General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Riverdancing Black woman accused of "cultural appropriation", so Riverdance team asks her to dance [View all]misanthrope
(7,417 posts)It comes from the African American tradition of the Southern U.S. and was present in both work songs and gospel. So were the slurring/bending of notes that are related to microtonalities.
You can disavow the influence of European musical traditions all you want but all the older jazz musicians I know from up and down the Gulf Coast, most of all in New Orleans, tell the story I just relayed above. The notation, the theory, the instrumentation is derived from European music. Those were brought into the African American neighborhoods courtesy of Creoles of Color.
Trumpets, saxophones, clarinets, trombones, pianos, they were all of European origin. It was when they were mixed with African poly-rhythms, African American melodic invention and Ragtime's syncopation that jazz emerged.
Jazz is polyglot. I sat at a dinner table with Delfeayo Marsalis less than a year ago talking about this very subject. He and his family are far from the only jazz musicians steeped in its history who would say the same.
Jazz wasn't disavowed solely by whites either. In proper African American circles, especially as it involved the church, it was rebuked as "the devil's music."
As far as focusing on my use of the word "pure," that was in relation to New Orleans social structure, where Creoles of Color occupied a place different than that of other African Americans. That unique structure didn't exist beyond a small stretch of the Gulf Coast roughly from Mobile, Alabama westward to the other side of New Orleans. Some Creoles of Color were so obsessed with those bloodlines that they would only allow their kids (when they could help it) to marry into other Creole families from the region.