A Brief History of Jazz for Beginners. New Orleans

The year 1917 became a turning point all over the world and to some extent epochal. If for Russian Empire he was marked revolutionary events, then in France, Felix d'Herelle discovered a bacteriophage, and in New York, the first revolutionary jazz record was recorded at the Victor recording studio. It was New Orleans jazz, although the performers were white musicians who had heard and passionately loved "black music" since childhood. Their record Original Dixieland Jazz Band quickly spread to prestigious and expensive restaurants. In a word, New Orleans jazz, coming from the bottom, conquered high society and gradually came to be considered the music of the elite. However, it is considered as such to this day.

This musical genre was formed on the basis of the melodies of black slaves who were forcibly brought to the American continent to serve the white planters. Therefore, for a long time, jazz music was considered the music of an inferior race. Even after she gained popularity in white American society, in Nazi Germany, for example, it was banned because it was considered a conductor of the Negro-Jewish dissonant cacophony. In the USSR, it was also banned for a long time, since the "top" believed that it was an apologist for the way of bourgeois life, as well as an agent-guide of imperialism.

Traditional jazz can rightly be called revolutionary music, because this style is a "fighter" in its own way. No musical genre has seen so many obstacles and obstacles on the way of its formation. Jazz performers were constantly fighting for the right to exist, for their place under the sun. At first, they did not have the opportunity to perform in front of wide audiences, they were not provided with large concert venues and stadiums. However, this has one, and maybe more advantages. There are no fans of this music random people. True amateurs have accepted jazz as a way of thinking and living in general. Jazz is improvisation, it's freedom! A person with a limited outlook, with standard ideas about life, cannot understand what New Orleans jazz is. Its features lie precisely in the fact that it has its own specific listener. These are always bright, intellectual and spiritually rich people who appreciate quality and meaningful music.

This musical style originated at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, as a result of the merger of African and European music. Slaves brought to the American continent from Africa were converted to Christianity by missionary priests and taught them to sing church hymns. And they mixed them with their religious songs "spirituals". This musical cocktail also included blues motifs that were widespread in all parts of the New World. For accompaniment, in addition to drums, they also used wind instruments and homemade harmonicas. This music gradually won the sympathy of the white musicians of New Orleans, and as a result of all this, as already noted, in 1917 the first gramophone record with jazz music was made.

This period in the history of music was called the 20s of the 20th century. Even the writers of this period are now called "New Orleans Jazz" writers. And Francis Scott Fitzgerald is one of them. Nevertheless, during this period, it was not New Orleans that was considered the capital of jazz, but Kansas City. Here it spread with incredible speed, and this was facilitated by numerous restaurants and cafes, where jazz music sounded in the evenings. It so happened that gangsters and mafiosi, who liked to spend evenings in restaurants, became its main listeners. Stages and orchestra pits began to appear in many of them, in which a jazz group consisting of a keyboardist, drummer, brass musicians and vocalists arranged. Most of them played blues, and not only slow, classical, but also fast. Then many of the musicians decided to try their luck and went to big cities - Chicago and New York. There were more restaurants and more spectators.

There lived a black boy named Charlie Parker in Kansas. In the evenings he liked to walk open windows restaurants and eateries and listened to the music coming from them. Then he whistled under his breath for days on end and hummed his favorite tunes. Years later, it was he who became the reformer of jazz music. Meanwhile, a magnificent black musician appeared on the east coast - a trumpeter, keyboardist and vocalist. His name was Louis Armstrong. He had an unusual timbre of voice, besides, he accompanied himself. He constantly toured between Chicago and New York and considered himself the successor to the great New Orleans trumpet player King Oliver. Soon another jazzman from the cradle of the genre arrived at the Big Apple - Jelly Roll Morton. He played the piano virtuoso, and also had amazing vocals. On all posters, he demanded that it be written that he was the founder of jazz. Many thought so. Meanwhile, in New York, Fletcher Henderson created a wonderful orchestra. Following this, another one was formed, which was no less popular. Its leader was the young pianist Duke Ellington. He began to call his orchestra a big band.

In the thirties, New Orleans jazz was reshaped into a new musical style - swing. And it began to be performed by big bands, among which Duke Ellinton's orchestra stood out in particular. This musical group consisted of virtuoso musicians - masters of improvisation. Each concert was different from the next. There were complex scores, roll calls, rhythmic phrases, repetitions, and so on. Appeared in orchestras new position- an arranger who wrote orchestrations, which became the key to the success of the entire big band. However, the main emphasis was still placed on the improviser, who could be a keyboardist, a saxophonist, and a trumpeter. The only thing, he had to observe a clear number of "squares". The orchestra included such musicians as Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, Ben Webster, clarinetist Barney Bigard and others. Nevertheless, the "world's most swing" rhythm section was pianist Basie, drummer Joe Jones, double bassist Walter Page and guitarist Freddie Green.

Closer to the 1940s, the orchestra became popular among fans of jazz music. Connoisseurs immediately noticed a certain feature that distinguished this big band from others. Some characteristic "crystal sound" was heard in his works, besides, it was felt that the orchestra had an incredibly successful arrangement. However, the rhythms of New Orleans jazz were no longer felt in their music. It was something special, but very far from Negro music.

With the outbreak of World War II, instead of serious music, "entertainment" began to flourish. This meant that the swing era was over. Jazz musicians were discouraged, it seemed to them that they had lost their positions forever and that their music could never again have the same success as in the dashing 30s. However, they were wrong, because jazz lovers were and are in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. True, today this style is not mass-produced, but is the music of the elite all over the world.

1917-1923 Difficulty of identification early jazz

Getting to the roots of jazz is not easy. The first recording of jazz music performed by the "Original Dixieland Jazz Band" was made in 1917. Moreover, there are still disputes about whether the music recorded on this disc can be considered typical jazz, whether Negro or other white musicians in New Orleans played in those years. In the period between 1900 and 1920, jazz, and especially its rhythmic variety, later called "swing", developed so rapidly that often the musicians of the same ensemble proceeded in their playing from completely different different views about rhythm, used various forms of rhythmic organization of the melody, and the gap in the time of appearance of these forms sometimes reached ten or more years. When they started making the first records, jazz, as a kind musical art, has not yet been finally formed, and it was impossible to say about any of its currents: here it is, typical jazz. Later, a group of New Orleans musicians migrated to the North, where their records soon began to be released. By 1923 there were enough records to be able to define with more or less certainty what New Orleans Jazz was.

1910 Early New Orleans bands, instrumentation

One of the varieties of New Orleans orchestras were ensembles, which by about 1910 had already become real jazz bands. We can judge their playing from early jazz records that have come down to us. They were mostly dance bands that performed at dance venues such as the Funky Butt and occasionally at picnics and parties. By 1910, and perhaps even earlier, the permanent composition of these orchestras was determined. As a rule, they consisted of a cornet, a clarinet, a valve trombone or a trombone with a backstage, a guitar, a double bass, drums and violins 1 . The violin often played the lead part with the cornet, but most often the violinists were included mainly because most of them knew musical notation could learn new melodies themselves and teach others. Sometimes these orchestras included a pianist or guitarist, but since they often had to perform at picnics and dance halls where there was no piano, the supporting rhythm chords were played mainly by double bass and guitar. “Buddy” Bolden and “Bank” Johnson, and many other jazz pioneers played in such ensembles for most of their lives.

1 Contrary to popular belief, during the early days of jazz, the banjo and tuba (brass double bass) were not included in jazz orchestras. But they had double basses and guitars, as Armstrong himself spoke about in one of his interviews. Photographs of twelve early jazz bands testify to the same. You will not see a tuba on them, however, there is one banjo. After the First World War, both of these instruments became very fashionable and were widely used in jazz and dance ensembles. - Note. author.

1910 Dixieland

Jazz bands played all sorts of music, including the blues, but they did not occupy such a prominent place in their repertoire as in the repertoire of orchestras that performed to bar patrons with "rough" music. In addition to the blues, jazz bands played simplistic reg arrangements, various fashion pieces, plantation songs, and other tunes. It was these orchestras that were the first to start performing music in a style that later became known as Dixieland. The very first recordings of Dixieland, which became a kind of standard of this style, were made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Among them are such plays as "Tiger Rag", "High Society", "Original Dixieland One-Step", "Panama", "Clarinet Marmalade" and others.

1915 Jazz to Armstrong - on the way from reg to swing

When Keppard's records appeared in 1923, New Orleans musicians who had heard him play ten years earlier were amazed at how much his skill level had declined. Keppard was a heavy drinker, but I suspect that this is not the reason for the negative impression of the records. It's just that compared to Armstrong and other young jazzmen who used more and more complex rhythmic patterns, Keppard's playing began to look old-fashioned. Later New Orleans white cornetist Johnny Wiggs (John Wigenton Hyman) recalled that, compared to the "hot" playing of Oliver, whom he heard in his youth at the Tulane University dance, Keppard's playing style and cornetist Nick La Rocca, lead player of the "Original Dixieland Jazz Band”, seemed to him rustic and naive. This impression was formed because Keppard and La Rocca did not go beyond the rigid, formalized rhythm of ragtime. They were kind of halfway between reg and jazz with its free, springy rhythms, but, as the records show, closer to improved ragtime than to jazz. And only the musicians of the younger generation had overcome by that time or were beginning to overcome the schematism of the rhythmic constructions of the reg.

It can be guessed that the first jazzmen, played by Armstrong in 1916 and later, did not yet know the real swing with its free “swing” of the melody, such as it became ten years later. In those years swing was based mainly on evenly pulsing quarter notes rather than eighth notes. In ragtime, in its, so to speak, pure form, very important role was assigned to the drums, which alternately beat off either quarter-notes or equal pairs of eighth notes. Such a manner of performance did not even give the boom-chik effect, which is so characteristic of jazz. Double basses accentuated only the first and third beats. Thus, musicians were just beginning to grope for ways to create truly jazz music.

1917 new orleans jazz comes to New York

In early 1917, an invitation to work at the famous New York restaurant and ballroom "Reisenuebers", located at the intersection of 58th Street and 8th Avenue, followed.

In two or three weeks, the ensemble of New Orleans musicians conquered all of New York. The engagements followed one after another. The popularity of the ensemble led to the appearance of the first jazz records. During this period La Rocca, trombonist Eddie "Daddy" Edwards, clarinetist Larry Shields, pianist Henry Ragas and drummer Tony Sbarbaro played in the ensemble. The circulation of their first record, which we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, exceeded one million copies - a figure unheard of at that time. Such success can be partly explained by the fact that in the recording of "Livery Stable Blues" the musicians managed to accurately imitate the sounds barnyard. In subsequent years, the ensemble recorded about a dozen records and made a tour of England. Over time, it acquired an increasingly commercial character and broke up in the mid-20s. In 1936, they tried to revive the ensemble again, but since it was not successful with the public, nothing came of this venture.

In short, the music of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band lies somewhere in between jazz and its predecessors and seems to be more typical of the hot music of the 10s than of the jazz of Oliver, Morton and Bechet of the 20s. .

The artistic merits of this music are debatable, but its influence on contemporaries is undeniable. Jazz quickly gained popularity and became a profitable commercial product. In the five years since the release of Livery Stable Blues, thousands of young aspiring performers, captured by the new music, have created hundreds of ensembles - mostly weak ones that had nothing to do with jazz.

1928 Cornet and trumpet

During this period, Armstrong switched from cornet to trumpet. Only a very attentive listener can notice the difference in the sound of these two instruments, due to a slight difference in body construction. If the cornet has one third of the body straight, and the rest has a conical shape or, gradually expanding, turns into a bell, then the straight and conical parts of the pipe are equal. For comparison, we note that the body of the horn, which has a somewhat muffled sound, should at least theoretically have the shape of an ideal cone. The cornet sounds softer, more velvety than the trumpet, but the trumpet is famous for the power of sound, bright and light timbre. In principle, the difference between the two instruments is not so great, and the choice of one or the other by the performer remains largely a matter of taste. The playing technique is the same on both, although they have slightly different mouthpieces, and therefore most musicians avoid changing one instrument for another during the evening.

Traditionally, the cornet has always been part of the marching bands, and New Orleans musicians have always used it extensively. Many of them treated the trumpet with a certain apprehension, believing that playing it required more virtuosic technique. Apparently, this is why Armstrong hesitated to switch from cornet to trumpet for so long. He himself gave various reasons for this eventual transition, but most likely he parted ways with the cornet on the advice of bandleader Erskine Tate. His brother James was a trumpeter in the same ensemble, and Erskine felt that the brass group would sound much more harmonious if Louis, like James, played the trumpet. Armstrong recalls: “He [Erskin. - Transl.] believed that the cornet was not so “hot” against the pipes. I listened, what's the difference ... Those sounded juicy, rich. Then I listened to the cornetists - for sure, it didn’t turn out as great as the trumpet” 1 .

Non-Improvisational Collective Music of the Oliver Orchestra

Later, an ensemble of New Orleans musicians led by King Oliver made a number of recordings. As a result, we have excellent examples of early jazz music. What can be considered his most characteristic features? First of all, it is ensemble music. Interestingly, some recordings have no solo at all, except for a few short breaks, and it is very rare that the duration of the solo exceeds a quarter of the entire recording. For the most part, all seven or eight musicians play together, and it is simply amazing that not only do we not feel chaos, but, on the contrary, the playing of the orchestra sounds extremely harmonious. This is the merit of the stubborn and determined Oliver. As Lil Hardin recalls, she was told from the very beginning to play strong, powerful chords, and every time she tried to play right hand fluent passages, Oliver, leaning towards her, growled angrily: “We have a clarinet in the orchestra without you!” Joe "King" Oliver was a real leader and knew what he wanted from the musicians. And he wanted each performer to correctly understand his task and strictly fulfill it.

The ensemble led by Oliver rarely improvised. Later, jazz did become a music based on improvisation, but this style of playing was uncharacteristic of the New Orleans jazz pioneers. Having picked up an arrangement that satisfied them, they did not consider it necessary to change anything in the future. The mere fact that each instrument of the orchestra had to play a strictly defined role limited the possibility of any innovations. Oliver's cornet played a simple, austere theme, often with pauses that other instruments filled in. The clarinet matched the harmony to the main melodic line. The trombone supported the musical whole with its glissando or very simple figures played in the lower register. The rhythm group provided a crisp, unadorned groundbeat. Four pieces were recorded twice at the studios of two different companies and in all four cases they turned out to be very similar to each other, including solos, although they were made with an interval of two or three months. In a word, it was a disciplined orchestra, and it could not be otherwise: the musical fabric was so dense that the deviation of any instrument from a given course could destroy the entire structure of the piece.

The well-coordinated game of all musicians - that was the main thing for Oliver. Solos were not played often. The musicians of the rhythm group especially rarely soloed, and besides, their solos were usually short. Somewhat more freedom was given to the clarinet, but Dodds did not solo in every recording. Further specific feature jazz became the predominance of solos of individual instruments, and the loss of the ensemble as a whole, as it were, interrupted the pace between individual solo numbers. With Oliver, it was the opposite: the solo served as a piquant seasoning for the playing of the entire orchestra.

In on Nov 28, 2011 |

New Orleans jazz is the founder of all subsequent jazz movements. It is also called traditional jazz. Initially, it was just a mixture of spirituals and ragtime (archaic jazz) and was not yet an independent musical direction. But over time, elements of the songs of black workers, blues melodies began to appear in it, and now, in the time interval between 1900 and 1917. there was a formation of a completely new direction - jazz, which combined the African style of performance, complemented by European harmonious melody.

The reason that jazz originated in New Orleans was the spirit of liberalism that reigned in this city. African-American folklore traditions were kept here; the holidays were accompanied by ritual dances of the Voodoo cult and the characteristic rhythmic music of drum orchestras. Over time, along with the ritual elements that are classical for Africans, features of European mysteries appear.

The main population of New Orleans was made up of blacks, whites and Creoles. As the level of economic development gradually rose, life in this city was distinguished by cheerful ease. This was also facilitated by the peculiarities of religious worldviews and the attitude of these people to life in general. So, in addition to carnival performances, any event was accompanied by music and dances, whether it was a funeral, a holiday, political events and even weddings. Oh, I remember in the Soviet Union, when I got married, it was not possible to film a wedding on camera, of course there were photographers, but I would like a video. Now in the century modern technologies everything is possible, even reportage shooting. In general, get married, record the wedding, and then watch with your grandchildren, remember. As mentioned above, initially there was the so-called archaic jazz, which was performed by “spasm bands”. But a little later, these bands were replaced by ensembles, the musical performance of which had its own personality traits. It was these ensembles that were called “combo orchestras”, and later became the founders of such musical direction like classic New Orleans jazz.

Its characteristic features include improvisation and virtuoso performance. solo parts. Jazz cannot be described - it must be listened to. The first documented and classic examples of New Orleans jazz include the recordings of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Their composition "Livery Stable Blues" is considered the first recording in the history of jazz and belongs, oddly enough, to white musicians. Naturally, black musicians began to play this jazz much earlier, but, unfortunately, due to the lack of the opportunity to record their music on physical media, we cannot hear their performances.

Buddy Bolden, Emmanuel Peretz, Tony Jackson, Clarence Williams, Oscar Celestin are rightfully considered to be prominent representatives of the New Orleans jazz style. Unfortunately, there are no recordings of these performers. But then their worthy followers have them, such as: Louis Armstrong (“A kiss to build a dream on”), Kid Ory (“Weary Blues”), Joe “King” Oliver (“Someday Sweetheart”, “Dead Man Blues ”, “West End Blues”), Kid Rena, Sydney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton (“Hot Peppers”).

But still. What is jazz and where did it first appear?

Jazz did not appear overnight, it was not invented by any one genius. It is a product of the collective and continuous creativity of many generations of people, the search for new ideas and borrowings from many cultures. Jazz has grown and developed in many different places in the US. The black population performing such music lived in many American cities: in Atlanta and Baltimore, in Kansas City and St. Louis, which was the center of ragtime, and in Memphis lived William Christopher Handy - "the father of the blues".

Some historians believe that it was New Orleans that became the cradle of jazz, the city was the ideal place for the birth of jazz music, because there was a unique, open and free social atmosphere.

Also in early XIX V. the port of New Orleans (Louisiana), located in the Mississippi Delta, until 1803 belonged to Napoleonic France and was famous for its democratic traditions, gathered people from different countries and strata of society. People flocked to New Orleans in search of better share and a comfortable life. The new lands also attracted restless adventurers, adventurers and gamblers, exiles and fugitives. They were people of different nationalities: French, Spaniards, Germans, British, Irish, Indians, Chinese, Greeks, Italians, Africans. New Orleans was the most multiethnic and most musical city in the New World. It was a port city, where ships arrived with slaves brought from the western and northern coasts of Africa. New Orleans was the main center of the slave trade, there were the largest slave markets in the United States. It is the descendants of people who were considered a "living commodity" who will create the most American of all arts - jazz. One of the passionate admirers of jazz, famous actor and film director Clint Eastwood once remarked that the Americans really enriched world culture two things - western and jazz.

The whole idea of ​​improvisation, which is the essence of jazz, is inextricably linked to the life of American slaves who had to learn to survive in difficult conditions. But the main dream of black Americans has always been freedom! American writer Early said that the essence of jazz is freedom! This music speaks of liberation. Of course, there were plenty of other peoples in the United States of America, those who were treated very cruelly and unfairly. But only black Americans were slaves, only they have a historical consciousness of what it means to be not free in a free country.

White slave owners did not encourage amateur musical creativity slaves, but they understood that if the "living product" is not given at least a sip fresh air, he can die or rise. In 1817 New Orleans slaves were allowed to assemble once a week, on Sundays, in Congo Square and sing and dance. White New Orleans sometimes came there to watch black Americans sing and dance to the sound of drums. In the work of African-American slaves, the features of their national cultures were traced. The infectious rhythms of Caribbean tunes were heard in the music of slaves brought from the West Indies. Work songs from cotton plantations, rice fields, and tobacco fields were sung by slaves brought from the heart of the American South, and slaves from the American North sang spirituals with the resporic form characteristic of the sermons of Baptist churches.

In New Orleans, despite the "Black Code" (1724), which forbade intermarriage between whites and coloreds, national and racial mixing gradually occurred. Community lived in the city free people who called themselves colored creoles. They were lighter-skinned than African blacks, descendants of European colonists and their dark-skinned wives and mistresses. The Creoles, among whom were even slave owners and simply wealthy people, considered themselves the heirs of the European musical culture and were proud of it. Creoles played a positive role in the cultural life of New Orleans. The French and Creoles created an opera house in the city, several symphony orchestras, social clubs. Repertoire opera house composed works by French and Italian composers. Minstrel music also played in New Orleans theaters. The show traveled all over America and looked, of course, to New Orleans.

In the second half of the XIX century. in New Orleans, citizens of all colors adored listening to the numerous semi-symphony and outdoor orchestras. Brass bands were especially popular. And there were plenty of occasions on the streets of New Orleans: weddings, funerals, church holidays. And every spring - Mardi Gras (i.e. "Fat Tuesday"), fun party, which was held before Lent as a grand colorful carnival with parades, demonstrations, picnics, concerts. All this action was accompanied by the music of marching brass bands.

Clarence Williams (1898-1965), pianist, singer, composer, music publisher, recalled: “Yes, New Orleans has always been a very musical city. During the big Mardi Gras holidays and at Christmas, all the houses were open and there was dancing everywhere. Every house was open to you, and you could enter at any door, eat, drink and join the company there.

Already in the XVIII century. Monasteries of the Capuchin and Jesuit orders arose in New Orleans. The Roman Catholic Church created the conditions for some rapprochement of the races, the gradual interpenetration of their cultural traditions. The city that distinguished ethnic diversity, was in a sense a romantic and musical city. Life was open here, as often happens in southern cities. A variety of people could live in one block in the neighborhood, with their own habits and national characteristics. Music for city dwellers environment, which accompanied all events, all his life, representing a fusion of Italian, French, Spanish, English and African musical cultures.

The city could not do without another New Orleans tradition - passion and vice. The gamblers and venal lovers who lived in Storyville contributed to the prosperity of gambling and brothels, designed to suit all tastes and budgets. Cabarets, saloons, dance halls, barrelhouses and "honky-tonks" - small taverns and taverns worked around the clock. The clients of such low-class and disreputable places of entertainment were mainly poor African Americans, declassed elements and other motley public. And there was music in every place.

And next to it is frenzied piety and the cult of voodoo with its rituals: honoring the spirits of ancestors, sacrifices, “zombie powder”, magic and ritual dances brought by black slaves from Haiti. ritual dances Voodoo was performed in the legendary Congo Square and in front of the city gates until 1900. New Orleans could be considered the center of witchcraft and magic. She lived here in the second half of the 19th century. and the most famous voodoo queen, Marie Laveau. And all this was mixed in such a multi-layered city, where people were forced to understand each other and interact with each other if they were neighbors.

On January 26, 1861, the state of Louisiana, in which New Orleans was located, broke away from the Union as a result of the war between the North and the South. The American Civil War did not bring anything good to the Southerners. However, fifteen months later, the allied fleet entered the harbor of New Orleans, and the city was forced to capitulate. Black residents southern city, where slavery took the most cruel and sophisticated forms in those years, this occupation brought the long-awaited freedom that the slaves dreamed of. The appearance of jazz was a kind of burst of creative energy of the oppressed people and became possible only after the abolition of slavery (1863). This music was born in the minds of people who were not previously perceived by society as full-fledged Americans, although they did not become less Americans because they lived in this country.

For twelve years after the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865), during the Reconstruction era, the northerners ensured the enforcement of order in the South of the country. But in 1877, after a behind-the-scenes deal between the Republicans of the North and the Democrats of the South, federal troops were withdrawn from the American South. Without the support of the army, the era of Reconstruction was completed. And although slavery was officially abolished, the "white masters of life" everywhere imposed power with an "iron fist". (It should be noted that white supremacy in the United States will continue to spread over the next hundred years.) The ranks of the Ku Klux Klan (an organization of ultra-right terrorist nationalist organizations of whites that defend the ideas of white superiority over blacks and immigrants with extremist methods), lynching courts ( murder of a person suspected of a crime or violation social customs, without trial and without investigation) have become commonplace. Segregation (division of the population by skin color, a kind of racism) has become the law of life; and some wit called the system "the law of Jim Crow" (after the name of the first minstrel show "Daddy Rice"). New Orleans, proud of its cosmopolitanism and democracy, resisted this system for a while, but then was forced to surrender, although music life did not disappear in the city.

At the end of the XIX century. New Orleans was introduced to two new musical genres without which jazz wouldn't exist. These were ragtime And blues. Ragtime, incorporating folkloric African and European musical elements, was the first piano genre of African American music to be embodied in a concert form, from which the history of jazz begins. It has been played by pianists in the cities of the American Midwest since about the 1870s, where most of the creators of this music lived. Ragtime became widespread in the cities of Kansas City, Chicago, Buffalo, New York, Omaha and, of course, New Orleans. Ragtime music unified everything that came before:

• spiritual;
• plantation dance- keykuok (the evolution of this dance ended with two-step and foxtrot, which were subsequently popular);
• minstrel songs;
• European folk tunes;
• military marches.

The transformed music of quadrilles, gavottes, waltzes, polkas was controlled by a fresh, insistent, syncopated, "ragged rhythm". Origin of the word ragtime is still unclear; perhaps it comes from English, ragged time- "torn time". In fact, almost all syncopated music XIX- beginning of XX century. before the term jazz was called ragtime.

For the next twenty-five years, ragtime, distributed throughout America, will be the most popular music, which had its own specific coloring in each locality, its own regional styles. The performers of this lively, assertive and reckless music introduced the whole country to it. Young people loved dancing to ragtime, but older generation this style of music did not favor. Puritans, overly strict in the rules of conduct, compared the passion for ragtime with the next stage of the decay of society. Time itself gave the answer. Around 1917, ragtime began to fade away, unable to withstand its own popularity, including because of the complexity of the music itself and the difficulty of its performance: without good musical training, ragtime cannot be played. Performed in the late XIX - early XX century. African American brass bands and ragtime dance bands, ragtime subsequently found its rightful place in orchestral jazz, and the name served musical characteristic such orchestras as: Buddy Bolden's Ragtime Band.

One of the most prominent representatives ragtime was the Negro pianist and composer Scott Joplin (1868-1917). He composed about six hundred ragtimes, among which the most famous are Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer, Original Rags, published in 1899 by John Stark. Ragtime flourished in the 1890s and 1910s. The spread of this music was facilitated, in addition to live performance and printed publications ragtime, cardboard perforated cylinders used in mechanical pianos - player rolls (Eng. player rolls). Priceless evidence of the music of that period has come down to us. In the middle of the XX century. the cylinders were restored, and the ragtimes recorded on them were rewritten on long-playing vinyl records, so that Joplin's music can still be heard today. In Europe, the audience got acquainted with ragtime at the beginning of the 20th century. thanks to the brass bands. Later, ragtime was reflected even in the work of composers of academic music - C. Debussy, I. Stravinsky, P. Hindemith, D. Milhaud and others.

At the end of the XIX century. New Orleans first heard blues. Refugees, former slaves from the plantations, poured into New Orleans from the countryside in an inexhaustible stream. They fled the Mississippi Delta from lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and hard labor on the cotton and cane plantations. The blues was part of their baggage, a musical expression of a special worldview associated with the manifestation of the self-consciousness of blacks, their love of freedom and protest against social injustice. Black Americans have been around since the late 1860s. in their work, they wanted to free themselves from the fetters of the aesthetics of minstrels, in the show of which African Americans appeared before the audience as people endowed with negative human qualities. As a result of this peculiar musical protest-search, a popular secular form of singing arose, very flexible, plastic, malleable and simple - the blues. The roots of the blues lie deep in Negro folklore. Word blues

comes from English blue devils- "dreary devils", and in a figurative sense - "when cats scratch at the soul." To shine in the blues, it is not enough just to perform the technique, you need to reinforce the technique with mood, feeling. The blues was secular music African Americans, but he can be considered the "unholy brother" of sacred music christian church. It was built on the same techniques of the antiphon (the questions of the preacher and the answers of the flock). But if in church music man turned to God, then in the blues a desperate man turned to the oppressor on earth. The blues performer seems to expel sadness and melancholy from himself. Blues lyrics reflecting some kind of life conflict can be tragic, realistic and revealing, but blues music is always cleansing. Blues is the most distinctive phenomenon of Negro musical culture.

In New Orleans, black musicians transcribed blues melodies to wind instruments that were found in shops and junk shops at every turn. Trumpets, cornets, trombones are still left over from brass bands from the time of the Civil War of the North and South. Previously, in military marching bands (brass bands), which consisted of white musicians, the instruments sounded piercing: the sound was direct, sharp, abrupt, powerful, capable of accompanying any processions. And among the New Orleans colored musicians, due to insufficient technique and a minimum of professional education, the instruments sounded differently: the sound began to vibrate at the end of the note, imitating choir singing in the church or singing blues artists. And such music already expressed completely different feelings, it had a different power over the listener! And although the music was quite primitive, but there was a play on the melody, embellishment (a kind of prototype of improvisation). She combined the spiritual, sublime and, at the same time, the secular sound of music. busy life New Orleans gave the opportunity to Negro brass bands to perform daily, since all social events in the city were accompanied by music.

Leading instrument in the New Orleans brass band of the late 19th century. there was a trumpet or a cornet. The composition also included trombone and clarinet. The rhythm group consisted of a banjo or guitar, tuba, drums and cymbals, and there were six or seven musicians in total. It was in such orchestras that jazz was born. What did the New Orleans Orchestra sound like? The musicians of the front line of the orchestra played a certain theme, then improvised in turn or in a group, a kind of polyphony (polyphony) arose, which imitated the three-voice counterpoint characteristic of the traditional New Orleans style. It was the fundamental, first style of the classical (or archaic) period of jazz history.

• Cit. by: Shapiro N. Listen to what I will tell you. The story of jazz as told by the people who made it. S. 14.

NEW ORLEANS (NEW ORLEANS) STYLE (eng. New Orleans style), a style that developed by the end of the 19th century, until some time was considered historically the first jazz style, and the American city of New Orleans in Louisiana was the cradle of jazz. It has been established, however, that regardless of New Orleans, from about mid-nineteenth century in various cities of the South and Midwest of the United States (Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas and others), music related to jazz existed and developed. The legend of New Orleans has not lost its meaning, but acquired a different meaning: this city was called not the homeland, but the capital of early jazz, although the concept of "New Orleans style" is still often used as a synonym for all traditional jazz in its original forms.

In a stricter sense, the term "New Orleans style" is usually referred to the distinctive improvisational Negro jazz of New Orleans, in contrast to the Euro-American type of jazz music that arose in imitation of it, known as "Dixieland". Researchers also distinguish between archaic and classical styles of traditional jazz, presented both in New Orleans and in its other local varieties.

Archaic New Orleans jazz, according to historians, existed approximately from the middle to the beginning of the 90s of the 19th century. Forms of existence, syncretism and ethnic identity indicate its belonging to African-American folklore (hence another name for it - "folk jazz"), but it also has tendencies characteristic of more mature forms of music-making: the growth of professionalism, the gradual liberation from applied functions and turning into music for listening (an element of concert performance), the transition from traditional song genres with primitive instrumental accompaniment to more developed instrumental-ensemble, and then orchestral genres. Its other features: the use of a variety of metro-rhythmic techniques (a combination of polyrhythm and cross-rhythm techniques with a stable main metric pulsation); intense syncopation (see Syncopation); elastic and elastic pushing beat (literally bouncing, pushing bit); drive (assertive and aspiring type of movement, creating the illusion of a constant acceleration of the pace); the presence of an independent rhythm group; collective improvisation, etc. Melodic deployment was based on the principle of strophic variation; characteristic of classical style there was no responsor (question-answer) interaction of the ensemble's voices; polyphony of a heterophonic rather than a purely polyphonic type prevailed. Harmony in the European sense has not yet been fully mastered; the composition of the ensemble did not differ in constancy, the instruments and instrumental groups did not have certain functions.

The process of formation of the archaic style is closely connected with some social conditions, primarily with the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the abolition of slavery in the southern states. From rural areas, Negroes began to move to cities, where the remnants of slavery were quickly erased. Favorable cultural environment, variety national traditions and genres of urban art also played an important role, as did the opportunity that opened up for blacks to make music their profession. An important incentive was the fact that after the dissolution of military bands, the domestic market received in large numbers wind and percussion musical instruments, sold at quite affordable price. It is therefore natural that the first orchestras of archaic jazz were predominantly wind orchestras. They took part in holidays, carnivals, street processions and even in church services, performing spirituals. They were created on the model of military "marching bands", as well as partly Creole salon orchestras (society orchestras) and performed a similar repertoire (marches, ragtimes, popular song melodies, everyday dances), but, of course, in a typically Negro syncopated manner, in an improvisational spirit . Archaic jazz arose as an imitation of European brass music by Negroes, but subsequently became an object of imitation itself. There are no authentic samples of archaic "marching jazz" (marching band jazz, street band jazz).

The classical New Orleans style period (circa 1890-1928) began with the transition of Negro folk music to urban dances and entertainment venues, i.e. in connection with its "socialization". The composition of orchestras expanded, as it became possible to use instruments that could not be used in the "marching bands" of archaic jazz (piano, double bass, banjo, guitar, complex drum kit). Instrumental groups were finally formed - rhythmic (banjo, brass or string bass, drums and piano) and melodic (cornet or trumpet, clarinet and trombone); the functions of solo and ensemble, as well as the role of improvisation and arrangement, were determined; the responsor technique (see responsor singing) has been widely used, dating back to the blues and work song traditions. Established new type polyphony (improvisational polyphony on a monometric basis), the principles of modal organization in harmony and rhythm became more complicated, the role of solo improvisation increased while maintaining the primacy of collective music-making. The types of fractional pulsation became more diverse (the regular accentuation of each beat of the bar was replaced by a paired alternation of strong and weak accents, first with strong accents on the 1st and 3rd beats of the four-quarter bar, later on the 2nd and 4th). The arsenal of techniques for creating metro-rhythmic conflict, polyrhythm and syncopation has been replenished; the performing repertoire has been enriched.

Characteristic classical jazz- appeal to a variety of musical sources. This is folklore, everyday, religious and academic music of many peoples of the world - French, Spanish, Italian, English, Irish, Scottish, German, not to mention the folk music of the Negroes themselves and the colored Creoles of the South of the USA, as well as Latin American songs and dances. The blues tradition (in intonation, sound production, melody, harmony, rhythm, musical form); a professional performing hot-style has developed. In parallel with Negro hot jazz, orchestral ragtime and dixieland developed. On the basis of the New Orleans classical style arose whole line chamber jazz styles, in particular piano (barrel house, boogie-woogie, Harlem style). Closely associated with it is the rise of the Chicago style and early swing. In the late 1920s, classical jazz was pushed aside by the commercial dance and entertainment music of large orchestras; in the 2nd half of the 30s - experienced a period of revival (the so-called "revival jazz").