Jazz was not originated on a specific day. It was created over time. According to Henry Louis, Jazz rose in the first decades of artistic gathering of a few components including ragtime band music, opera, and European classical music. When Africans were working in American farms they were prevented to talk to each other so that they could not make a revolution against them. They find a way in which they could communicate with each other by making releases of musical tones from their own African cultural heritage. When slaves got their independence, they lived in New Orleans. Samuel CHARTERS claimed that Jazz was created in New Orleans. It was considered the birthplace of this musical art. It was the place in which black Africans found their freedom rather than American cities. It collected different racial groups including Blacks whites and Creoles who lived together in harmony. Henry Louis said:
“No seed for the new music was richer than New Orleans, where in spite of separatist racial policies, musicians could tap into the city s spectacularly broad range of musical influences and where the opportunities to hear, play and practice music under expert musicians-tutors were extraordinarily abundant. (64)”
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This means that although many difficulties that Negros faced throughout the slavery era, they gain the liberty to sing whatever kind of music they wanted especially jazz. Charters suggests that What is similarly as important to the tale of New Orleans jazz is the influence of the rush of Italian and Sicilian outsiders amid this period. The well-known Italian songs, what's more, the verse Italian trumpet sound left their blemish on the playing of such a large number of New Orleans jazz specialists. To put it differently, jazz musicians started adding some instruments to jazz that were taken from Italian immigrants. New Orleans is considered a nucleus of black American popular art. It has assisted many changes in the history of jazz.
Jazz was considered a replacement for many art forms. Before the civil war, Negros created the Congo Square which was a kind of dance. People in New Orleans danced and sing while burring someone, also they gathered outside this city to practice and to preserve their own dances and musical art. Ted Gioia mentioned that: “The Congo Square was hardly so long-lived. Traditional accounts indicate that they continued, except for an interruption during the Civil War, until around 1885”. (8). These dances disappeared immediately after the first appearance of the first jazz group singers. New Orleans music was likewise affected by the famous melodic structures that multiplied all through the United States following the Civil War. Metal walking groups were the anger in the late 1880s, and metal groups sprung up crosswise over America.
There was additionally a developing national enthusiasm for syncopated melodic styles affected by African-American customs, for example, cakewalks and minstrel tunes. By the 1890s syncopated piano organizations called jazz made a prominent music sensation, and metal groups started enhancing the standard walk collection with jazz pieces, and here jazz started improving its characteristics. When it comes to the musical threads of early jazz in New Orleans, there were violins, Saxophones, Trombones, Drums, Pianos, and Banjo or Guitar. Most jazz singers in New Orleans found in their music a sense of liberty to maintain their black identity. Through those musical instruments, they started playing and respecting their characteristics. The fact that there was not a Maestro in the jazz group, reflects and symbolizes their independence from American restrictions. The construction of its tone is based on Syncopation, polyrhythm, improvisation, repetition, and revision as well as call and response which were developed because of of many figures for example, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.
Louis Armstrong's contributions to the Harlem Renaissance
An important jazz figure who gave jazz another direction. He was a significant jazz pioneer in the twentieth century. According to Brian Harker: ‘’……Armstrong did raise the artistic profile of jazz, he did transcend the culture of his time, and for countless rapt listeners, he did indeed transform jazz into music for music s sake’’ (3). Armstrong transformed and changed the natural image of jazz without exceeding the culture that existed in his time; furthermore, he changed it into “a music for the good music”. He rebuilds jazz into another artistic profile. He was characterized by his pure and unique sense to satisfy his audience more than any other jazz singer. Marvin Martin in his famous book “extraordinary people jazz” said:
“He loved to please his audience, clowning and displaying his wide mouth, toothy grin and occasionally singing pop and show tunes. As a result, Armstrong developed a far broader audience than most purist jazz stars. He was sometimes criticized for this. But Louis stated that he didn’t t to heed dictators who couldn’t tell one note from another telling him how to blow his horn.”(19).
A founding father of jazz built up a far more intensive group of onlookers than most perfectionists’ jazz stars and he claimed that he did not notice the critics that were made by some of despots. James Lincoln Collin shows how Armstrong invented a new concept in the characteristics of jazz called improvisation. He encouraged other young musicians to make it a principal technique in their songs while they were playing. Marvin Martin noticed how Armstrong constructed new techniques named
“Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” in the recordings of his songs however, this has been considered as a turning point in the jazz age. In the same regard, James Collin Lincoln explained that:
“The five dozen records generally titled the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives constitute one of the most significant bodies of American recorded music. Certainly, it is the most important set of recordings of twentieth-century improvised music. That these records were extraordinary was recognized immediately by musicians, jazz fans, and a growing, if still small, larger public. All”. (169)
He was described as the architect of jazz by Bo Emerson in “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution”, also he described how Armstrong changed jazz with his amazing solo trumpet, which was immediately musically progressed, profound, rich, and overpowering. Furthermore, he became the primary virtuous of his instrument and has changed famous bad mentalities over the estimations of this African-American work of art. He has left a deep impact on the advancement of early jazz, moreover known for his bright identity and his gravelly performing voice with respect to his instrumental ability. In any case, individuals who performed never despise his effect on American music.
In spite of the fact that his body suffered and weakened, he kept forming and drawing his future plans to make his music more progressive but he died in 6, July 1971, whereas his spirit was still alive in all jazz recorded songs. He gave the chance and the start to other generations to complete what he has just begun. Armstrong is still one of the top examples of important jazz leaders and fighters who helped to transmit negro‘s music, voices, and power to the world. He left a great place and made his name etched into jazz history.