The History Of Jazz

All music genres and styles have their beginnings, some better documented than others. Whether it be an effect of time period or geographical location of the birth of a music styling or it be related to the culture of a music that may practice and oral tradition as opposed to a written down, notation style of music. Regardless of the reasons, all music has it’s start. One of the more recent developments in music history is that of Jazz. Jazz is one of these styles that’s dawn is somewhat up in the air amongst music scholars and historians. Although the exact coming to be of Jazz is uncertain, there is still much research and information regarding the early sources of the style. The sources of early jazz are deeply rooted in African culture, …show more content…
A widely accepted truth about Jazz is that it has roots in African culture. With the arrival of African slaves in America in the early 17th century, brought an although abused, mistreated and violated society of people to America it was that nonetheless a society of people. With a society comes culture, and the African culture is one with rich musical characteristics. The African people had a large variety of kinds of music and songs, those songs ranged from topics such as ritual songs, work songs, songs of mourning, songs of victory etc. African music is well known for being a vocal tradition, however it does feature a range of string instruments, some simple reed instruments like the tusk of an elephant, but the predominant characteristic of instruments in African music is the drums. There was a large variety of drums styles from small hand drums to large arrangements of several drums. One of the reasons for the significant emphasis on drums is because of one of the integral features of African music and that is rhythm. A very unique rhythm as it can be directly attributed to one of the main features of Jazz, and that is …show more content…
In the early 17th century boat upon boat would bring Africans to America to be sold as slaves and placed on plantations and other unfavorable positions. Although it was a turning point in African culture in brought upon the rise of the African American who although had changed significantly from his African roots still managed to keep some of their original identity. This retention of African identity also played a pivotal role in African American music, although it had gone through many changes whether they were naturally occurring or forced up on it, the African roots could still be pulled to the surface with rather ease. At first all was stripped from the slaves who arrived, in some cases even their music however over time and in different areas things like work songs would become more and more common because in the slave owners eyes these work songs promoted good work ethic and efficiency. Already we see a connection back to the African culture, the work song. As work songs began to arise frequently eventually they were written down which has given us documented proof of the African American slave work song, and example of this could be the following corn husking