Nola Music

blue notes

"Bent" or "flattened" tones lying outside traditional European-based scale structures that reflect particular African American melodic characteristics.

gens de couleur libres

"free people of color"

African Music (Five Characteristics)

1) Emphasis on Rythm -Rhythm explored and developed in Africa in ways European music has never done -Complex and polyrhythmic which can be hard for outsiders to sympathize with 2) Intertwinement of music and dance -Dance and Music are not two distinct categories -Many musicians also dance and many people who are dancing also contribute to the music by clapping etc. 3) It is assumed everyone is musical -Metronome sense -Music as basic of a social interaction as talking 4) Music is integral to everyday life -Music not nessicarily for performance but serves a social function -Congo square is not a performance space but a market 5) Improvisation

Jazz revival

50's and 60's Nola revival brought back traditional Jazz songs. Musical characteristics: nola polyphony, instrumentation, participation.

Maple Leaf Band

A brass band for the boys of the Colored Waif's Home that played a lot of different kinds of music.

Waltz

A dance in triple time performed by a couple, who as a pair turn rhythmically around and around as the progress around the dance floor. Also used to describe a piece of music written for or in the style of a waltz.

Juba

A dance that took place in Congo Square. Was derived from a thigh slapping dance of Kongo origin. The dance included patting slap-dance step, counterclockwise movement in a circle, and was often accompanied by drums.

Call and Response

A key feature of African music that has been retained in many modern black musical traditions.

Field Holler

A melodic, unaccompanied cry with abrupt swooping changes of pitch, used originally by black slaves at work in the fields and later contributed to the development of blues.

Blues

A music genre that can be described as having 12 bar form, blue notes, bending of notes, sliding between notes, lowered 3rd 5th and 7th notes. From oral tradition rather than literate: Blues separated uptown "negros" from downtown creoles.

Brass Band

A musical ensemble usually consisting of entirely brass instruments. Also most often accompanied by a percussion section.

Lining Out

A religious-musical practice which emerged from slavery in which a solo lining out of the hymn was followed by a slow heterophonic rendition by the congregation.

Polyrhythm

A rhythm that makes use of two or more different rhythms simultaneously.

Quadrille

A square dance performed typically by four couples and containing five figures, each of which is a complete dance in itself. May also be used to describe a piece of music for a quadrille dance.

Bamboula

A term used generally as well as specifically and can be used to refer to a drum, a dance, or a rhythm. A Bamboula dance could be seen in Congo square and had similar features to the Kongo and the Kalinda dances. Gottschalk composed a piano piece based on his experience seeing the dance. The piece contains syncopation like the dances do but not much else is similar.

work songs

A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either sung while conducting a task or a song linked to a task which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. Thought to have the strongest link to Africa of all African-American music.

Joseph "King" Oliver

American jazz cornet player and bandleader. Known for his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Was a mentor to Louis Armstrong and introduced him to many people in the industry. Armstrong took his spot in his band when he moved to Chicago.

Jelly Roll Morton

American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer from New Orleans. His composition "Jelly Role Blues" was the first published jazz composition.

Rock-and-roll

An American musical and behavioral that crystallized in the mid-fifties. Developed out of rhythm and blues (black popular music) and country and western music (popular music of southern agrarian whites). Was able to market the already popular R&B black music to a white audience.

metronome sense

An ability to hear the music in terms of the common rhythm even when it is not explicitly sounded.

Listening: You don't wanna go to war

An example of hip hop and brass band integration by Rebirth Brass Band and Soulja Slim.

Sanctified Church

An off-shoot of Baptist church which occurred when the Baptist church began to enforce more strict worship. This splitting was related to social class. Religious-musical traditions here were closest of all churches to the ring shouts of slavery and the church renewed the ecstatic religious practices which some see as a protest against the high-brow tendency in negro-protestant congregations. Armstrong was at the center of the ecstatic traditions of worship in the church. Here he learned music as a means for shedding all emotional inhibitions. This church also taught him a lot about rhythm. This is also where Armstrong says he learned to sing.

Retention

Aspects of African culture that have been retained and can be seen in Afro-American cultural practices Ex) Ring shout: retained in Jazz funerals and black churches-circular chants seen in gospel quartets.

Acculturation

Assimilation into a different, typically dominant, culture

Listening: Les Rendezvous Waltzes

Ballroom dance music that would have been played at white or creole dances. Includes trumpet and piano instrumentation. Written in a waltz style (triple time).

Listening: Prayer Meeting

Baptist church congregation singing. Heterophony texture.

Mardi Gras Indians

Black Carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, who dress up for Mardi Gras in suits influenced by Native American ceremonial apparel. Their suits and songs have become recognizable symbols are Nola vernacular culture. Songs are arranged in call-and -response fashion and popular chants became the basis for R&B, soul, funk, and hip-hop recordings.

Bounce

Call and response style party and Mardi Gras Indian chants and dance call-outs that are frequently hypersexual.

Peter Davis

Caretaker at the Waif's Home who taught music. He was suspicious of the boys from the Third Ward. He physically abused Armstrong in the home, but once he realized his talent he mentored him even letting him stay at his home.

Listening: Dede Mon Pauvre Coeur

Classical piano music composed by Edmond Dede, a creole of color composer. Contains opera singing.

Congo Square

Cultural practices seen in Congo square are not seen in other places in the US because of the differences between plantation slavery and urban slavery as well as the fact that NOLA was under French and Spanish rule until 1803 and those slavery practices were different from the rest of the US. In New Orleans, Sundays were free days for slaves were they were about to gather in the market of Congo square.

Kalinda/Calenda

Dance seen in Congo Square as well as many other places. Likely had was of Kongo origin. There are several regional variations. Many accounts of the dance talk about it as a men and women partner dance. Other accounts talk of all men war-dance versions which include mock fighting.

Listening: Just a Closer Walk With Thee.

Dirge on the way to a burial in a jazz funeral. Brass band: trumpet, tuba, trombone, bass drum. Characteristics include syncopation, stretching of notes..

Jazz Funeral

Dirge-to-Jazz sturcture: slow sadder music on the way to the burial contrasted with celebratory upbeat exit march. Principles of African music involved: Social, specific rhythm style of second line drumming, call and response, improvisation, and participation.

Listening: Lawdy Miss Clawdy

Early radio hit for both black and white audiences by Lloyd Price. The swing beat is isolated to the singing parts only. Featured Dave Bartholomew's band.

Swing

Emphasis on off-beat or weaker pulse in the music. Typical songs featured a a strong rhythm section in support of a more loose wind and brass section.

Participatory Music

Everyone present is actively doing something: playing an instrument, singing or chanting, and/or dancing. A key feature of African music that has been retained in many modern Afrocentric musical traditions

Listening: Kiss Me Sweet

Example of "sweet" music played by Creole Musicians. Features a trumpet, clarinet, tuba, and vocals. Ragtime syncopation.

Listening: Ray Nagin

Example of hip hop and brass band integration preformed by Hot 8 Brass Band at Jazz fest about the police killing of trombonist Joseph Williams.

Listening: "Good Rockin Tonight"

First R&B song recorded in New Orleans. Recorded by Roy Brown. 12 bar blues, swung 8ths, boogie-woogie bass line, swing beat on drums, honking saxophone solo. Walking bass, tenor sax, and horn section. Beginning of youth culture: R&B talked about partying and sex which was absent from mainstream white music.

Listening: Handa Wanda

First funk recording by actual Mardi Gras Indians. Recorded by the Wild Magnolias.

Ring Shout

Foundational example of African retention in North American Black Culture. Music and dance comingled in a ring formation. In NOLA the ring shout became an essential part in burial ceremonies of Afro-Americans.

Downtown

In Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, Downtown "learned" music culture was eurocentric, "high-class", and involved literate, strict, pedagogy for the developing of musicians. These downtown creoles, utilized the clarinet and piano in their music.

Uptown

In Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, Uptown vernacular music culture was Afrocentric and relied on immersion and oral traditions for developing musicians. The key instruments used by uptown musicians were the cornet and later the trumpet.

"Straightening Thesis"

In NOLA, the ring shout became an essential part of the burial ceremonies of Afro-Americans. From this, the ring eventually straightened to become second-line jazz funerals due to the changing demands of everyday life. However the movements of the traditional ring shout are still retained in the movements of the second line participants. The dirge-to-jazz structure of the jazz funeral parallels the walk-to-shout structure of the ring shout.

Spanish Tinge

Jelly Roll Morton's term for utilizing the rhythms of the tango and other Spanish dances in jazz compositions.

Harold Batiste

Key artist and mentor in the development of modern jazz in Nola.

Catholich Church

Louis Armstrong was baptized into the Catholic church.

Brothers Thesis

Louis Armstrong was shaped by total immersion in the central tradition of African-American vernacular music

syncratism

Making one set of beliefs work in a new context. Ring shouts were taken from African culture and used in North America to make the stiff christianity of the time more palatable.

Listening: Sew, Sew, Sew

Mardi Gras Indians popular recording by the Golden Eagles. Contains traditional Mardi Gras Indian chants, call and response, and hand percussion.

West End Blues

Multi-strain 12-bar blues composition by King Oliver. The most famous recording however, was by Louis Armstrong.

Fats Domino

New Orleans R&B pianist and singer. One of the first R&B artists to "cross-over" and become a pop/rock n roll artist. Discovered by Dave Bartholomew.

Professor Longhair (Roy Byrd)

New Orleans blues singer and pianist. His early influences came from church and dancing. Got his start in the clubs of Rampart Street.

Improvisation

One of the five characteristics of African music. Free performance of a musical passage usually in a manner that conforms to certain stylistic norms but is not constrained by a specific musical text. Metranome sense.

Dave Bartholomew

One of the most important musicians in New Orlean's post-WWII R&B and RnR. His musical background was entirely in the Nola jazz tradition. His first band was a scaled-down version of the big bands of the swing era that played rhythms carried by boogie figures in the pianist's left hand, a walking bass and subtle drumming. Backed many of the most influential R&B artists in New Orleans.

Dippermouth Blues

Originally recorded by King Oliver's Creole jazz band. Dippermouth was a nickname of Armstrong's. This song is a strong example of the influence of blues on early jazz.

Listening: Blue Horizon

Performed on a clarinet by a creole of color jazz musician, Sidney Bechet. Characteristic: Blue notes, bending of notes, vibrato, tension and release, slow tempo, repeated phrases.

Listening: Bamboula

Piano piece composed by Gottschalk which was inspired by after he wittnessed a Bamboula dance in congo square. Has syncopation like the dances but not much else is similar between the two.

Syncopation

Placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur

Second line parades

Public festival in which club members, musicians, and other second liners come together to create "a single flowing movement of people unified by the rhythm". Considered freedom marches in the black community.

Listening: Iko Iko

R&B arrangement of a Mardi Gras Indian chant by the Dixie Cups. Contains strong back beat and syncopation of New Orleans R&B.

Dew Drop Inn

R&B hub in Nola. Was a sanctuary for black performers in the segregated south. Hosts performed in drag.

Listening: The Fat Man

R&B piano piece by Fats Domino. Often cited as one of the first rock and roll records. Distinct backbeat and scat that was derived from Dixieland

Listening: Tipitina

R&B piano piece by Professor Longhair. Stutter stepping left-hand rhythm a staple of New Orleans music.

Listening: Lucille

Recorded in New Orleans by Little Richard. Drummer Earl Palmer played "backbeat," influential on the formation of rock 'n' roll

Listening: Dippermouth Blues

Recording of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. An example of blues elements in early jazz. Characteristics: bending of notes, sliding into notes, polyphony, and 12-bar blues harmonic progression.

Listening: Tangle Eye Blues

Recording of a Field Holler. Characteristics: Swooping changes of pitch, sliding between notes, unaccompanied singing.

Sacred

Religious songs would be sung by a Jubilie quartet.

Rhythm

Rhythm is to African music what harmony is to European music. The central organizing principle of the art.

Secular

Secular songs would be sung by a Jazz Quartet. Secular orientation of musicians was part of a broader pattern in which membership in fraternal clubs replaced church membership.

Sissy Bounce

Term referring to the fact that bounce affords space for women and non-normative gender rappers. Artists dislike this term

Vernacular

Term used to describe the music culture of uptown "negros" in post civil war New Orleans. An Afrocentric, oral, and immersive culture which contrasts to the "learned" practices of the downtown "creole"

Dirge

Term used to describe the slow mournful music played while traveling to a burial in a Jazz Funeral in commemoration of the dead.

Polyphony/ New Orleans Counterpoint

Term used to describe the way the voices in a musical piece interact and the texture of said musical piece. Seen in brass and Jazz bands in which musicians in the front line are all playing distinctly different melodies all together.

Heterophony

Term used to describe the way the voices in a musical piece interact and the texture of said musical piece. Seen in sanctified and baptist churches in which the entire congregation sings the same melody with slight improvised variations

Baptist Church

The church was very successful in the conversion of freedmen because of they an experience of conversion which mirrored African rituals which had been important in slave religion and had preaching styles which engaged the worshippers emotionally. Because the church was a safe space for African-derived transitions, it fostered a lot of religious-musical practices which involved retention. Heterophony originates in the Baptist church singing practices. However, the church eventually shifted to discouraging the kind of ecstatic worship which came from slave religious practices which may be a reason that Armstrong and his mother left to join the sanctified church.

Harmony

The combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions having a pleasing effect.

Canal Street

The geographical border between the uptown "negros" and downtown creoles.

Creole

The original meaning comes from Portuguese: anything related to or coming from a colony or colonial context. In New Orleans, referred to the antebellum cast of free people of color who were often mixed race. Post civil war, the free people of color who resided downtown created a distinction between themselves and the newly emancipated slaves who resided uptown. Race: Black and mixed race Language: French Geography: Downtown History: Freedom during slavery Music: Opera, Symphonic, Pedagogy Occupations: Skilled trades

Second Line

The people who follow the band in a jazz funeral participating as they go.

disaster tourism

The practice of visiting locations at which an environmental disaster has occurred. some scholars have suggested that post-Katrina hip-hop can be viewed as disaster tourism.

Socialization

The process of experiences and surrounding society shape ones behavior. How practices are passed down from one generation to another.

Essentialism and its limitations

The unifying characteristics of African people and Africanism. Problematic because Africa is a big diverse country and this is referring to Africa and Africanism as a whole.

The Colored Waif's Home for Boys

This is where Louis Armstrong stayed after his arrest. The judge sent him here to make up for his lack of parental control at home. While here, he was exposed to Eurocentric musical pedagogy whereas before he was only exposed to African-American traditions.

Gospel Quartet Singing

Traditions of harmony singing that have roots in 4-part hymn singing, barbershop quartets, jubilee songs, and other gospel songs. Gospel quartets sing in four-part harmony with parts given to a tenor, lead, baritone, and bass.

Modern Jazz/Bepop

Type of Jazz originating in the 1940's. Played for listening not participation. The music is difficult to play with fast and challenging harmonies.

Congo/Kongo

Type of dance seen in Congo Square as well as many other areas. Characterized by a ring or circular form, drums, and call and response. In this dance women stay low to ground shuffling there feet and carrying handkerchiefs while men leap and perform feats of gymnastic dancing. Many dances with different names were derived from this dance.

Listening: Sing On

Upbeat march away from a burial in a jazz funeral. Includes percussion, a brass band: trumpet, trombone, tuba, snare drum. Characteristics include a polyphony texture and polyrhythm.

"Alabama Style"

a new style of quartet singing that originated in the Bessemer/Birmingham area and became influential and popular in New Orleans in the 1930s.

Dixieland Jazz

a style of jazz, originating in New Orleans, played by a small group of instruments, as trumpet, trombone, clarinet, piano, and drums, and marked by strongly accented four-four rhythm and vigorous, quasi-improvisational solos and ensembles.

Timbre

the character or quality of a musical sound or voice as distinct from its pitch and intensity. Sound color and tonality. Can be manipulated using a mute to distort the sound.

pedagogy

the profession or principles of teaching, or instructing. A characteristic of the "learned" downtown creole musical practices in New Orleans.