[Dixielandjazz] Spanish Influence

Bill Haesler bhaesler at bigpond.net.au
Wed Oct 28 19:29:11 PDT 2015


John Gill has returned us to Charlie's original 'Latin Influences On Early Jazz' thread.

Dear John,
And what a fine and thought-provoking contribution it is.
Charlie will be pleased.
I too was hoping for something beyond a list of tune and song titles with Spanish and Latin themes.
While well aware of Jelly Roll Morton's comment to Alan Lomax in 1938 that "...if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning...for jazz", unfortunately, I have never really found it within early jazz recordings, as you obviously have, other than the obvious/deliberate examples. 

> ...Another subject is a Mexican musician and composer named Juventino Rosas who went to New Orleans in the late 1880's or early 1890's and took that city by storm with a tune called "Sobre Las Olas" or as we know it "Over The Waves"... A very interesting series of articles was written about this Mexican Band and it's various influential musicians in the Tulane Jazz Archive newsletter several years ago...

Mention of the Tulane Jazz Archive newsletter jogged the old memory regarding an article therein regarding Morton and the 'Spanish Tinge'.
I went back to my newsletters and found it, 'The Spanish Tinge Hypothesis' by John Doheny. 
(Along with the three Mexican Band 1991, 1994 and 2007 Jack Stewart articles you refer to.)
It is in Vol. XIX (2005-2006). Pages 8-15.
And is online at:
    http://jazz.tulane.edu/sites/default/files/jazz/docs/jazz_archivist/Jazz_Archivist_vol19_2006.pdf#spanish
It was certainly an interesting re-read for me.

> In the 1880's there was a very popular style of Mexican music called Banda music, a brass based traditional Mexican music... very much like the older New Orleans brass band music as exemplified by The Olympia Brass Band, and The Onward Brass Band. Check it out.

I will. With new interest.

>    I don't know why the influences of Mexico do not get much credit in jazz history, I guess it just doesn't fit the narrative that the historians wish to promote.

I doubt that we alien jazz mouldies would have even suspected that there was Mexican jazz.
Thank you for the interesting dissertation. 
I still manage to learn something new every day.
Kind regards,
Bill.


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