[Dixielandjazz] Dixieland before ragtime?

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

The DIX (French) was essentially a ten dollar bill issued in the South.
That  is where the term, applied by northerners, came from and it predates
the civil war.  It's natural then for  music coming out of the South to be
called Dixieland.

I think a lot of people mix Dixie with blues.  It's true that Dixieland
music dips heavily into the blues for inspiration but it equally dips into,
as I pointed out before, classical counterpoint as well as J.P. Sousa and
Ragtime.  It is a mix of the four styles.  Sort of a musical cross breeding
to come up with something entirely different which is why it's so exciting.
It's also the reason why it's so difficult to pin down it's origins and
define it because it's like so many things.  Take any one of those four
elements away and you just don't have Dixieland as we know it.

The first indentured servants in the early colonies were almost always white
and were imported from England.  Why send a ship all the way to Africa if
you could get people that wanted away from their situation or debt so bad
they would sell themselves but it just didn't work very well.  It was
difficult to hold onto your indentured servant because they could beat feet
and blend into the rest of the population.  This was the problem with
Indians also.  Once those two groups got very far away you couldn't get them
back. The system of indenturing just didn't work out.   Blacks could always
be identified so you had a chance to get them back if they ran, they were
cheaper than indentured  servants  and you didn't have to let them go after
7 years. The rest is history.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <jazz_trombone at axint.net>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 5:09 PM
Subject: RE: [Dixielandjazz] Dixieland before ragtime?


>   Blacks did invent blues. Blues essentially comes from field
> hollers(working in the fields) and from spirituals. Many early blues
> were sung acapella because you very well couldn't be harvesting cotton
> while pickin' a guitar. Blues spoke of their despair of the life they
> were forced into with no way out. While no one knows how old the blues
> is, it can't be older than when the first black indentured servants
> landed in jamestown, Virginia in 1619.
>
>   As far as dixieland goes, to the best of my knowledge it is a northern
> term. I have no idea if it comes from blacks or whites but as far as the
> musical style goes, I believe that it was invented by blacks as well. It
> probably goes back to the days of the black brass bands.
>
> MB
>
>
>
>
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> > ps.  I've heard it said that Blacks invented the blues and in the same
> > breath the speaker said "and whites invented dixieland."  I have no idea
> > whether or not any of this is true.
> >
> > BG
>
>
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