7. Jazz

The decline of ragtime and progression into jazz wasn’t clear-cut. By the end of World War I, jazz had become the new American popular music genre for syncopation (Tucker and Jackson, 2001). But this move into jazz was more of a terminological transition as opposed to a stylistic one; up until the late 10s/early 20s, jazz was known for its sexual connotations. It came from the words “jasm” and “jass”, the latter of which was patois for “vigorous activity”, especially sexual intercourse. Amongst certain jazz circles, this term has been a source of contention that still rages on to the present day. Although jazz took over from ragtime in around 1917, tremors of the musical paradigm shift could be felt from the end of the 19th century in New Orleans thanks to Buddy Bolden, an African-American cornet player. Bolden was known for his “powerful and unique sound” within the annals of ragtime and blues and it was those bluesy/ragtime-inspired improvisations (Floyd, 1995, p.184-185) that created the foundations of New Orleans jazz. Notably, Bolden was never actually recorded, coinciding with his elusive and enigmatic life. In fact, it wasn’t until 1933 that his music appeared in print (Gioia, 1997). At the start of Bolden’s career during the 1890s, quadrilles and marches were the main sound of New Orleans but Bolden and his group implemented more syncopation in their performances. The “ragged and raucous” music didn’t cater to the Creole players of the time but the local black community embraced the rebellious style and Bolden used this to his advantage, pushing more boundaries (Gioia, 1997, p.35). His life and legacy didn’t last much longer, however, and he died in 1931 from cerebral arteriosclerosis

Bolden laid down the foundations for jazz as a differentiation from its precursor, ragtime. He wasn’t alone in doing so, however, as composers both black and white, had been experimenting with syncopation around the time Bolden was rebelling against the musical standards (Gioia, 1997). From Bolden’s innovative work came more artists, with New Orleans becoming the epicentre of what we now call “jazz”; artists like Jelly Roll Morton (who falsely attributed himself as the inventor of jazz) and Louis Armstrong were the biggest practitioners of this new concept of New Orleans jazz. The former was one of the main composers to implement a new jazzy syncopation in drumming, moving away from the duple and triple metres of ragtime (Tucker and Jackson, 2001) In the late 1910s, the Original Dixieland Jass Band was formed and became the first jazz band to be recorded. In doing so, they were highly influential in making jazz a commercial genre