Taijuan Moorman
Jazz music is often said to be American music, having its
roots deeply originate from various American cultures, and evolving with
African American culture in the early twentieth century.
The music that is easily defined today as jazz music has an interesting
background. One can point to West African drum culture and slave spirituals. You
can also look at minstrel music, a type of medieval European song and dance entertainment
for royalty. However the biggest influence on jazz music was the city of New
Orleans.
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Elements of Jazz can be found in Ragtime, the Blues and the marching
bands at New Orleans parades and funerals. Though what started down in
Louisiana would soon move up to northern states by the Mississippi River.
Louis Armstrong, born 1901 in New Orleans, served as a great
influencer on what jazz would evolve to in northern cities, especially Chicago.
Much of the black population would travel up to South Chicago and Harlem, and
they took jazz music with them. Chicago helped make jazz “more sophisticated,”
which kept the rhymes from New Orleans and added in Chicago’s culture.
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Armstrong would also influence elements of scat and improvisation,
and in a lot of ways there wouldn’t be jazz without improv. Other important
jazz musicians include Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, the latter often
considered one of the greatest scat singers in jazz history.
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