[Dixielandjazz] Latin influences on early jazz

[Charles Suhor]

Some very illuminating points here, Ken (and others). I’ve been given plenty of reasons to rethink my doubts about Latin influences on early jazz. I’ve boiled it down to this—the criteria I set for significant INFLUENCE of Latin and other musics on EARLY jazz are these:

a.—there must be a musicological likeness
b.—there must at some time have been a close physical proximity of the musicians with early jazz players and/or their immediate ancestors
c.—there should hopefully be some archived testimony from the early jazz players
d.—anecdotal accounts can validly be part of c., but for credibility there should be some volume of quotes on a topic

Re a.,  I’m happy to learn that the Argentinian tango was a rich and varied rhythmic form. But what showed up in the early jazz tangos were the repetitive, simplified lines. it’s clear that show the essential energy of the original form wasn’t digested. It can’t, then, be called a meaningful influence on jazz. The rhythmic transfer didn’t “take." Likewise, it seems that the Cuban rumba percussion patterns that became “radically dislodged for the downbeat” (great phrase, Ken) were way ahead of early jazz, unless it can be shown that the infectiously joyous syncopations of ragtime are plausibly similar and that there were contemporaneous connections. 

I’m enjoying working my way through this. Thanks for the responses.

Charlie

 


> On Oct 28, 2015, at 8:16 PM, Ken Mathieson <ken at kenmath.free-online.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Hi Charlie et al,
> 
> I've been enjoying this thread and would like to add my tuppenceworth as we say in Scotland (that's two cents' worth for transatlantic listmates). I'll start off by challenging Charlie's assertion that "the tango is a very limited rhythmic background rhythm, lacking the energy and thrust of syncopated jazz that's often superimposed in solos over it." If Charlie means the simplified, repetitive pattern of the Tango as played by Gringo musicians for Gringo dancers he's got a point. But hear a good Argentinian rhythm section playing tango for skilled Argentinian dancers and it has a subtle, pulsating and fluid feel, with passages drifting in and out of double time and with dramatic rubatos and pauses which the dancers respond to, all the while building to a driving climax. As someone once observed of porteno tango "it's the vertical expression of horizontal desire!" The same thing can be said of gringo attempts to standardise and simplify samba, beguine, son, rumba etc. Indeed the rhythm called rumba in the Anglo-Saxon world is closer to a simplified bolero and a million miles away from authentic Cuban rumba in which percussion patterns become radically dislodged from the downbeat. Likewise in the Anglo-Saxon world the beguine rhythm is a misnomer and is in fact truly a simplified bolero (as in When They Begin the Beguine), whereas the Antillean beguine of Martinique and Guadelupe is usually a lively mid- to up-tempo rhythm with percussion patterns similar to bossa nova over a habanera bass pattern.
> 
> Given the non-existence of gramophone records in jazz's formative phase, it's likely that incoming stylistic influences were delivered by musicians for whom these styles were second nature. And just because these styles became watered down to make them more suited to Anglo-Saxon dance conventions, we shouldn't discount the impact of the real thing on early jazz players. A case in point is the music of the Caribbean: New Orleans was the most important port on the Gulf of Mexico and trade with the Caribbean islands was colossally important, so the music of the whole Caribbean must have have been familiar to the early jazz players. If you're in doubt, check out the similarities between the music of the New Orleans Creoles and the authentic beguines of Martinique (Stellio and Ernest Leardee). The Cuban/Puerto Rican influence was felt very early in NYC: Benny Waters told a musician friend of mine that when he first went to New York in the mid 1920s, many of the young black musicians went to regularly to hear the Puerto Rican bands in East Harlem, whose trumpeters, in Benny's words, "played just like Dizzy Gillespie; where do you think he got it from?" Als worth checking out is Brasilian choro music, which roughly parallels the development of jazz from ragtime through informal small group playing and a big band phase and eventually spun off into Bossa Nova with parallels in the Californian Cool School.
> 
> Re the influence of Scots-Irish music, much of this came through bluegrass fiddle playing and had some influence on ragtime. However another overlooked influence came from the drumming in Scottish traditional dance music. I was a friend of the late great Jake Hanna, who was very interested in the highly technical Scottish pipe band drumming tradition. One night after hours at the Sacramento Jubilee, Jake and I were in the company of Scots-born saxophonist, Jim Galloway. Jake had asked me about the drumming in Scottish Country Dance bands and when I was struggling to describe it, Jim suggested that he and I and the bassist and pianist from Fat Sam's Band who were also present, should play Jake a few selections. We did this and Jake listened carefully. When we'd finished, Jake said that, as a youngster, he had heard Zutty Singleton and other early New Orleans drummers (I'm nearly sure he also heard Baby Dodds, but wouldn't swear to it) and that the New Orleans style of jazz drumming had more to do with Scottish Country Dance drumming than it had to do with Africa. I thought he was kidding, but he was insistent that the drum patterns essentially contributed great horizontal drive while the bass and piano were stressing the vertical strong beats. In effect the drummer's role was essentially the same and the techniques employed were very similar.
> 
> Interesting thread - thanks Charlie!
> 
> Ken Mathieson
>