The Roots of Jazz

Essay # 48761

African-American Studies
History > U.S. After 1865
History > U.S. The 1930's - Great Depression

The Roots of Jazz

Reports on the history of jazz, what it is today, and who some of its key players were.

2,025 words () | 7 sources | MLA | 2003 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper emphasizes the history of New Orleans and how it was such a perfect place for jazz to take hold and grow. The paper examines the city's race relations, reconstruction, its allowance of prostitution, and how these city characteristics fostered the growth of jazz.The paper also looks at some of the key players that were instrumental in popularizing jazz and examines the hardships faced by up and coming jazz musicians like Buddy Bolden and his sister, Lottie Bolden.

From the Paper:

"To define the roots of jazz is to look into all that the cornucopia of Southern culture has to offer. It incorporates forms of music that are so widespread that it is often difficult to understand how they could have come together to create a music that is truly and completely American. From classical to hymnals, confederate marching bands to back-wood folk tunes, jazz brings together musical characteristics that come from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and America. But the stage that these elements would come together upon was the most important key in the creation of jazz. It is difficult to surmise how this vast array of influences could have united in any place other than New Orleans. It is in this city of lust and guilty pleasures that jazz was born and its dirty cradle would provide jazz with an audience that spread throughout the country. The musical industry that jazz would become could not have formed without New Orleans' mixed culture and its allowance of prostitution in the region popularly known as Storyville. New Orleans at the turn of the century on one hand was a city ahead of its time in fashion and entertainment, and on the other hand far behind in race relations. It hosted several opera companies and incorporated some of Europe's highest fashion. French and Creoles still had a strong presence in the city and brought their own individual flavor to the popular culture of the time. This however, would create divisions among races that ignited a variety of race riots in the early 1900s that would leave parts of the city badly damaged physically and culturally."