Jazz

Jazz music is widely known to have originated from Africa, and indeed much effort has gone into documenting the link between the two. From Africa, jazz took some shaping from Europe and finally found a home in America, where it was developed into its currently recognizable form in New Orleans. Nevertheless, jazz is very reminiscent of African drumming and singing. During the days of the Trans –Atlantic slave trade, quite a number of Africans were taken from their homes and shipped off to America and the West Indies and other such places where cheap labor was in high demand. There were vast plantations to work on, and these Africans, who had not quite caught up with the rest of the world, were perceived to be the ideal solution. Thus these men and women who usually held some reputable place in social circles, found themselves in a new land. Under different circumstances, they would have been thrilled to be there. The reason for their presence on that land was definitely not for pleasure, though. They were there to work. To keep them under control and keep their minds off their homeland, one of the measures employed was that they were forbidden to speak their native tongue, to play their native instruments or anything of the sort. Still they still managed to keep an element of their culture alive. Most of them are known to have come from West Africa, which is conveniently very close to the Atlantic and made shipping the slaves off much easier than dragging them in from the mainland.

It might help to go right back in time to see what the African music scene was like. Well, back in those days, African music was more than just something to while away time or to entertain. It was interwoven into every aspect of their lives. Africans belonged to tribes. Indeed to this day they still do. No one was quite expected to look on while the rest of the tribe performed an activity. Every hand was needed on deck. In those days the modern implements now available to us and even in those days available to the ‘white men’ were unheard of by Africans. They had to use their hands, with the help of a few crude implements. Surely this kind of work was daunting, and they needed some way of mitigating the stress. Music was the answer. It was not a spontaneous thing, but it just sort of developed over the course of time. As such, there was a song for every occasion, activity or function, be it work or play. They sang a song when they were happy, they sang a song when they were down-hearted, they sang a song when they were bored, and they sang a song no matter what they felt. This kind of thing may be noticed in the many moods expressed by jazz music. In Africa, even in story-telling, there was singing. Ananse stories for example were very popular in Ghana. At a point in the story, the narrator would raise a song and the children sitting in the circle eagerly joined in. Indubitably there was no way any slave master could take the African’s culture and music from him. And today it still exists in many forms, with jazz being a very important example.

THE AFRICAN FLAVOUR

African music is body and soul music. It was not just sung, it was lived. First of all once you were around and you had a voice, you had to sing. And once you were singing and you had the hands you had to clap. And once you were clapping you definitely had to dance. The older generation might however sometimes leave the energetic parts to the youth and simply sway a little or tap their sticks in time. Of course this was a bit limited when the music was being sung while working. But when they were really performing, though they had no opera houses and all that, they put in some effort. There were quite a number of instruments at the disposal of African musicians, depending on the region in consideration. However, the prominent instruments that run common throughout all the regions is the drum. Even then, there was a huge variety of drums, ranging from those made from hollowed out logs and gourds. They had animal hide stretched out across their mouth, and were beaten with sticks or the palms. Characteristically, African music has a strong rhythm, and this is provided by the ever-present sound of the drum. No matter how irregular African music may sound, it actually has a consistent though complex rhythm, and this is the vital part of African music that steered the tide of what was to become jazz music.

THE NITTY GRITTIES  

The African influence that we find in jazz is not the same African rhythm, but the emphasis here is on the rhythm. African music had a driving force brought about by polyrhythm and cross rhythms. A good illustration of a simple polyrhythm is this: a beat is established and two groups are formed. One group is to clap twice to the beat while the other group is to clap three times. A two-against-three polyrhythm is created. African music does not deal with such tame polyrhythm as these, though. It entails much more complex ones that sometimes make it look like African music was really disorganized. This is not so, though African music’s concept of harmony was much different from the Western concept of harmony. The many drums used in making the music each had their own distinctive rhythm which could easily be made out when played alone. However, a collection of different drums, each with its own set rhythm, were played together to create a complex but rich musical sound. Another link to jazz may be found in this of different sounds of music. It is known that African music predominantly makes use of the pentatonic music scale. To hear what the scale sounds like, play the notes C D E G and A, on a piano. The pent- prefix indicates that this is a five-note scale. The pentatonic scale may be found in the music of the Scottish, Mexicans, Japanese, Peruvians and others. African rhythms reflected their patterns of speech, and this is what led to the development of the pentatonic scale, which was obviously then not known as such. This scale therefore influences jazz, and also blues, heavily.

CALL AND RESPONSE  

As the title goes, call and response involves one line being said and then a response given right back. When it came to singing, largely African music had a single-line melody. Thus the leader of the song sings or chants a melody, and the partaking group throws back the response. This style is found heavily in jazz, and in fact in many other aspects of African-American activities. For example the leader in a church may shout a phrase, and the congregation eagerly responds. In jazz music this may be found in the way the instrument sounds respond to each other. One instrument, say the saxophone plays a melody, and the melody is thrown right back by the clarinet, albeit in a slightly altered form. African music also expressed all forms and kinds of vocal manipulations that are heard today in African-American music, and very little effort was made to produce the pure notes cherished in other genres of music. Although in a different kind of way, African musicians made good use of falsettos, raspy tones, buzzes in the voice, and bending notes. All these elements of African music were retained by the slaves and were expressed in field hollers and such, and eventually evolved into jazz.