The African influence on New Orleans music can trace its roots at least back to Congo Square in New Orleans in 1835, when slaves would congregate there to play music and dance on Sundays. African music, local music, including that of such local Whites as Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Along with such popular European musical forms popular in the city, perhaps most notably the brass band traditions, the cultural mix laid the groundwork for the New Orleans musical art forms to come.
The earliest form was dixieland, which has sometimes been called traditional jazz, ‘New Orleans’, and ‘New Orleans jazz’. However, the tradition of jazz in New Orleans has taken on various forms that have either branched out from original dixieland or taken entirely different paths altogether.
By the 1890s a man by the name of Poree hired a band led by cornetist Buddy Bolden, many of whose contemporaries as well as many jazz historians consider to be the first prominent jazz musician. The music was not called jazz at this time, consisting of marching band music with brass instruments and dancing. If anything, Bolden could be said to have been a blues player. The actual term “jazz” was first “jass”, the etymology of which is still not entirely clear. The connotation is sexual in nature, as many of the early performers played in rough working class venues.
The use of brass marching bands came long before jazz music through their use in the military, though in New Orleans many of the best-known musicians had their start in brass marching bands performing dirges as well as celebratory and upbeat tunes for New Orleans jazz funeral processions from the 1890s onward. The tradition drove onward with musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Henry “Red” Allen and King Oliver. The presence of marching bands lives on today in The Big Easy, with musicians such as the Marsalis family doing some of their earliest work in such bands.
CREOLE RESTAURANT NYC 