]

...because main elements that were at the core of jazz (blues, ragtime, baptist-holiness church) had nothing to do with congo square

Congo square was said to be the one place in North America where Africans were permitted to openly play music en masse. Whites gathered to listen to the music.(and copy it, of course in their own bands) and they probably hired out the services of the Africans to perform for them at gatherings.The tradition of Black musicians and bands in N.O. has to be traced back to Congo Square.


If you look at the history of the traveling minstrel shows..and the period they started, it overlaps with the period of active Congo Square gatherings. Surely a place like New Orleans would have unique musical element with Black performers traveling with these shows across the country. The music performed at these shows from troupes from around the country surely helped spread the different musical styles that were developing..both on white musicians in attendance and on the slave quarters that the African performers would visit when the show came to town. I think that ragtime music was influenced by these traveling plays and performers. ..and then jazz builds on ragtime elements.

video in spoiler about jim crow minstrel shows and New Orleans

Spoiler

 

[Black Haven]

Congo square was said to be the one place in North America where Africans were permitted to openly play music en masse. Whites gathered to listen to the music.(and copy it, of course in their own bands) and they probably hired out the services of the Africans to perform for them at gatherings.The tradition of Black musicians and bands in N.O. has to be traced back to Congo Square.


If you look at the history of the traveling minstrel shows..and the period they started, it overlaps with the period of active Congo Square gatherings. Surely a place like New Orleans would have unique musical element with Black performers traveling with these shows across the country. The music performed at these shows from troupes from around the country surely helped spread the different musical styles that were developing..both on white musicians in attendance and on the slave quarters that the African performers would visit when the show came to town. I think that ragtime music was influenced by these traveling plays and performers. ..and then jazz builds on ragtime elements.

video in spoiler about jim crow minstrel shows and New Orleans

Spoiler

Early influences of minstrel shows trace back to south Carolina and Virginia. Like for instance "stick dance" which was commonly used in minstrel shows was actually from SC and VA.

To add to the dance element of the practise, other slaves would gather around the competitive fighters. They would clap in rhythm, and sing in a call-and-response style, while one caller led the rest of the crowd.

Like the banjo and other instruments, the berimbau was based on African instruments and developed by African-American slaves. An early depiction of slaves performing a stick dance is an 18th-century watercolour painting called The Old Plantation, which is in the collections of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. It shows a dozen African-Americans gather in front of two slave cabins, with one stick dancer, and two women dancing with scarves to music of a drummer and a banjoist. The watercolour is believed to have been made of a plantation between Columbia and Orangeburg, South Carolina.[2]
The stick dance became a standard part of the minstrel shows performed by African-Americans during the late 19th century.
It had an element of humour, where the dancer would shuffle onto the stage dressed as an elderly African-American man using a cane, and then suddenly use the cane to perform energetic acrobatic capoeira dance moves

.

 

[im_sleep]

Domestic slave trade


New Orleans should acknowledge its lead role in the slave trade: Erin M. Greenwald and Joshua D. Rothman


Now, who's impact do you think was bigger.?


And those are just the slaves alone, not including the whites and free blacks who emigrated from the "old" US. Furthermore that was only those that arrived by sea at the port of New Orleans, not including those who arrived by land into louisiana.

Just from 1804-1820 the slave population in Louisiana would boom (from about 25,000 to nearly 70,000 in 1820), "largely from the domestic or inter-state slave trade".

New Orleans has a many times greater historical connection with Richmond VA alone than with the entire caribbean combined, especially as it concerns African-Americans.

Richmond Virgina & New Orleans Louisiana Connection Two Main Domestic Slave Trade Ports

Domestic slave trade - Wikipedia

The domestic slave trade is the tie that binds ALL AA’s with roots in the south.

The lack of understanding of this, as well as the lack of understanding of the directions from which AA culture flowed and originated from lends to a lot of myth-making on how a lot of the culture developed.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Congo square was said to be the one place in North America where Africans were permitted to openly play music en masse. Whites gathered to listen to the music.(and copy it, of course in their own bands) and they probably hired out the services of the Africans to perform for them at gatherings.The tradition of Black musicians and bands in N.O. has to be traced back to Congo Square.


If you look at the history of the traveling minstrel shows..and the period they started, it overlaps with the period of active Congo Square gatherings. Surely a place like New Orleans would have unique musical element with Black performers traveling with these shows across the country. The music performed at these shows from troupes from around the country surely helped spread the different musical styles that were developing..both on white musicians in attendance and on the slave quarters that the African performers would visit when the show came to town. I think that ragtime music was influenced by these traveling plays and performers. ..and then jazz builds on ragtime elements.

video in spoiler about jim crow minstrel shows and New Orleans

Spoiler

not the musics Im talking about

blues was brought into new orleans from mississippi
ragtime was from missouri
negro spirituals/black sacred music was everywhere an anglo-african population existed

minstrels shows began as more of a Virginia/Ohio/Kentucky/New York thing

 

[get these nets]

Early influences of minstrel shows trace back to south Carolina and Virginia. Like for instance "stick dance" which was commonly used in minstrel shows was actually from SC and VA.

.

not the musics Im talking about

blues was brought into new orleans from mississippi
ragtime was from missouri
negro spirituals/black sacred music was everywhere an anglo-african population existed

minstrels shows began as more of a Virginia/Ohio/Kentucky/New York thing

The end of the clip pinpoints the creator of jim crow minstrels & I posted this vid about origins of those caricatures in Nov.
documentary "Origin of minstrels/jim crow stage caricatures"

My post didn't say that minstrel shows started in New Orleans. What I said was that those traveling shows were coming in and out of N.O. Congo Square made sure that white identified the Africans who had musical talent and these were the first musicians and bands of Africans in that town. As mentioned in the short clip and the doc. I posted, these plays traveled the entire country BEFORE and after the Civil War. Certainly before ragtime existed in published form.
The plays originating out of certain regions surely added elements of those AA cultures and exposed them to the rest of the country.

If these plays traveled across the entire country, I'd have to think that they had influence on music that developed later.

 

[Supper]

Morton said "Spanish tingue" on tape and then proceeded to play a song of Spanish/Cuban derivation to demonstrate to Lomax what he meant.

This is a good question that you pose though.


I think I read earlier in the thread that you were of Creole heritage. Forgive me if I'm confusing you with somebody else.

If you are of that heritage, and aware of New Orleans Creole history, you already know the difference between the article I posted and the information that you posted. The person being discussed, Morton was of Creole descent. From everything that I've read and seen, Creoles in N.O. area had a very insular culture..apart from whites, Blacks and the native English speakers of that area. The article I posted cited that French speakers in the region lobbied for the refugees from St. Domingue to come in to boost their numbers.....in fear of losing political and cultural clout to the english speaking Americans who would come into the area.
In terms of numbers....I'm sure the people coming in from previous American territory would impact the culture of the city/region.Creole heritage/culture, being insular would remain in tact. Over 200 years later French culture and Creole culture of New Orleans hasn't gone away.
As far as the Africans, if we look at what would have been happening in Congo Square.....

Spoiler

certainly all the enslaved Africans would be playing music and dancing. The educated guess says that the ones who were from Latin slave colonies (Spain/ France) where the drum was NOT banned, would have different musical traditions than the ones from some other American states, where there was a slave code ban on the drum. Those Africans wouldhave influenced each other.

It would all blend to form the unique culture of New Orleans and southern Louisiana.

Yes, I am of SWLA and SETX creole heritage, which is different from the NO creole variety.

This comes down to a widespread misusing and misunderstanding of the term "creole". The term originally in colonial louisiana and other french and spanish was simply used to distinguish African born(guinea) blacks from the colony-born(creole) blacks, and could also extend to people of mixed race heritage as well on account of their african ancestry. The creole culture itself in colonial louisiana comes from these people, not the white spanish and french, hence the Afro-louisianaian langauge is what is known as creole or "kreyol", or even "****** french" in some cases and not the french spoken by the original french settlers, which is referred to as "plantation or colonial french".

LOUISIANA FRENCH refers to variations of the French language spoken in Louisiana. The most prominent varieties are:

• Colonial French or Plantation Society French, a formerly common dialect now rare though still in existence. Non-Acadian French Ethnic groups in AVOYELLES, Iberia, Pointe Coupée, St. Charles, St. Landry, St. Mary, St. Martin, St. Tammany, and other parishes south of Orleans, still speak Colonial French, as opposed to Cajun.

• Cajun French (Acadian) centered in the South West of the state

• Louisiana Creole French centered in the South East of the state (although this is technically a separate language distinguishable from its mother tongue French by its grammar. It shares many similarities with the Creoles of the Caribbean)

https://www.mylouisianafamily.com/histories/The French Language in Louisiana.pdf

The white french and spanish elite didn't begin to refer to themselves as creole until after the Louisiana purchase to differentiate themselves from the Anglophone people from the "old" US. Today the "correct" use of the term is to refer to anyone with french and spanish colonial heritage especially along the gulf coast. Though, many people tend to use it as euphemism for people of mulatto heritage in louisiana.

Anyway true Afro-creole in America are going to have a lot more culturally in common with other groups of AA in this country than any group of non-AA blacks or even most of the whites of their specific regions. There are many cultural unifiers among ALL Afr'Am which included unique sub-groups like the geechie, creoles, afrilations, and MS hill country folk etcc

As explained here

Yes, we are Afr'Am. Like I said, there are overarching elements to our culture & heritage that pretty general among African-Americans such as the use of red-rice(Oryza glaberrima) in our meals, use of grounded peanuts(goobers) in meals, the combination of Native-American crops with West African cooking techniques to make AA staple dishes like grits and cornbread.

And on music there's the use of strummed folk instruments like Banjo with has documented and recorded being played by African-American in just about every part of the US and Elongated Minor Pentatonic scales with microtonal bent "blue notes" in our melodies ESPECIALLY with the trade marked raspy voices, as well as off-beat accentuation(nuts and bolts of the backbeat which is also unique to all forms of AA music and not found in other Afro-diasporan music types)


(You certainly wont find anything like that among Haitians or Martiniqueans)

^^^^Much of this has to with the common rice, cattle, cotton culture that the economic landscape of North America demanded on slave industry regardless of it was being administered by French, Spanish, or English unlike in the Caribbean and South America were Sugar & Mining where the bread and butter of the economy. Slavers in French Louisiana are noted in specifically trying to recreated the model of rice plantations of the English/British administered southern atlantic coast upon seeing their success so they could compete. So, as it was be a large number of Upper West Africans slave from the Sudan and Sahel regions were imported into the colonies and much of AA culture, if traced back, to pre-transatlantic era is rooted in the traditions of the Sudan and the Sahel. And if that wasn't enough there was the domestic slave trading once the US republic procured lands formerly under the thumb of European colonialism. The amount of people involved in this movement of slaves was even greater than that of the Transatlantic slave trade. So, no Texas nor Louisiana Africans/AA were ever in isolation from other African/AAs in other parts of the colonial or antebellum US.

And like @IllmaticDelta said there's also the common influence of the Church traditions as well.



"Free blacks", yes. Non-AA immigrants, No.

 

[Supper]

They have argued .....but I would like to see more of this evidence of this.

I agree that Congo squares doesn’t have a direct influence on Jazz, but to say what took place there was entirely African American rather than African seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Congo square was outlawed in 1844. With New Orleans being a major slave port , I think using the term African American to describe the “black “ people there is inaccurate. They were essentially straight off the boat , or only one generation removed at the most. I think they what culture they were allowed to express was definitely more African.

The truth is New Orleans, as a transatlantic slave port for slaves arriving from Africa, wasn't that large. Charleston, SC dwarfed it in that regard being many times larger. VA was also much larger, and even the northern atlantic imported more slaves from Africa than New Orleans

Trans-Atlantic slave trade among what are now US cities. These would have been Norfolk and Hampton in Virginia, and Annapolis and Baltimore in Maryland. Specifically, 210,477 slaves disembarked in the Carolinas and Georgia between 1626 and 1830; 127,668 disembarked in the Chesapeake area; 26,954 disembarked in the Northern U.S. at places like Boston, Newport, and New York; and 21,785 disembarked on the Gulf Coast, primarily at New Orleans.

What made the NO port infamous and was it's bread and butter was it's involvement with the DOMESTIC slave trade, in which it saw over 100,000 enslaved people pass through. So, it's no a stretch of the imagination to say the most of the people in Congo square were AA as apposed to people from Africa.

 

[Supper]

Also I find it strange the cultural practices alive and strong in New Orleans aren’t found in other parts of the country, for that matter Louisiana if it’s s predominant black Anglo/Protestant culture. You’re dismissing the catholic influences when New Orleans has black catholic dioceses and a strong black catholic population. We literally take off a week for Marci Gras and meals are prepared to coincide with the observation of lent.

The reason Mardi Gras is a big deal here is because it’s a predominant catholic culture



Oldest parish created by African-Americans celebrates 175 years




Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy

Mardi Gras is a big deal for people in Mobile, AL as well and their students also get a week off from school, and their Mardi Gras celebration is older than New Orleans'. Are they predominately black catholics or protestants? The truth is that New Orleans doesn't even make it in the top 22 most catholic cities(most likely due to it not having a large hispanic population).

And mardi gras culture in AL and LA technically doesn't originate with blacks, but Afro-Alabamans and Afro-Louisianas have a long history of conducting their own unique festivals and fusing their own cultures into it which are highly influential today. Similar to Rodeo culture in TX, it originates with Spaniards, but Afro-Texans have a long history holding our festivities that express our culture which has become highly influential overall it such as BBQ cookouts, trailrides, the bulldogging technique, and cowboy blues folk songs.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

.[/QUOTE]

The end of the clip pinpoints the creator of jim crow minstrels & I posted this vid about origins of those caricatures in Nov.
documentary "Origin of minstrels/jim crow stage caricatures"

My post didn't say that minstrel shows started in New Orleans. What I said was that those traveling shows were coming in and out of N.O. Congo Square made sure that white identified the Africans who had musical talent and these were the first musicians and bands of Africans in that town. As mentioned in the short clip and the doc. I posted, these plays traveled the entire country BEFORE and after the Civil War. Certainly before ragtime existed in published form.
The plays originating out of certain regions surely added elements of those AA cultures and exposed them to the rest of the country.

If these plays traveled across the entire country, I'd have to think that they had influence on music that developed later.

the minstrel material didn't influence those genres even though the minstrels pulled from the actual pre-formation sources of those same genres while making a parody form of it but my main point is the core genres of influence to jazz had no connection to congo square and were from a whole other region.

blues



ragtime



sacred music

 

[get these nets]

.[


the minstrel material didn't influence those genres even though the minstrels pulled from the actual pre-formation sources of those same genres while making a parody form of it but my main point is the core genres of influence to jazz had no connection to congo square and were from a whole other region.

blues



ragtime


sacred music

You're making the assumption that the music tradition started in Congo Square just vanished. That people in New Orleans weren't playing any music until jazz was formed by combining those elements you mentioned .
I think it's precisely because of the traditions continued after the gatherings at Congo square ended that New Orleans is the city most often linked to jazz being formed.

You think it's a coincidence that other places also had Africans from different regions of America and also blended music genres, but that jazz really popped off in New Orleans?
To what would you attribute it to?

 

[TNOT]

I think you misunderstood what I was saying in regards to Congo square. What I meant was the black slaves that came from other southern states which were Anglo/protestant brought their cultural norms at the time to new orleans thus influencing in a whole other direction.

I'm not disputing the reason it being banned because that's a fact of what you posted. Also I never

Mardi Gras is a big deal for people in Mobile, AL as well and their students also get a week off from school, and their Mardi Gras celebration is older than New Orleans'. Are they predominately black catholics or protestants? The truth is that New Orleans doesn't even make it in the top 22 most catholic cities(most likely due to it not having a large hispanic population).

And mardi gras culture in AL and LA technically doesn't originate with blacks, but Afro-Alabamans and Afro-Louisianas have a long history of conducting their own unique festivals and fusing their own cultures into it which are highly influential today. Similar to Rodeo culture in TX, it originates with Spaniards, but Afro-Texans have a long history holding our festivities that express our culture which has become highly influential overall it such as BBQ cookouts, trailrides, the bulldogging technique, and cowboy blues folk songs.

The nations only historical black private university is located in New Orleans. Xavier university.

The nations oldest black Catholic Church is New Orleans
There is a black diocese in New Orleans and three black catholic private high schools.

At least 20 black catholic parishes exist in a city with less than 400k people .

Why would these institutions exist in a small city if they don’t get or never had a large black perishiner base?

I’m sure New Orleans is highly ranked in terms of black catholic members per capita





New Orleans and southern Louisiana in general has a large black Catholic congregation.


I’ve been to mobile Mardi Gras in Mobile it’s not the same, no where close and I’m only commenting on black people traditions.

Mobile reminds me more of rural black Mardi Gras celebrations in southern Louisiana.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

You're making the assumption that the music tradition started in Congo Square just vanished. That people in New Orleans weren't playing any music until jazz was formed by combining those elements you mentioned .
I think it's precisely because of the traditions continued after the gatherings at Congo square ended that New Orleans is the city most often linked to jazz being formed.

jazz is basically blues on wind instruments



jazz was founded on blues tonality and harmony

A. Tone Colors



Jazz musicians play their instruments utilizing the complete gamut of tone colors (tonal quality) that their instruments will allow.


B. Emotional Expression



Unlike classical players who usually strive for a clear, “pure” tone, jazz players strive for a tone that is generally more “vocal” in nature, i.e., jazz musicians will bend pitches, “growl,” “whine,” play “raunchy,” “dark,” “light,” “airy,” “raspy,” “bluesy,” “throaty,” “nasally” (anything the human voice can do to express emotion and then some) in addition to playing clearly.

http://www.jazzinamerica.org/LessonPlan/11/2/158





and less rigid form of ragtime on piano. Even before Jazz was born, there was a more improvised style of ragtime outside of new orleans, that was played at cutting contests, similar to

You think it's a coincidence that other places also had Africans from different regions of America and also blended music genres, but that jazz really popped off in New Orleans?
To what would you attribute it to?

new orleans was the first to play blues on wind instruments was the difference

 

[get these nets]

The nations only historical black private university is located in New Orleans. Xavier university.

The nations oldest black Catholic Church is New Orleans
There is a black diocese in New Orleans and three black catholic private high schools.

At least 20 black catholic parishes exist in a city with less than 400k people .

Why would these institutions exist in a small city if they don’t get or never had a large black perishiner base?

I’m sure New Orleans is highly ranked in terms of black catholic members per capita





New Orleans and southern Louisiana in general has a large black Catholic congregation.


I’ve been to mobile Mardi Gras in Mobile it’s not the same, no where close and I’m only commenting on black people traditions.

Mobile reminds me more of rural black Mardi Gras celebrations in southern Louisiana.

That's right and is due to the colonial history (catholic Spain & catholic France)..and the infusion of people fleeing St. Domingue in the early 19th century.
SD was the center of colonial French power,culture,etc. New Orleans became the center of western hemisphere French life, even after France gave up dreams of dominating the hemisphere
These institutions still exist, Louisiana Creole culture still exists, and remnants of French culture are still alive in the region over 200 years after becoming part of Anglo Protestant America.

 

[Supper]

The nations only historical black private university is located in New Orleans. Xavier university.

The nations oldest black Catholic Church is New Orleans
There is a black diocese in New Orleans and three black catholic private high schools.

At least 20 black catholic parishes exist in a city with less than 400k people .

Why would these institutions exist in a small city if they don’t get or never had a large black perishiner base?

I’m sure New Orleans is highly ranked in terms of black catholic members per capita





New Orleans and southern Louisiana in general has a large black Catholic congregation.


I’ve been to mobile Mardi Gras in Mobile it’s not the same, no where close and I’m only commenting on black people traditions.

Mobile reminds me more of rural black Mardi Gras celebrations in southern Louisiana.

The point of contention wasn't if New Orleans had more black catholic representation than other cities, but was that if NO's black francophone/catholic CULTURAL representation was more significant than it's black anglo/protestant CULTURAL representation. Which is arguable seeing as there are AAs in louisiana with francophone background that are protestants and those of anglophone background with are catholic.

I'd say it's more likely that the black anglophone cultural representation is more significant in New Orleans than the black francophone cultural representation, especially in music. But, whether or not black catholic culture is more significant than black protestant culture is debatable. Mardi gras is catholic in origin, but it didn't come from blacks. Jazz funerals did come from blacks and are protestant in origin. Not to mention the influence of gospel music which comes from black protestants outside of louisiana which New Orleans black catholics play today thanks to the influence of zion travelers.
Gospel Train: The Zion Travelers Spiritual Singers

During this time, most people who took part in these funerals preferred the term "funerals with jazz" instead of "Jazz Funeral", because they felt as if the latter title implied that the focus of the tradition was on the music, not the deceased. Yet, as brass funk started to become more popular, participants in the tradition began to warm up to the title of Jazz Funeral. However, many people during the mid-20th century still frowned on the use of this type of secular music during funerals, especially the Catholic church. The church felt as if this type of music disrespected the practice, so for a large amount of time the only people who typically performed these funerals were black protestants in New Orleans. During the 60s, this started to change along with the rest of the country due to civil rights and other prominent movements.

It's Not Just Tomatoes: Jazz Funerals: The Mourning of Death, the Celebration of Life

The pianist pounds the keys to a ragtime beat as the choir members, dressed in white, hit the center isle, clapping and singing.

″Here I am in the service one more time,″ the choir sings as worshipers pick up the beat and join in.

″Yes Lord, here I am,″ shouts an elderly woman as ″Amen 3/8″ resounds throughout the church.

The scene varies little from that at the black Baptist church around the corner. But this is the 10:30 Gospel Mass at St. Monica Catholic Church.

The priest and the congregation are mindful of a controversy in Washington, D.C., where the Rev. George Stallings Jr. has accused the Catholic Church of failing its parishioners.

″If they could be with us today, all those people worrying about what’s going on in Washington would know we’ve already united our heritage and our faith,″ the Rev. Thaddeus C. Boucree tells the St. Monica congregation.

Stallings wants to form an African-American Catholic Rite, which he says would still be part of the Catholic Church. He was suspended by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington after holding services with what he says is a brand of Catholicism that better serves blacks.

But in New Orleans, several mostly black Catholic churches have already adapted the Mass to fit their style of worship, combining gospel music and revival-style preaching with the traditional Catholic liturgy.

Black New Orleans Catholics Already Incorporate Culture Into Worship

Black catholics in New Orleans are heavily influenced by southern AA baptist traditions. Nothing "french" about them.

 

[TNOT]

The point of contention wasn't if New Orleans had more black catholic representation than other cities, but was that if NO's black francophone/catholic CULTURAL representation was more significant than it's black anglo/protestant CULTURAL representation. Which is arguable seeing as there are AAs in louisiana with francophone background that are protestants and those of anglophone background with are catholic.



Peoples Culuture is driven by religious beliefs. A city with a large black catholic population is influenced by that religion and its adapted practices.

Free peoples of color in early New Orleans (many who came from Haiti) practiced catholism, hence the creation of St. Augustine. Slaves no matter where they came from did not live in the city they lived predominantly in plantations outside of what is considered the city during those times



If New Orleans had more Protestant cultural influences, then the expressions of that culture would be more similar to African Americans in other states. I believe it’s not. I believe the uniqueness of New Orleans is due to the influences of several different cultures, with each culture exerting influence at different parts of the city’s history.