Columbia College Chicago Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago Center for Black Music Research: Black Music Research Newsletter Publications Spring 4-1-1987 Black Music Research Newsletter, Spring 1987 Samuel Floyd Columbia College Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cbmrnews Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Education Commons Recommended Citation Floyd, Samuel, "Black Music Research Newsletter, Spring 1987" (1987). Center for Black Music Research: Black Music Research Newsletter. 24. https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cbmrnews/24 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. It has been accepted for inclusion in Center for Black Music Research: Black Music Research Newsletter by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BLACK MUSIC RESEARCH NEWSLETTER <. B \I I{ COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO Vol. 9, No. 1 ISSN Number 0271-3799 Spring 1987 Black Music in New Orleans: A Historical Overview by Curtis D. Jerde, Tulane University Long before the more prominent of any American city." Accordingly, it cended to play dance music for special metropolitan centers of today (e.g., served as the site of some of the earliest occasions did white musicians as a rule New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) could and most extensive Afro-American deviate from that norm. claim the distinction, New Orleans music development of any urban com­ Blacks in early New Orleans not only qualified as the nation's music capitol. munity in the nation .. gathered to dance indoors at public Historian Henry A. Kmen's Music in Black musical activity in New Or­ facilities, they also indulged them­ New Orleans: The Fonnative Years, 1791- leans dates back to at least the last de­ selves in such recreation in the open 1841, published by Louisiana State Uni­ cade of the eighteenth century. In keep­ air. Such outdoor promenades antici­ versity Press in il.966, tells the story of ing with the cultural character of the pated a cultural pattern that became America's first music city. In his preface, community, and consistent with an customary all the way into the jazz age, Kmen makes reference to the Crescent overriding motif of the black musical when such gatherings become memor­ City as a cultural center, "one which in heritage, it began primarily in connec­ able at sites like hlstoric Lincoln Park. its own way, rivaled the fabled 'flower­ tion with dance activity. Moreover, it During the late eighteenth and early ing of New England.'" had strong association with the growth nineteenth centuries, slaves (and possi­ As Professor Kmen intimates, of a pervasive street and saloon ambi­ bly even freemen in some instances) nineteenth-century New Orleans pos­ ence. danced in designated open expanses, sessed a rich and varied musical prod­ Case in point: in April of 1799 the ostensibly only at times prescribed by uct ranging from philharmonic to Spanish colonial government granted law. Place Congo (Congo Square) popular sensibilii!y, and including both one Bernardo Coquet permission to served as the designated area in that sacred and secular involvement. The begin holding public dances at his es­ period. growth of vernacular idioms is, how­ tablishment on St. Phillips Street for Motivated by intentions to con­ ever, most characteristic of musical de­ people of Afro-American descent. The struct a plantation economy, the velopment indigenous to New Orleans dialogue surrounding this transaction Spanish colonial government had in in its history. Based upon an accultura­ strongly suggests that such functions fact taken action in the decade follow­ tive process quite probably at work al­ had actually occurred there, and at ing the American Revolution to give ready in the colonial period, band comparable establishments in the city, impetus to growth of the slave popu­ music and dance music have especially for some years prior to that. Black lation. In addition to newly arrived defined the sound of New Orleans, people in New Orleans not only at­ slaves, some blacks undoubtedly also contemporaneously as well as histori­ tended them, chances are that they pro­ migrated with the Loyalist element cally. A plurality of ethnic influences vided the music as well, though no fleeing the English colonies along the has blended in a pattern of shared tra­ documentation exists by which to eastern seaboard in the wake of the ditions forged within the context of prove it. As in other established urban British defeat. Open-air dancing, per­ common urban folk experience. centers of the old South, blacks mitted pragmatically, it would seem, Preeminent in this melange of ethnic routinely provided music for dancing as a measure of control, probably did influences, a seminally important chap­ in New Orleans, for themselves as well not necessitate the imposition of ter in black music history took shape as for wrote society. White people in statutory proscription until the slave in the Crescent City. Kmen (1966, viii) fact looked upon it as a demeaning oc­ population had increased as signifi­ states that nineteenth-century New Or­ cupation. Only when professional cantly as it did in the 1780s. Krnen leans gave residence to "the largest musicians otherwise occupied playing Negro population, both slave and free, concerts or in the theaters condes- Continued on page 2 2 New Orleans, continued This element would form the cians far outstripping the available backbone of a community of Creoles supply. That situation prompted the (1966, 226) indicates that with cer­ of Color in the city, critica l for the cul­ germination of band academies oper­ tainty such concern dates at least to tural inroads it pr0vided, especially ated by itinerant "professors," in 1786, given the passage in that year in terms of musical development. many cases drawn from the ranks of of a law which "forbade slaves to Open avenues of approach to theaters New Orleans's free blacks of antebel­ dance in public squares on sundays and ballrooms brought the Creoles in lum musical vintage. Some of these and holy days until the close of the contact, directly and indirectly, with schools actually existed outside the evening service ." the classical tradition of European city proper and served as conduits The above-mentioned law in fact re­ music. As a result of such exposure, through which musicians from the im­ stricted such activity to Sundays, and midway through the antebellum age mediate hinterland passed eventually in Place Congo only. The scenario that a Negro Philharmonic Society would to take up residence in New Orleans. ensued paralleled similar situations in emerge. Its emergence signified the The black band academy estab­ the West Indies. As in the Caribbean, rise of an exemplary cadre of schooled lished by Uptown New O rleans musical performance in the beginning musicians. In addition to concert ac­ bandmaster James B. Humphrey, in seems to have reflected the African tivity, they performed at the Renais­ Plaquemines Parish south of the city, folk roots of the people. As related by sance Theatre, the first of a number symbolized this cultural phenome­ architect Henry Latrobe during a visit of black musical theater establish­ non most expressively. The Eclipse to the citv in 1819, it "consisted of two ments that would grace the city's cul­ Brass Band founded by Humphrey at drums a"nd a stringed instrument" tural terrain over the years. In time a Magnolia Plantation counted among (Kmen 1966, 227). The people sang in veritable honor roll of internationally a host of ensembles that emerged in call and response format to their ac­ recognized musical figures would de­ this period as progenitors of the black companiment and did a ring dance to rive from their midst, including bands that formed in the twentieth the rhythms emitted. However, such illustrious names as Edmond century. It, along with the Excelsior others observed a more eclectic re­ Dede, Basile Bares, Lucien Lambert, Brass Band, the Eu reka Brass Band, tinue, with fifes and fiddles Eugene V. Macarty, and in the jazz the Onward Brass Band, the Deer documented as having appeared as period, Ferdinand Joseph LeMenth Range Band (also a product of Mag­ early as 1799. (Lamothe?), better known as Jelly Roll nolia Plantation), the Pelican Brass The Caribbean connection repre­ Morton. Band (witr which Humphrey also sents an especially vital linkage for Possibly the most important trans­ played and eventually led), the black musical development in New ference of European influence affect­ Pickwick Brass Band, the St. Joseph O rleans. By the second decade of the ing the heritage of black music in New Brass Band, and the original Olympia nin eteenth century, the arrival of a Orleans involved the cultivation of a Brass Band, helped make up this first substantial number of West Indians, band tradition. It served as the prim­ wave of black bands that sprung from both slave and free, had mushroomed ary seedbed for the development of a the city. They set an important prece­ the black population in the Crescent jazz idiom. Black band music fi rst dent and generated vital momentum City substantially. Situated as it is on began appearing in the early years of for numerous ensembles that fol­ the northern rim, New Orleans actu­ the nineteenth century in response to lowed. Later, Oscar "Papa" Celestin's ally counts as a Caribbean commun­ the city's need for martial music. Tuxedo Orchestra, the John Robi­ ity, and the transit of musicians back The influx of freedom subsequent chaux Orchestra, A. J. Peron's Society and forth has left a considerable i.rn­ to the war, and the eclipse of civil Orchestra, and the Claiborne William's pression upon the city's vernacular rights that constituted the disappoint­ Orchestra were among the city's musica l style.