Birthplace of Jazz: the curious, Creole city of New Orleans

1904 :: Map of New Orleans Showing Street Railway System of the New Orleans Railways Co.
Originally uploaded by regional.modernism

Jazz is a musical form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions, says Wikipedia.

From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music.[1]

Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note[2] but one of jazz's iconic figures Art Blakey has been quoted as saying, "No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa".[3]

The word "jazz" began as a West Coast slang term of uncertain derivation and was first used to refer to music in Chicago in about 1915.

From its beginnings in the early 20th century, Jazz has spawned a variety of subgenres, from New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s, big band-style swing from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s, a variety of Latin jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and late 1980s developments such as acid jazz, which blended jazz influences into funk and hip-hop.

While jazz may be difficult to define, improvisation is clearly one of its key elements. Early blues was commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, a common element in the African American oral tradition. A form of folk music which rose in part from work songs and field hollers of rural Blacks, early blues was also highly improvisational.

By 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million Africans to the United States. The slaves largely came from West Africa and brought strong tribal musical traditions with them.[17] Lavish festivals featuring African dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843, as were similar gatherings in New England and New York. African music was largely functional, for work or ritual, and included work songs and field hollers.

In the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European-American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized such music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment.

The music of New Orleans had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. Many early jazz performers played in the brothels and bars of the red-light district around Basin Street, called "Storyville."[25] In addition, numerous marching bands played at lavish funerals arranged by the African American community. The instruments used in marching bands and dance bands became the basic instruments of jazz: brass and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale and drums.

The cornetist Buddy Bolden is often mentioned as "the first man of jazz."


Map of New Orleans -

- Lake Pontchartrain
- Miss R
- Canal St
- Elysian Fields Ave
- Vieux Carre, French Quarter
- Jackson Square, St Louis Cathedral
- Cafe do Monde
- Antoine's Restaurant
- Place Congo, Louis Armstrong Park
- Central Business District (CBD)
- St Charles Ave
- Tulane U, Loyola U, Xavier U, Dillard U, SUNO, UNO
- Audubon Park & Zoo