Jazz in New Orleans, Chicago and NYC

Fine Arts Magnet @ Artspace
Originally uploaded by trudeau

Whether to go to Shreveport Opera for Pagliacci or to Centenary College's amphitheater for a performance by Tetrafusion is the question for next week. They both take place Sat, Nov 8.
Btw, Caddo Schools take a break on Tues, Nov 4, for the presidential election.

This week we will finish student reports on 20th century artists and listen to brief reports on jazz music.

Friday we worked on specific words of description so as to make essays clearer. The discussion was based on the essays about visiting Artspace.

The geography of jazz begins with New Orleans. It travels up the Mississippi via steam to Chicago, to the South Side. The music was part of the Black diaspora from the poverty-ridden fields of the rural South to the factories and tenement buildings of the big cities.

Chicago and NYC were the places where the first jazz records were cut. The multi-cultural life of New Orleans fostered creativity in performance but did not produce the business organizations or recording studios that would enable the city to capitalize on local talent. To some extent that remains part of the character of New Orleans.

Btw, there Was a time when New Orleans made a slew of hit records. It was the late 1950's and the R n B hits came from people like Fats Domino ("I'm Walkin'") and Shirley & Lee ("Let the Good Times Roll").

Satchmo was born and raised in the Crescent City but recorded his amazing and classic performances in Chicago and NYC.


Do you remember the word shibboleth? It means vocab that is peculiar to a particular group. Such as a teen shibboleth like "deface," or "faux five." Satchmo used slanguage from the black community in his conversations and songs. "Break it down," "chops," "crib," "daddy-o," "dig" and similar words became jazz shibboleths.