Take a three-minute drive from downtown New Orleans into a tough, inner-city neighborhood called Treme, and you`ll find the birthplace of jazz-or the closest thing to it.
Though visitors tend to prefer the glitter of Bourbon Street to the gritty sight of fenced-in Congo Square, it`s the latter that stands as our direct link to the uniquely African and American music the world calls jazz.
For it was in Congo Square, more than two centuries ago, that enslaved Africans were allowed to congregate once a week to play the music of their homeland. By the 19th Century, the rhythmically complex music that slaves had played on a variety of percussion instruments had been outlawed, with white masters fearing the communicative power of this music.
So the unique, traditional African music took new, European-tinged forms in the fields, the church, the streets and the sporting houses of New Orleans. Hand-clapping, foot-stomping, shouts and chants were the main musical expression for pre-Civil War slaves. And from this emotionally charged vocabulary grew gospel hymns, band tunes, funeral marches, ragtime numbers and, ultimately, jazz and blues.
If this period-the mid-19th Century-is to be considered the pre-history of the music we now call jazz, we`re fortunate that a few musicians are still around who heard those jazz pioneers.
”I don`t even know why they call it jazz-I heard this music before they called it jazz, so I just call it traditional New Orleans music,” says Willie Humphrey, a New Orleans clarinetist who soon turns 91.
Sitting in the quaintly dilapidated room called Preservation Hall, where he performs, Humphrey can recall the sounds of the new music at the turn of the century.
”I used to hear Bunk Johnson (a fabled, first-generation jazz cornetist) when I was a kid-he had a band of his own,” remembers Humphrey, who knew jazz legends Jelly Roll Morton and Kid Ory.
”What did Bunk sound like? Like Louis (Armstrong). Louis got a lot out of listening to that music in the (Storyville) district.”
Indeed, during the first decade of this century, Storyville-the red-light district named for a New Orleans alderman-all but burst with raunchy, bawdy sounds.
”You`d hear music anywhere you went,” recalls New Orleans guitarist Danny Barker, 82, who plays the Chicago Jazz Festival Sept. 1.
”You`d hear music in the street-organ grinders pulling their instrument on a two-wheel cart, going from barroom to barroom.
”And you heard peddlers shouting their wares. You heard music everywhere because everything you did was done musically in New Orleans.
”See, New Orleans was a French town and a party town-there was an abundance of entertainment. You could walk down the street and hear a party going on until 11 o`clock the next morning.”
Like the spirit of the town itself, early New Orleans music was rough, robust and bristling with a thousand musical influences.
At the heart of its emerging sound were the dissonant ”blue” notes that instantly distinguished New Orleans music from European classical.
The ”flatted” blue note emerged in 19th Century slave chants and work songs, an expression of sorrow.
And this sound was carried forth into the popular music of the day by
”the two kinds of musicians you could find in New Orleans at the turn of the century,” recalls Willie`s younger brother, Percy, 86, who plays trumpet at Preservation Hall.
”See, the average New Orleans musician developed his own style, because he didn`t know how to read music. So he played what he picked up, and he`d catch maybe 18 or 20 different sounds.
”But the other musicians, like myself and Willie, were professionally taught-we knew how to read music because our grandfather taught us how.
”So whenever you`d hear a band on the street or at a funeral or at a house party, you`d hear these two kinds of musicians trying to get it together.”
From these two approaches emerged a noisy, hodge-podge of sound mixing improvised and written musics.
In part, the ebullient new music grew out of the Baptist churches of the 19th Century.
”The church got to be real important,” says Barker, ”because after the Civil War there was chaos for blacks. You had a mad scramble to look out for yourself, because the masters no longer had control over the slaves.
”So to help out the blacks, the Baptist churches formed Benevolent Societies, and they were at the center of a lot of the music. You`d hear the music in church, and when the Benevolent Societies buried you, they`d do it with music.
”And everyone wanted to play in the brass bands because it was a good way to get into music. The funeral bands, see, played lots of whole notes-and that`s an easy way to learn how to play.”
This explosion of music-from church to bawdy house-spawned a generation of musicians that, at the turn of the century, finally gave a clear-cut identity to the new music.
Trumpeter Buddy Bolden ”attracted people wherever he played” leading his ragtime band, recalls Barker.
But it wasn`t until a brilliant, New Orleans piano professor named Ferdinand ”Jelly Roll” Morton emerged on the scene in 1906 that the new music had a central, charismatic figure to promote it.
Morton, whom Wynton Marsalis calls ”the first great intellectual of jazz,” ”was a legend, even back then,” recalls Barker of his former friend. ”He had gone to Chicago (in the early `20s) and became a big success. Like everyone else, he went to Chicago because you got paid peanuts in New Orleans.
”Jelly Roll had this particular tempo that they loved as much in Chicago as in New Orleans. It was this laid-back tempo, so that when you`re dancing with a woman, you could hold her real close.”
Besides Morton, a flock of New Orleans musicians headed to Chicago, among them trumpeter/bandleader King Oliver. He, in turn, brought to Chicago New Orleans trumpet sensation Louis Armstrong, whose virtuosity and charisma quickly landed him Morton`s role as champion of the music now being called jass or jazz.
”All the first great jazz came out of Louis Armstrong,” says Barker, whose tiny home on the outskirts of New Orleans` housing projects is filled with pictures of Barker and Satchmo playing together.
”Louis was the first one to do scat singing, the first one to play four registers on the cornet, including way up on top.
”He was responsible for what people started to call `popular singing.`
Before Louis, it was all trills and square tunes. And Louis was pure New Orleans. You can hear it in the way he bends his notes. You can hear the Baptist church in almost everything he played.”
As Armstrong`s star rose, however, Morton`s sank, particularly with his move from Chicago to New York at the end of the `20s.
”Jelly Roll was misunderstood,” says Barker. ”The problem was that back then, they didn`t have press agents, except for the circus.
”So Jelly Roll had to promote himself. So he had a diamond in his tooth, wore all these fancy clothes, told all the musicians how to make music, and folks didn`t understand all his braggadocio, and they turned against him.”
In fact, the era of small-group jazz that Morton`s Red Hot Peppers personified was coming to an end, soon to be replaced by the big, brawny swing bands of the `30s.
Thus ended the first chapter of the history of jazz.
”When it all started,” says Barker, ”you would go to a club to have fun. You wanted to dance and clink glasses.
”But in the modern joints (in the late `30s and `40s) you could hear a pin drop. Everybody`s listening, nobody`s drinking or dancing. It was like an undertaking parlor.
”So there was a new era with new music to perform.
”But that`s the way America is-always waiting for the next new thing.”
