Thursday, September 22, 2011

Ska-boom: a quiz upon the basic tenets of jazz

Jazz quiz
1. First city of jazz: __ __.
2. Second city of Jazz (and of the US in general): __ .
3. Third city to which the fathers of jazz - such as Joe Oliver, Louis
Armstrong and Jellyroll Morton - relocated: __ __ .
4. Movement of impoverished black Americans from the farms of the Deep
South to urban centers of Upper Midwest and Northeast: a) diplomacy b)
dispora c) displacement d) dislocation .
5. Approximate date for the birth of jazz: a) 1800 b) 1850's c)
1900 d) 1920's.
6. Name given to the place in New Orleans where slaves gathered on
Sundays: a) river levees b) Ashanti circle c) Place Congo d) Vieux
Carre.
7. Louisiana term for people of mixed ethnic background, esp. a
mixture of French, Spanish, native American and Afro-Caribbean: __ .
8. Gens de couleur libre was a special ethnic category in NO. It
indicated a person who was African-American, yet not a slave. T / F
9. Another name for the historic French Quarter is Vieux Carre; it
means: a) Spanish Quarter b) Old Quarter c) French District d)
Slave Quarters .
10. A radical change in his instrument's shape was the signature of
bebop jazz artist Dizzy Gilespie. His instrumentwas the ____ .
11. Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazzers offered vocal
improvisation with random vocables and syllables or without words at
all. This is called __ singing.
12. World War I and the Immigration Act of 1924 halted the flow of
European immigrants to the emerging industrial centers of the
Northeast and Midwest, causing shortages of workers in the factories
and openings for immigrating African-Americans. T / F
13. Chronological order of the development of jazz: a) Dixieland,
big band-style swing, bebop, Latin jazz, free jazz b) big band-style
swing, Dixieland, bebop, Latin jazz, free jazz c) bebop, Dixieland,
big band-style swing, Latin jazz, free jazz
14. In jazz the skilled performer will interpret a tune in very
individual ways, never playing the same composition exactly the same
way twice. Thus while jazz may be difficult to define, ______ is
clearly one of its key elements.
a) swing b) improvisation c) syncopation d) concentration.


1. New Orleans
2. Chicago
3. NYC (Harlem is not a city; it is a neighborhood in NYC)
4. diaspora
5. 1900
6. Place Congo, or Congo Square
7. Creole
8. T
9. Old Quarter
10. trumpet
11.scat
12. T
13. Dixieland, swing, bebop, etc
14. improvisation

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