Special of the Day: Musical Gumbo with the Roots of Jazz With upbeat, swing-like rhythms, exuberant solos and refrains of the fortissimo dynamic, and soulful notes of blues reminiscent of past racial hardships, jazz is certainly a genre like no other. Popularizing throughout the Reconstruction Era and Gilded Age of American history, the complex and passionate form of music that is jazz can be traced back to the assimilation of European, African, and Creole groups of varying socioeconomic backgrounds within the city of New Orleans. These groups not only fused together the traditional musical practices of their own cultures, but combined the various emotional revelations acquired from past events that occurred to individuals of their backgrounds …show more content…
A prime example of this notion is none other than one of the most infamous pioneers of jazz, Charles Joseph “Buddy” Bolden. Kallen states, “[Famous] for his sheer volume, Bolden played largely by ear and was credited by many of those who heard him as being the first to bring explicitly African qualities of flattened blue notes, vocalized tones, and “hot” syncopation into the ragtime setting— in other words, he was seen as the progenitor of improv in jazz” (19). Buddy Bolden was the first musician truly celebrated for playing jazz and also happened to be the inventor of the infamous jazz-style “Big Four” rhythm, “an accent on the upbeat of the fourth note within a measure” (Gumbo: Beginnings to 1917). It is of common knowledge that Buddy Bolden is to jazz what Babe Ruth is to baseball, a groundbreaking and influential man of his kind. However, there is also another charismatic character that assisted in the pioneering of jazz music— a man that went by the name of Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, better known as “Jelly Roll Morton”. Jelly Roll Morton, a Creole piano virtuoso, was the first jazz performer to write down his compositions as sheet music. Kallen states in The History of Jazz, “This allowed other musicians across the globe to learn real Jazz first-hand from Morton's notes written on the page” (21). Jelly Roll Morton was greatly influenced by Buddy Bolden— whether it be by the qualities of Bolden himself, or by the playing style of the “Big Four” inventor’s music. Expressed in Gumbo: Beginnings to 1917, Jelly Roll Morton “took Buddy Bolden's feel of music. [He was] attracted to nightlife” and “took a teen job playing in a whorehouse in Storyville… [blending] ragtime, minstrelsy, the blues, [and] Spanish-tinged (Habanera beat)” musical styles. Overall, Jelly Roll Morton became infamous for transforming stiffly-structured ragtime piano