New Orleans became known as the Birthplace of Jazz, famous for its world-class musicians such as trumpeter, Buddy Bolden—the First Man of Jazz; pianist, Jelly Roll Morton; and New Orleans’ most famous musician Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, who made jazz famous around the world. We fully explore America’s quintessential musical art form in the city where jazz was born. Though the city was a leading slave port and segregation persisted long after slavery was abolished, people of different races mixed much more freely in New Orleans than other American cities.“There were opportunities for interaction, in spite of segregation, and many neighborhoods were a crazy quilt with blacks, whites and Creoles living together,” says Raeburn.He points out that while the rest of the antebellum South was trying to stamp out any remnants of African culture slaves might cling to, New Orleans’ city fathers tried to regulate it, allowing at least a small venue for traditions to continue and evolve. The ways these cultures mingled, collided and evolved together in the Crescent City produced America’s most distinctive musical style.One of the key components to the birth of jazz was New Orleans’ long and deep commitment to music and dance, says Bruce Raeburn, a jazz historian and curator of the Hogan Jazz Archives at Tulane University. New Orleans in the 20th Century . … the rest is “jazz” history. This book is considered to be the definitive history of New Orleans music in terms of an overview of the last 50 years. However, the popularity of traditional New Orleans jazz would be short-lived, as Louis Armstrong, one of the Big Easy’s most famous sons, in an ironic turn of events, would shift jazz away from the ensemble work that defined it by ushering in the Age of the Soloist, …
The New Orleans jazz funeral was popularised by the famous scene from the 1973 James Bond film ‘Live and Let Die’. For instance, slaves were allowed to congregate, make music and dance in Congo Square, an area that is today part of Louis Armstrong Park on North Rampart Street on the edge of the French Quarter.“This was not your typical American city, there was much more of a Mediterranean mentality here,” Raeburn says.In addition, New Orleans was home to the largest population of free people of color during the slavery era. Sampling from and experimenting with all of these diverse influences, New Orleans musicians added the touchstone ingredient of improvisation to produce something completely new.Jazz defied the then-dominant Western musical tradition of following a composer’s music precisely, and replaced it with a dedication only to following a feeling or emotion in music.Top to bottom: Joe “King” Oliver; Kid Ory; Jelly Roll MortonHistorians generally point to Buddy Bolden, a cornet player, as the first jazz musician. Below is a timeline of key important musicians/icons from New Orleans and some important information to help understand early New Orleans jazz. He was followed by a long list of musicians who each left their stamp on the evolving style of jazz in the early part of the 20th century, including Joe “King” Oliver, Kid Ory and Jelly Roll Morton, generally considered the first great jazz composer.While rooted in New Orleans, the city’s jazz pioneers traveled extensively for work. “As it spread, it changed, but the original sound came from New Orleans.”Ian McNulty is a freelance food writer and columnist, a frequent commentator on the New Orleans entertainment talk show “Steppin’ Out” and editor of the guidebook “Hungry? This artistic diaspora was accelerated when the city’s official red light district, Storyville, was ordered closed by the federal government in 1917, thus shuttering the saloons and bordellos that had proved such reliable venues for early jazz musicians. The New Orleans Jazz Museum celebrates the history of jazz, in all its forms, through dynamic interactive exhibits, multi-generational educational programming, research facilities, and engaging musical performances. Many of these people had access to the European musical traditions, and in some cases formed the bands that played at the city’s balls and concerts. The New Orleans-style funeral can be conducted traditionally. To this cauldron, the waves of history added spiritual music from the church, the blues carried into town by rural guitar slingers, the minstrel shows inspired by plantation life, the beat and cadence of military marching bands and finally the syncopation of the ragtime piano, America’s most popular music for a time in the early 20h century. The New Orleans Jazz Museum celebrates the history of jazz, in all its forms, through dynamic interactive exhibits, multi-generational educational programming, research facilities, and engaging musical performances.The Jazz Museum enhances New Orleans’ ongoing cultural renaissance by providing diverse resources for musicians and music lovers of all languages and nationalities. Bolden’s personal theme song was called “Funky Butt” and today the jazz club on North Rampart Street of the same name pays him tribute. Jazz is a byproduct of the unique cultural environment found in New Orleans at the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the vestiges of French and Spanish colonial roots, the resilience of African influences after the slavery era and the influx of immigrants from Europe. Many people prefer funerals to be a celebration of life rather than a sombre occasion. As a matter of fact, the building where this museum is now located was once used for a completely different purpose: minting coins and other denominations of currency in the United States.