Roots of jazz; C'est la Congo

The recorded program is a presentation of the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the story of American jazz the story of an odd mixture of cultures. The story of an adventure in a recorded series of programs which will present the spirit facts music and people of an American art form. The drums of Africa the rhythm of the country in the southern part of the French West Africa and south of Nigeria. The drums of the. Did jazz come out of the hills of Africa. The staccato beat of an emotion

the expression of a taut skin. Is there anything of Africa in the deep sub conscious of the American Negro. Do people reflect the truth when they say the negro has rhythm. Who cares you say. Many do I do. This is the sound of the next half hour. This is the sound of the Americans pass. This is the sound of the drum. I'm going to say I don't think there's a slightest doubt as to the African influence in American jazz like saying C A T spells cat. I think it's that elementary. Listen when anyone listens to reconceive brought over from West Africa Togo land from da homie by

anthropologists could be Melba Herskovitz could be a waterman of Northwestern University out of nowhere decline means right now but you listen to the records and listen to the syncopation excitement of the rhythm the whole pattern you find in American jazz. That was Studs Terkel of Chicago who knows American jazz and folk songs. He says yes here is Barry Ulanov in a history of jazz in America. He says it won't do according to legend. The beat which is in the center of jazz as well as a fringe of decorative melody came over to the Americas from West Africa in the slave ships. This tradition holds that the American Negro shaped jazz by imposing a heavy layer of his native jungle chants and rhythms upon the European materials. He found in the land of his and forced adoption. For some years now a crew of industrious anthropologists and social scientists have been hard at work trying to

make this story stick. It is a seemingly impressive story buttressed with footnotes interlarded with quotations from German authorities generously sprinkled with the commonplaces of academic pretension. It confirms the average man's impression of the negro as a jungle formed primitive whose basic expression is inevitably savage. It sits well with the editors and readers of the country's sophisticated magazines where this conception of jazz finds high favor. From the point of view of jazz musicians themselves however the theory distorts the facts. Out of all resemblance to the true history of the music that has been played as jazz by jazz man since the end of the 19th century whatever its merits as myth it doesn't fit with the facts of the music itself. It won't do. Frankly I'm not that technical I myself. Overall I guess what will what do with the gestalt approach. Well overall I personally am not a

musician. I wouldn't detect this particular phrase this is Africa. I said I think the overall approach in terms of living in terms of being in terms of musical contributions generally. For example there's a recent album relative recent album of songs of West Africa by the sonar Senghor group you may have heard that you remember many of those songs dealt with the daily living well blues. You think of blues that it has to deal with. It doesn't deal with cosmic things. It deals with everyday living like a Blues could deal with a job or a silo has been done wrong too by a woman or vice versa. Might be a would just be trail in a very human way and daily living are alone so when you're innings or when Lead Belly sings I woke up this morning blues around the bed. I woke up this morning lows in the bread the blue something living and something very real and all that good jazz deals with the every day. Yeah and to live and live with some dignity and self-respect. And here is the voice of Rex Harris in his book jazz.

Songs and dances. That is the key to West African music and it's afro american descendent jazz. The song and dance were inseparable even as their language and their music were inseparable. And it is in this way that African melody filtered through the early work songs via the blues and instrumental synthesis with the human voice molded one facet of the classic jazz in New Orleans African rhythm quiescent to a large degree during that musical void of American slavery molded and other. And it does make a difference. We have to understand the roots the life of these people not only here but where they came from captivity and slavery may wipe out the long history of families may interrupt and even end the generations of progeny. But it didn't kill the memories. The tongue and it's use it didn't smother the long inherited customs and desires. These people were

after all adults with half a life behind them. A half which they didn't forget but carried with them and passed on to their children new slaves were constantly being brought in. There was a one way avenue of contact with the old customs the old people. Africa. They brought their religion and fused it with Christianity. They brought their ideas of decoration and expressed them in Western forms. They brought their language and assimilated English with it and they brought their Folkways Folkways which taught them to sing and make music out of their daily experience. In the words of so not a single leader of an African troupe of singers and dances and event takes place in a village and that night a song will be made up about it the next day. Everyone in the village knows of it and sings the song. If the event is of great enough importance or the words are beautiful poetry it will in time spread to other

villages and in a greater length of time be known throughout the length and breadth of Africa. So they improvised words and melodies improvised to their music around the events of their lives. Improvisation that single characteristic which stands out so glaringly in what we call jazz improvisation. That remarkable grant of freedom which could be expressed even in chains without fear. Why shouldn't it have shown its remarkable variety in work songs Schott's blues and coded musical messages joys and hollows. On several occasions been on. Seminars. And I've been to. Several meetings. Where we found.

Anthropologist. Mandela I mean. Dating. Back. I sat and listened one time to. Roughly. 100 songs that. The gentlemen I know. Come back from Africa. But on the whole free. I think for a year. He had over 600 I was fortunate enough to look about. 600 different languages. I mean no one can hope for the work. Whatever have you. And I have found such things as. That's Stephen Foster thing Camptown. Races about to be rolling saw. A roaring song that came off of the Nigeria river.

That it was. Had the same identical melodic pattern. And probably several other cases that I found in there. And what we call the Negro spirituals. Now I grew up bodily from. From Africa. And now they are part of our song here. I also found that. The things I did know all that. Over a sixteen hundred words. Commonly you colloquial expressions and Alabama Georgia and the Carolinas. What is commonly called. God. Came directly from Africa. Now all of these things I. Have put me to work to wondering about some of these things but these things just didn't remain stagnant.

They they move they move on just is like. They take direction of the wind now and. Another thing all together. And. You find yourself delving into why and how that was George Alina who with his brother operates a record distributor business in Chicago. How and why. That's what I want to know and many others too have asked the question. Some say it's the rhythm. Some say it's the speaking drum. Some say it's the slavery the humiliation. Tara Some say it's all of these. Here is writer Rex Harris again their drum language was not as it is generally believed a kind of primitive Morse code but was a mechanical reproduction of their own vocal language achieved by different pressures on a drum him while the more subtle but brought a lot of shaking effect

produced by vibration against the drum. In this way it was and still is a method of talking phonetically on drums. And the term speaking drums is an exact description. Here is Andres eed French writer describing an African dance in the moonlight. It ceased to be lyrical and became frenzied them and I. Some of the women look possessed. One old woman executed a solo in a corner by herself. She went on like a lunatic waving their arms and legs in time to the time to join the circle for a moment and then suddenly giving way to a frenzy went off again to one solitary place fell down and went on dancing armies.

A very young girl almost at the same moment left the circle like a stone which honestly made three metres backwards and rolled in the dust like a sack. I expected spasms and hysterics but no she made a lifeless mass over which I bent wondering whether her heart was still beating or she gave not a sign of breath. A little circle formed around two old men bent down and made passes over her shouting out I know not what strange appeals to which she made no answer. But the Tom-Tom seem to wake her. She dragged herself along the forced herself to them and fell down again for the last time on her Sinai and her arms stretched down her legs have them in an exquisite knowing and on and on and nothing succeeded in stirring them and out and you know I am I don't.

Know when I am I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM. But the question still remains does jazz Oh anything to the Africans. Was there ever anything in this country that resembled that dance scene in Africa. Here is an account of what took place in Congo Square in New Orleans given by all of cardio one during the 1880s a dry goods box and an old port barrel from the orchestra. These were beaten with sticks or bones used like drum sticks. So as to keep up a

continuous rattle while some old men and women chanted a song that appeared to me to be purely African and its many vowed syllabic cation. In the dance the women did not move their feet from the ground. They only ride their bodies in suede and under the Tory motions from ankles to waist. The men leapt and performed feats of gymnastic dancing. Small bells were attached to their ankles owing to the noise. I could not even attempt to catch the words of the song. I asked several old women to recite them to me but they only laughed and shook their heads in their pads while they told me no use. You can never understand it say like Congo. And so the argument persists. Is jazz a derivative of the African tribal songs or is it indigenous to America. How can we answer the question. Let's go to Africa. During the slaving days let's see how they were caught shipped and placed on plantations.

Here are the words of Robert Park well-known journalist and sociologist of minority peoples the great markets for slaves in Africa were on the West Coast. But the old slave trails ran back from the coast far into the interior of the continent and all the peoples of Central Africa contributed to this stream of enforced emigration to the new world. In the West Indies a great deal was known among slave traders and plantation owners about the character and relative value of slaves from different parts of Africa. But in the United States there was less knowledge and less discrimination coming from all parts of Africa and having no common language and common tradition. The memories of Africa which they brought with them were soon lost and here are the words of a present day African from Nigeria. Amos Tutu whose primitive writings retell the folklore of his people. There were many kinds of African wars and some of them are as follows

General wars. Tribal wars burglary wars and the slave wars which were very common in every town and village and particularly in famous markets and on main roads of big towns. At any time in the day or night these slave wars were causing deadlock to both old and young of those days. Because if one is captured he or she would be sold into slavery for foreigners who would carry him or her to unknown destinations to be killed for the buyer's guide or to be working for him. And how were they transported to America. What was a slave ship like. Do we know. Has anyone described it. Here is the account. See Al are James in his book Black Jacobins packed in the holds of the galleys one above the other. The slaves were given no more than four or five feet in length and about two or three feet in height so that they could neither lie at full length nor sit upright.

They were chained right hand to left leg and attached in rows to long iron bars. In this position they spent the months of their fetid voyage coming up once for less than a minute to empty their pails of vomit and excrement. The close proximity of so many naked human beings their bruised and festering flesh the prevailing dysentery and the general accumulation of filth made it impossible for any European to stay in the hold for more than a few minutes without fainting. The Africans fainted and recovered or fainted and died. During the storms the hatches were battened down and the heaving vessel hurled the slaves against their chains. Robert Park once had an opportunity to talk with an old man living just outside of Moby old. He was a member of what was known as the African colony. He remembers Africa and he said a missionary who knew our

language offered to send us back to Africa and even urged us to go. And I said to him that I crossed the ocean once but I made up my mind then never to trust myself in a boat with a white man again. Robert Park says the African negroes who came to America brought very little with them and had little opportunity to remember after they got here. In his words there was less opportunity in the United States also than in the West Indies for a slave to meet one of his own people because the plantations were considerably smaller more widely scattered and especially because as soon as they were landed in this country slaves were immediately divided and shipped in small numbers frequently no more than one or two at a time to different plantations. This was the procedure with the very first negroes brought to this country. It was found easier to deal with the slaves if they were separated from their kinsmen. On the plantation they were thrown together with slaves who had already forgotten or only

dimly remembered their life in Africa. English was the only language of the plantation. The attitude of the plantation slaves to each fresh arrival seems to have been much like that of the older immigrant. Toward the green horn everything that marked him as an alien was regarded as ridiculous and barbaric. And what was life like on the plantations. They worked all day. Sunrise to Sunset a white overseer amongst them with his whip men women boys and girls who worked the fields dark and dirty cabins with their homes their clothes were rough and scanty their masters fed and clothed them on fifteen dollars a year. They married and had children. Why were sold from their husbands husbands sold from their wives. Sold it to other Masters and other plantations. Families shattered and

formed the struggle to continue to capture a life meaning was a constant trial. Even babies were sold from their mothers breasts mother is Massa going to sell us tomorrow. Yes my child. Yes my child. Yes my child. Going to sell us down in Georgia. Yes yes yes. Going to sell is way down in Georgia. Yes yes yes. Oh watch and pray for your well mother. I must leave you. Very well fare you well mother. I want to leave you. Fare you well. Oh watch and pray. They worked from sunrise to sunset. I worked in the fields on the roads on the levees and in their

woods and their first songs were the work songs of songs which bear the rhythm of work. Yeah yeah I know that. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. The recurrent beat which mocked the Wik songs of the early generations was typified by the graphic as the hammer blow was made the pick brought down on the road. Well the axe sunk into the tree. You may know God but now we might be mad and we'd

be going to eat you. Did the work song reflect the functional chants and dances of the African. Or was it indigenous to the negro temperament and brought out by his environment as Dr. Park says. There are those who say that it's African and those who say it won't do. And so the question remains unanswered or probably with any number of answers depending on who you are. Negroes in Africa were great improvisers great drummers and great at creating song and dance from their everyday experiences. They passed the best of them down to their generations and they still sing some today that are hundreds of years old.

The negroes came to America. They were split up mistreated dispersed and beaten. But they sang songs about every day experience and with a keen sense of improvisation and rhythm. Negroes came to the West Indies and came to Louisiana. The French city from the West Indies and they brought music to the work song. The spiritual the blues of the plantations mixed with the rumba and the French Opera New Orleans and jazz came from somewhere somewhere where Negroes were because jazz came from uptown from Negroes town and negroes came from Africa. But maybe they didn't bring it with them. Maybe the drum of the Voodoo the drum of the Cameroon the bongo drum didn't come with them. Maybe they forgot but something happened because the negro

sang his stories and danced his heart. And Jazz had to begin somewhere. These are the drums of Africa. These are the voices of Africa in Nigeria. Try life if they are real. You're on a go people of Nigeria were brought to Brazil

Haiti Cuba and the United States. These are the drums and the voices of Haiti Africa. In the new world of. Present day religious following Africa. Does that look. All over

Los and in the United States saying a new language. And they prayed in a new way and lived a new life but they still sang prayed and lived with almost forgotten and unremembered and unspoken love. But it was in them and it came to pass even load.