The United States is credited as being a country with a “melting pot” of cultures. With a wide variety of people, comes a wide variety of perspectives, preferences, and ways to live daily life.

One of the beauties in living in a country where diversity enhances all innovation, and where individual backgrounds are celebrated everyday, is the multitude of creation that emerges from the collaboration. This happens through conversation, art, food, but most notably through music.

Jazz Music was performed throughout the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana beginning in the early 1900’s

Born down in New Orleans, Jazz music is the definition of American culture as the genre itself is an embodiment the country’s values, feelings, and self expression.

The genre originated in the African American communities in the early 19th and 20th centuries from the roots of blues and ragtime. The music incorporates components of independent and popular music styles to weld African American and European American style and performance orientation. In the late 19th century when slaves were being imported from West Africa to North America, the stomping, clapping, drumming beats from the Congo blended with the fast and smooth melodies from Columbia, Cuba, and Haiti, to create a rhythmic pattern known as the Habanera rhythm. These musical variations made their way all the way up to New Orleans where ragtime music publications began to make their rise within the music industry.

The party, fast-paced, and dance swing jazz of the 1920’s was popping with life and excitement

Independent pianists such as Tommy Turpin and Scott Joplin began to create ragtime singles that eventually made their way to print within the 1890’s. From their hard work, several artists began to perform “jazz music” on the piano, drums, and trombones such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong performed as solo acts and began to collaborate and showcase together in clubs throughout the South.

In the 1930’s dance-oriented swing jazz bands emerged along with the hard-swinging bluesy improvisational Gypsy style jazz. Thus came Bebop jazz, with the shift from more dancing and repetitive rhythms, to the more complicated and intrinsic rhythms with intrinsic chord-based improvisation.

I could go on and on diving into the subcultures within the genre of jazz, and spell out every specification there is, but ultimately what I want to write about is not so much the history of the music itself, but how jazz is the definition of who we are as a country.

The evolution of the chord-progressions moving form improvisational to structured parallels the American movement of independent business and industries to a country of big corporations that overrule the nation. The infusing of beats and dances from Africa and how they blended with the French marches and English band rhythms serves as a illustration of how the African Americans tried to embrace who they were while trying to acclimate to the new country they were a part of. And when colored people were excluded from performing in the 1950’s and 60’s, jazz did not die out, it carried on as strong as the people who marched with Dr. King and continues to serve as genre that speaks equality and justice for all.

Jazz may not be one of the most popular genres today, and is typically used for background music in most coffee shops or at dinner parties, but will always carry the rich history and culture of the American people. Jazz music may not be able to defined with a pinpoint definition and tidy bow on top, but will always be an ever-growing music of evolution that has the roots of our country, with all of the potential of the future.

♥ Little Kelli