[Dixielandjazz] Why Americans Don't Like Jazz

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/3/04 8:45:27 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
jazz_trombone at axint.net writes:

> a. People are attracted to strong, repetitive beats and rhythms and 
> lyrics wether they realize it or not. This is why rock and roll got very 
> popular. Jazz is much more complex with it's constant chord changes.
> 
> b. Many Americans never really identified with the culture behind jazz. 
> Jazz came primarily from blacks and in that music came the story of the 
> suffering and anger black lived with everyday. Not every tune revealed 
> this but many did if you listen close enough.
> 

Another though just came to me folks about this subject that I forgot to 
mention when I posted a reply to Jim Kash's post.

Africans used to communicate in their homeland by drums and various rhythms 
became a language to send messages long before the invention of the telegraph, 
:)

This was also a comon practice with many Native American Indian tribes, ( 
remember the stories about the WAR drums?)   They also used SMOKE signals to 
communicate over great distances.

Early Balck slaves in America and other countries who could not speak the 
local language often communicated in this manner and even made their own 
instruments fashioned after what they had played in their homelands.   

It was therefore a natural progression for them to infuse these instruments 
with whatever others they could get their hands on in this new foreign 
environment to make experimental music combining melodies and rhythms from all around 
them as they heard them.  

They borrowed diddies and melodies from Irish & Scottish, celtic, classical, 
chamber and whatever else they were exopsed to in those days syncopated old 
gospel songs and hymns of the white churches of the South which was their 
primary source of learning English, and the only book they were allowed to even read 
was the BIBLE which the slave owners wives thought was certainly not going to 
do any harm to these poor  ignorant and thought to be stupid savages.

The same thing happened in South America which developed into great sources 
of future Latin Jazz, Afro Cuban Jazz, and brought us musically integrated jazz 
greats like Tito Puento, Prez Perado, and many others.

Therefore it makes perfect sense that most common folks that are not 
musicians can and indeed do at the very least conjure up visual images when they first 
hear music therefore as Jim Kash said The see it first and hear it second.


Once again to deny that Jazz originated with Black musicians in American and 
South America is downright criminal.   Without them there is a chance we would 
all still be playing European waltzes, and Irish jigs, over and over and over 
exactly the same way every time.

Cheers,

Tom  ( I saw that) Wiggins