Jazz: Musical Anarchy, Based on "Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns"

   Jazz— musical anarchy pioneered by the oppressed colored Americans which, whether precisely known or not at the time, came to uproot outdated systems and cry out with songs of freedom. As beautifully stated in Burns’ first episode, titled Gumbo: “Jazz grew up in a thousand places but it was born in New Orleans.” Thanks to the smorgasboard of culture lent to us by 19th century America's most cosmopolitan city, New Orleans had the rich and diverse influences of slaves traditions, spirituals, creole music, minstrels, the war, ragtime, and of course the blues, all of which gave birth to jazz before it was even called as such. Jazz celebrated individual expression, the profundity of life and picked apart the human condition in its own improvisational language, evolving with every conversation but almost always rooted in the blues. 

    Starting with a checkered past, segregation and Jim Crow laws quickly strained the cultural fusion taking place musically after the abolishment of slavery. From the misrepresentation of each other's cultures through minstrelsy to the continual dehumanization of the American colored person, this strange relationship would go on for decades to come. Later, union occupation and subsequent reconstruction shined with a glimmer of hope and this new birth of freedoms would spark a new period of creativity for blacks in New Orleans, although short lived when a deal was struck between Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats which would once again collapse reconstruction. Of course, though, prohibition just makes things double the fun for society and limiting human creativity and expression is quite hard. It was 1890 when ragtime entered the picture to speed up the American youth and bring about further disdain towards black people who were thought of by whites to have largely influenced the popular genre. 

    Around the same time as ragtime, the blues arrived, answering the search for colored people looking for an aesthetic to liberate them from the burdensome shackles of minstrelsy. The blues, built on just three cords, had a structure which allowed for infinite variations. Blues was personal, intimate, soulful and could talk about anything while making the listener feel better, not worse. Deepening the message of the blues and creating something unparalleled in its soul, the blues was often played on leftover military instruments, mainly horns and the greatest musicians were able to blend the spiritual sounds of gospel music with the secular sounds of the blues. 

     Bringing further tension and division into the socio-racial arena, Plessy V. Ferguson instated laws mandating separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites, leaving Creoles second class citizens in 1896. Out of necessity, Creoles began to play with blacks, having nowhere else to play other than their communities. This gave way to the blossoming of jazz as an authentic art form and especially to soloing and improvisation where individuals could shine within the structure of the pieces. By embellishing and filling in the spaces of the blues, horn players took flight.

    Half mad, pioneer jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden was New Orleans best known black musician who brought about the “big four” beat which gave jazz its “lilt” as stated by Wynton Marsalis. Other epic musicians who paved the way for this revolutionary genre include but are not limited to: pianist Jelly Roll Morton, clarinet prodigy Sidney Bechet, trumpet virtuoso Freddie Keppard, and many others. Although early jazz players were creating music and defining a never before heard sound in the years before World War I, few people outside of New Orleans had a chance to hear this new music until 1917 when a group of white musicians from New Orleans, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, made their first jazz recording in New York, thus beginning the exciting and ever-transforming, Jazz Age.