Der ganz erstaunliche Siegeszug des Jazz ab 1917

„High Society“ – klingt dieser frühe Jazz nicht siegesgewiss?

 

„High Society“, 1923 vom New-Orleans-Trompeter King Oliver erstmals eingespielt, hier in einer etwas späteren Version von New-Orleans-Pionier Jelly Roll Morton, 1939 (YouTube).

 

1 Drei Gründe, weshalb der Jazz sich so rasend schnell verbreitet

Erster Grund: Jazz ist Tanzmusik

Der bedeutende Historiker Eric Hobsbawn hält fest: Das Erstaunliche am Jazz sei nicht die Tatsache seiner Existenz. Das Erstaunliche sei vielmehr seine einzigartige Verbreitungsgeschwindigkeit zu Beginn. Man dürfe den Jazz in seiner Expansionskraft mit dem frühen Islam vergleichen.

Wie beginnt alles?

Alle wollten im Amerika der 1910er-Jahre wie Irene und Vernon Castle tanzen. Wozu tanzten die Castles? Zu Ragtime oder jazzähnlichen Klängen!

 

 

Eine Tanzwut ab 1910 in den USA ist die entscheidende Bedingung für die Ausbreitung des Jazz. Das erfolgreiche Tanz-Tandem Vernon und Irene Castle beschäftigt in den 1910er-Jahren afroamerikanische Musiker. Die Original Dixieland Jazz Band spielt schon 1919 im britischen Hammersmith Palais. In einer Tanzhalle also. Dank seiner Verbindung mit Tanz verbreitet sich Jazz, ähnlich der argentinischen Tango-Musik, über die ganze Welt.

 

„The Castle Walk by Vernon and Irene Castle (1915)“. Die zu hörende Musik stammt von Jim Europes Society Orchestra (YouTube, 1:13).

 

Der Begriff Jazz für die frühe rhythmisierte Tanzmusik im sogenannten „Jazz Age“ der frühen 1920er ist freilich etwas irreführend. Jazz im engeren Sinn – mit Swinggefühl, mit Solo-Improvisationen – entsteht erst später. Eric Hobsbawn sagt, 97 Prozent dessen, was damals unter Jazz lief, sei faktisch kein Jazz gewesen.

„Authentic undiluted [unverwässerter] jazz made no great impact on the general white public, though the northern tour and the records of the (white) Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917 caused a temporary sensation, and conveniently serve to mark the beginning of the ‚jazz age’. Both the date and the label are misleading, for the ‚jazz age’ had begun – though not under that precise trade-mark – some years earlier and it was not so much an age of jazz as of the mass conversion of ordinary pop and dance music to some idea vaguely involving syncopation, rhythm, instrumental novelty effects such as barnyard imitiations, and the like. This new idiom was undoubtedly influenced by jazz, but it is safe to say that ninety-seven per cent of what average white North American and European heard under that label between 1917 and 1935 had as little to do with jazz as the costume of drum-majorettes has with battledress.“

Der „Jazz“ profitiert davon, dass die Leute zu populärer Musik ab zirka 1910 plötzlich tanzen wollen:

„The triumph of this hybrid jazz is so important as phenomenon that we must look at it more closely. In the first instance it was almost certainly due to the triumph of ballroom dancing and especially – among the younger twentieth-century generation – of a fairly fast type of dance [ …] From about 1910 on, publishers seem to have observed that no song was likely to become a smash-hit unless it was also danceable. Within a decade practically all songs would automatically be supplied with a dance orchestration in strict time, however little suited to them. […] Fortunately it is the fact of the dancing vogue rather than its explanation which concerns us here. I dare say it was closely connected with the loosening of Victorian conventions of social behaviour, and especially with the emancipation of women.“

Ohne Erfolg des Foxtrot-Tanzes kein Welterfolg des Jazz:

„From 1900 the invention of new rhythmic dances became a minor industry The crop of 1910-15, Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, etc., produced the most lasting formula, the Foxtrot. It is safe to say that without the foxtrot and its cousins (the Shimmy, originally a Barbary Coast indecency, was particularly popular in Europa in the 1920s) the triumph of hybrid jazz in pop music would have been unthinkable […] The dancing vogue automatically brought infiltration of Afro-American idioms into pop music […] and a craze for drumming and drum solos, such as has periodically sized the more moronic part of the public, was already running its course in 1914-16.“

„From 1912 or so the blues entered popular music. W.C. Handy published some of his finest pieces between then and 1916 (Memphis Blues, St Louis Blues, Yellow Dog Blues, Beale Street Blues), and 1916 saw a battle between pop music publishers over the priority of their respective blues. From about the same time the term ‚jazz’ (or jazz, jaz) came to be used as a generic label for the new dance music […] Toward the end of 1917 ‚jazz bands’ were already being formed in Britain.“ (Hobsbawn, Jazz Scene, 47-49)

 

Ragtime-Tänze zwischen 1910 und 1920: Animal Dances, Castle Walk, Tango und Maxixe. Auszug von: How To Dance Through Time, Vol II (YouTube).

 

 

 

Jazz animiert zum Tanz. Weil er die Trommel nutzt. Das ist alles andere als banal mit Blick auf die abendländische Konzertmusik, in der Rhythmisches eine vergleichsweise untergeordnete Rolle spielt.

Besonders New Orleans ist voller Trommeln. Weil man die Trommel als Definitionsmerkmal aller moderner afroamerikanischer Musik sehen darf, bezeichnet der deutsche Pophistoriker Karl Bruckmaier New Orleans nicht nur als Mutterstadt des Jazz. Sondern auch als die von Pop.

Bruckmaier lässt seine Geschichte des Pop beginnen, indem er Spuren der Trommel nachforscht. Falsch, wenn man Vorläufer des Pop in europäischer Salonmusik und im Schlager des 19. Jahrhunderts sucht, wie es der deutsche Poptheoretiker Peter Wicke tut. Pop heisst Groove! Pop heisst Afrika!

New Orleans ist mit seinen französischen, spanischen, karibischen Einflüssen einzigartig in US-Amerika. Es ist viel freier, als die Städte unter dem Einfluss der protestantischen Puritaner. In New Orleans mit seinen vielen Schwarzen darf die Trommel sprechen! Weil langezeit spanisches Recht gilt.

„Spanisches Recht erlaubt dem Sklaven, seine alte Sprache zu sprechen, die Trommel zu schlagen, Vereinigungen zu bilden, Eigentum zu erwerben […] Britisches Recht dagegen betrachtete die Schwarzen als blossen Gegenstand, dem amerikanisches Recht noch die letzten Rudimente persönlicher Freiheit wie eigene Sprache oder Kultur aberkannte, und es reduzierte die Schwarzen auf den Status von Vieh, das man nach Belieben züchten, misshandeln, töten, ausnutzen und verkaufen konnte.“

Zweiter Grund: Der frühe Jazz setzt sich in den 1920er-Jahren durch dank seiner Fröhlichkeit

 

 

Laut Marc C. Griedley („Jazz Styles“) ist früher Jazz als „fröhliche“ Musik unheimlich populär. Griedley stellt eine Parallele her zum Rock der 50er- und 60er-Jahre:

„The earliest jazz had a wide appeal, especially to youthful audiences and particularly to social dancers. […] Like much rock and roll of the 1950s, New Orleans and Chicago styles of the 1920s are often perceived as happy music. Traditionally they have been used as entertainment to set a mood of cheer and frivolity. Though scholars and musicians often take the music quite seriously, the public associates the sound with images of exciting parties in the ‚Roaring Twenties’. Unlike the solemn view often ascribed to modern styles, the earliest styles are usually perceived as lighthearted and fun, though many of the early classics possess masterful construction and great depth of emotion.“

 

 

Musik, die selbst die Trauer beim Tod verscheucht: „Oh did’nt He Ramble“ von Jelly Roll Mortons New Orleans Jazzmen (New York 1939) (YouTube).

 

Dritter Grund: New Orleans spielt bei der Geburt des Jazz eine Sonderrolle, weil seine Musiker so wanderfreudig sind

Jazzähnliche beschwingte Musik wie Ragtime oder die von Bluessängern gibt es früh verschiedenenorts in den USA. Doch das New-Orleans-Modell des Jazz wird massgeblich. Und es verbreitet sich! Warum? New Orleans gilt als die musikalischste Stadt der USA – und viele Musiker aus New Orleans machen sich sehr früh auf zu Reisen durch die ganzen USA und verbreiten so ihre Klänge. Besonders bekannt: Jelly Roll Morton, Pianist und Komponist.

Eric Hobsbawn wendet sich gegen den Mythos, dass Jazz nur in New Orleans entstanden sei, unterstreicht aber die prioritäre Rolle der Stadt:

„All [black] America was ready to burst out into one form or another oft he jazz idiom anyway. Nor was the New Orleans influence the only one. The ragtime pianists, the blues singers in their tent shows, were already on the scene.“

„It is therefore obvious that jazz was not simply ‚born in New Orleans’. In one way or another the mixture between European and African elements was crystallizing into musical shape in many parts of America. Nevertheless, New Orleans can defend its title as the cradle of jazz against all comers, for there, and there alone, did the jazz band emerge as a mass phenomenon. How massive is indicated by the startling fact that this city of, say, 89’000 [black] inhabitants – the size of Cambridge – in 1910 contained at least thirty bands whose reputation has survived. The priority cannot be disputed.“ (Hobsbawn, Jazz Scene, 37)

Die Musiker aus New Orleans touren ausgiebig und machen ihre Musik bekannt:

„The thruth is that New Orleans players begann to tour the hinterland and the rest of the country almost immediately, even getting as far as Europe, though nobody took much notice of them there before 1919. It would be tedious to list such of their movements as have been traced. We need only recall that in 1907 Jelly-Roll Morton reports how he went to Chicago, then to Houston, Texas, then to California, then back to New Orleans via Texas and Oklahoma, getting a new girl in each place and winning a lot of money at pool. Touring was part of the economy of entertainers anyway, and New Orleans, a major reservoir of musicians even before the rise of jazz, must have been frequently tapped.“ (Hobsbawn, Jazz Scene, 43)

 

2 Wie New-Orleans-Jazz klingt

Eric Hobsbawn notiert zur Instrumental-Besetzung des New-Orleans-Jazz und zum frühen Jazz-Repertoire:

„The earliest style of ‚ancient’ jazz was that of New Orleans, whose origins in military band-music are still evident. Its instrumentation normally consisted of cornet (from the mid twenties also trumpet), clarinet, trombone, tuba (later bass), and snares and bass drums. The banjo (later guitar) was added subsequently, as was the piano, which obviously had no place on the carts or in the hands of the perambulating musicians. It was a solo instrument for ragtime or blues. The saxophone never had a place in New Orleans music.“

Hobsbawn zur Klangkultur des frühen Jazz:

„The instrumental technique combines the African vocalizing of the uptown [people of color] with the orthodox French style oft he Creole, especially obvious in the woodwind: thus Johnny Dodds plays technically mediocre, but wonderfully blue and vocalized clarinet, while Bigard or Simeon play the liquid ‚Creole clarinet’. The repertoire, which even the gloomiest jazz haters admit to be jolly and tuneful, was again largely derived from European dances and marches, with the French influence dominant and a marked ‚Spanish tinge’ owing to the proximity of the Caribbean. The actual derivations have in many instances been established, e.g. for ‚Tiger Rag’, which comes from a quadrille. Though New Orleans knew the blues, it seems never to have integrated it as fully into jazz as the Kansas City players or Duke Ellington did later; perhaps because oft he strength of the Creoles and their dominant, and quite ‚unblue’ musical tradition. The blues in New Orleans was regarded mainly as whorehouse music. Not until after 1914 or so was a link between blues and instrumental jazz firmly forged … „

Ein Wort zur New-Orleans-Polyfonie:

„The chief vocal characteristic of New Orleans jazz was a three-part vocal polyphony. The cornet carried the main melody and the band, the clarinet, with its capacity to make itself heard over a mass of noise, filled in its own melody rather more elaborately between the lead notes and answered them, the trombone set up a brass counterpoint to the cornet. The rhythm section laid down a rock-firm beat, normally accenting two of the four beats to the bar, but initially with relatively little syncopation or rhythmic subtlety. The melodic and rhythmic complexitiy of the music emerged from the interplay of all the instruments, which normally improvised collectively, with not much scope for long individual instrumental breaks or solos. Later this tended to develop into a three-part musical form: an opening section, in which the instruments, led by the cornet, played together, a middle section, in which the individual players could show their paces in solos or duets, and a final section in which everybody once again went to town: one of the most exhilarating sounds in jazz. The former style is illustrated by the (rather late) first recordings of [black] Orleans jazz in the early 1920s from King Oliver’s band, the latter by many of the ravishing records of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five.“ (Hobsbawn, Jazz Scene, 93)

Klangbeispiele für den alten New-Orleans-Jazz, seine kollektive Improvisationskultur:

 

Der „Tiger Rag“ in der frühen Version der Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1917) (YouTube).

 

Der „Tiger Rag“ in einer späten Version von Louis-Armstrong-Posaunist Kid Ory, gespielt 1959 in der Pariser Salle Pleyel (u.a. mit Henry Red Allen an der Trompete). Die Form des Stücks ist einer französischen Quadrille entlehnt (YouTube, 4:16).

 

Eine Quadrille, die formal-musikalisch Ursprung des „Tiger Rag“ ist. Eine Quadrille ist ein französischer Tanz für vier Paare, entstanden zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts. Das Filmbeispiel bringt eine beschwingte Musik, deren Nähe zum Tiger Rag durchaus vorstellbar ist (YouTube, 6:50).

 

King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band „Dippermouth Blues“ (1923) (YouTube).

 

Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five „Struttin’ Some With Barbecue“ (1927) (YouTube).

 

Abschliessend zur Frage, wie New-Orleans-Jazz klingt – einige brillante resümierende Bemerkungen von Scott Deveaux und Gary Giddins (Jazz – Essential Listening, New York, 2011):

„In the decade from Bolden’s heyday until the success of recorded jazz in 1917, New Orleans musicians continued to develop their own distinctive style. We can’t know precisely what their music sound like, but by extrapolating backward from later recordings, and by drawing information from photographs and interviews, it’s possible to offer a general portrait of early New Orleans jazz.“

„Its instrumentation derived from two sources. Brass band societies, which spawned smaller dance groups, gave the music its melody instruments: trumpet or cornet, trombone, and clarinet. Together, these instruments are called ‚front line’, reflecting their position at the head of a marching band. (Fans who loyally followed a parade band came to be known as the second line.) Brass bands also, inadvertently, fostered the drum set, combining the elements of parade percussion – bass, drum, snares, cymbals. The other source was string ensembles, which featured violin, banjo, mandolin, and other instruments – including guitar and bass, which became indispensable to the jazz rhythm section. The piano begann to find a stable role in jazz bands with the advent of ragtime […]“

„By the time they began recording, New Orleans bands had already attained an unmistakable ensemble style. There was no obvious star or stand-out soloist. The front line improvised a dense, polyphonic texture – a collective improvisation, with each instrument occupying its own musical space (clarinet on top, cornet in the middle, trombone at the bottom), rhythm (clarinet is fastest, trombone slowest), and timbre. […] Breaks and stop-time (where the band stops to let a single musician briefly solo) were common; soloing as we think of it was rare. In this sense, New Orleans Jazz embodied the folk aesthetic, in which the group almost always subsumes the individual. […] Formally, New Orleans bands usually relied on ragtime-type compositions with multiple strains (as well as the novel structure of the twelve-bar blues). This meant that performances were not simple, repetitive structures – or at least not completely so. At the beginning of a number, each strain was often played only once. The trio offered a point of contrast: modulating to a new key, dynamic level, or texture. The musician’s performances were tied to the composition, with little opportunity to break loose from it to play improvisations (solo or collective).“ (Devaux, Giddings: Jazz – Essential Listening, 62)

3 Jazz: Ein Vorläufer globaler Kultur

Jazz entsteht als Synthese verschiedenster Einflüsse – ablesbar an den verschiedenen Ethnien in New Orleans, die ihre Herkünfte einbringen in den Gumbo oder die Bouillabaisse des Jazz.

 

 

Da sind ehemalige Sklaven in New Orleans, die schon von 1817 an freien Sonntag auf dem Congo Square trommeln, tanzen, singen. Da sind „Creoles of colors“, Nachfahren französischer oder spanischer Emigranten, die mit schwarzen Frauen Kinder haben. Da sind sonst Bürger aller möglichen Nationalitäten von Deutschen über Italiener bis hin zu Iren! Sie bringen ihre Musik mit, Franzosen und Briten vor allem auch Blasmusik. Da ist auch die Oper in New Orleans; da ist „Voodoo“; da gibt es die Plantagensongs aus den Minstrelshows, das beliebteste Unterhaltungsgeschäft über Jahrzehnte in den USA. Das ist alles miteinander verschmolzen. Wie in der Gumbo-Suppe.

Zu den afrikanischen Sklaven sowie anderen Bevölkerungsgruppen im Einzelnen:

Afrikanische Sklaven: „There is not much disagreement among the experts about the African components of jazz. Most of the slaves imported into the Southern states of the U.S.A were West Africans, the French (in whose Louisiana territory jazz first emerged) having a special preference for slaves from Dahomey. […] Among the musical Africanisms which the slaves brought with them were rhythmic complexity, certain non-classical musical scales … and certain musical patterns. The most characteristic of these are the ‚call-and-response’ patterns which dominate the blues, and indeed most of jazz, and are preserved in their most archaic form (as one might expect) in the music of primitive coloured gospel congregations, with ist echo of ‚shouting dances’. Certain types of functional songs were no doubt also brought over by the slaves: ‚field-hollers’ and work-songs … Such characteristic African musical practices as vocal and rhythmical polyphony, and the ubiquitous improvisation also belong to the slaves’ musical heritage. The only instruments they brought with them from Africa were rhythmic or rhythmic-melodic ones, and voices; but the characteristic timbres and inflexions of the African voice have coloured every jazz instrument since.“ (Hobsbawn, Jazz Scene, 30)

Spanische, französische und angelsächsische Bevölkerungsgruppen:„Jazz arose at the point where three different European cultural traditions intersected: the Spanish, the French, and the Anglo-Saxon. Each on its own had produced a characteristic Afro-European musical fusion.“

„Afro-Spanish influence affected jazz only as a ‚Spanish tinge’, to quote the pioneer New Orleans musician Ferdinand ‚Jelly-Roll’ Morton: an admixture of certain rhythms such as the tangana or the habanera which, as W.C. Handy already noted, roused a particularly vivid response among continental [people of color] … „

„The French musical tradition is far more important, particularly as it was fully assimilated by the peculiar class of freed slaves which grew up in New Orleans: the ‚gens de couleur’ or Creoles. They were normally former coloured mistresses of French settlers and their descendants. The Creoles in turn brought it among the lower-caste [people of color] in the 1880s, when the progress of segregation deprived them of their privileged position. The instrumentation of early New Orleans jazz, which is essentially that of the military band, the instrumental technique, particularly obvious in that French speciality, the woodwind, the repertoire of marches, quadrilles, waltzes, and the like – all are unmistakably French, as indeed are the dialect and the names of many oft he early (Creole) New Orleans musicians: Bechet, Dominique, St Cyr, Bigard, Picou, Prion, and the rest. … Equally important, probably, is the French – or perhaps more exactly the Mediterreanean or Catholic – social tradition of New Orleans: the profusion of public festivals, carnivals, fraternities … and parades, in which New Orleans jazz grew up.“

„The Anglo-Saxon components are in many respects the most fundamental. They consist of the English language, the religion and religious music of the colonists and, in a smaller way, their secular folk-songs and folk-music (…) The English language provided the words of [black] speech and song, and in it coloured Americans have created, with the jazz idiom, the finest body of English folk-poetry since the Scot ballads: the work-song, gospel song, and secular blues. The secular music of the colonists – perhaps mostly the Scots-Irish poor whites oft he South – provided a mass of songs many of which, taken up and modified by the [black] travelling minstrels, entered the jazz repertoire. ‚Careless Love’, the Kentucky mountain ballad, or ‚St James’ Infirmary’, whose derivation from an early English original A. L. Lloyd has traced, are examples.“ (Hobsbawn, Jazz Scene, 30)

 

Louis Armstrong: «St. James Infirmary» – die Ursprünge dieses Stücks sind englisch (YouTube, 4:45).

 

Appendix zu 1 bis 3:
Siehe für den Musikstreifzug eins auch Ken Burns „Jazz“, Vol 1., Episode 1, 8.05 bis 14.45 („Jeder hier ist Gumbo“)

4 Schweiz am Sonntag: „Baby, let the old time roll!“

Bestandesaufnahme des alten New-Orleans-Jazz in heutigen Tagen