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LOUIS ARMSTRONG - NEW ORLEANS BEGINNING: 1901 - 1922
Louis Armstrong was born August 4, 1901, in a poor uptown section of New Orleans, Louisiana, a cosmopolitan city with a distinctive blend of cultures and a rich musical history. The city’s African American community and culture would become the shaping force of jazz. Historically, Louisiana went back and forth between Spanish and French control until the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.Soon thereafter, slaves in New Orleans were given permission to meet for recreational purposes. They began to gather in a large open area of the city called Congo Square, a reference to a location on the African continent from which many of them came. Here they would dance for hours to the beat of handmade drums, reminiscent of their homeland. Following the Civil War, the Congo Square dances continued for over a decade, and then gradually declined.
During the 1700s slavery had existed in Louisiana under a system somewhat different from that of the other Southern states. Freed, or manumitted, slaves were given freedom as whites. These free people intermarried with whites and created a cultural group known as Creoles of colour, especially in New Orleans. In a rigid caste system, they were effectively separated from both blacks and whites, although they were very involved in such French culture as trades and the arts—especially music. Many Creoles of colour were fine performers and composers. The Creoles had higher education than blacks, and, as in white society, many of their children studied abroad. They lived in a section of the downtown French Quarter, while the black population lived uptown. In 1894 legislation was passed that designated Creoles as black, and they were forced to leave the French Quarter and live with the uptown blacks, who had a tradition of spirituals, ragtime, and blues. The mixture of the two groups produced the music we know as jazz. It was into this dynamic sociocultural milieu that Louis Armstrong was born.
Louis Armstrong was born in a city with respected musical traditions of opera houses, symphony orchestras, and brass bands and parades, with music for every occasion indoors and out. After his father left the family when Louis was an infant, he and his older sister Beatrice, nick-named “Mama Lucy,” were raised by his grandmother, Josephine, and mother, May Ann. He joined a quartet of other young boys and earned a little money singing on street corners for tips from passersby. In his autobiography, Armstrong states:“In those days ...I was going to church regularly for both grandma and my great-grandmother were Christian women....In church and Sunday school I did a whole lot of singing. That, I guess, is how I acquired my singing tactics.”
One day when he was about twelve years old, he secretly took his stepfather’s gun and fired it in the air during a New Year’s celebration. He was promptly arrested and sent to a reform school for boys, the Colored Waifs Home. There he was taught to play the cornet by the school’s band director, Peter Davis. He joined the marching band and led his schoolmates in parades. He left the Waifs Home after a year and worked on junk wagons selling coal for a Jewish family, the Karnofskys. The family treated him kindly, and he developed a great love and affection for them. With their help, he was able to purchase his first instrument, a cornet.
During his teen years, Armstrong continued practicing diligently on his instrument, working during the day and playing in honky-tonks with local bands at night. He was also hired by bandleader Fate Marable to play on one of the riverboats that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. His reputation began to spread, and he was becoming known as one of the finest young cornet players in New Orleans.
The African Music Heritage.
The tradition in New Orleans of allowing slaves to dance, sing, and play drums in Congo Square was a unique example of West African musical performance in the diaspora. It was symbolic of a tradition that survived to influence black musicians in New Orleans, thereby laying the seeds of a new sound that led to the creation of jazz. To begin the study of Louis Armstrong’s life and music, an introduction to the sounds of African music will highlight some of those early precursors of jazz that remained in the African American community and left an enduring tradition. As the majority of the slaves in New Orleans were brought from the west coast of Africa, you will listen two examples of traditional music from that area: a song from Ghana and a Nigerian drum ensemble.
Ghana is a tropical country in West Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, which bulges westward into the Atlantic Ocean. It was formerly called the Gold Coast due to its large deposits of gold, diamonds, and other precious metals. It is about the size of the state of Oregon, with nearly five times as many people. More than half of the people of Ghana are farmers who live in rural areas. Now, listen the Ghanaian folk song "Ka-Foo". English is the official language of the country, but many Ghanaians also speak African languages. The Ga people are one of the major cultural communities in the country with their own language, which we will hear on the recording.
The lyrics of the song are:
“Don’t cry, don’t cry; don’t cry and let them see your mouth. There is gold in your mouth; don’t cry and let anyone see your mouth."
The rythmic pattern of the song is as follows:
On the other hand, Nigeria has the largest population of any country on the African continent, making it one of the most populous nations on earth. The Yoruba (YAW-ruh-buh) people are one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria and are admired for the bata (BAH-tah) drums that are indigenous to their music and culture. Bata drums have conical shapes with two heads of animal hide and are usually played in sets of a large, medium, and small drum. Bata are played by male professional musicians and are famous for the complexity and excitement of their rhythms. African slaves brought the tradition of bata drumming to the Americas. The music on the recording is played at Egungun (eh-GOON-goon), a Yoruba festival.
Now, listen the "Bata Drums for Egungun", a drum ensemble of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, in which the drums begin playing a very rapid pattern against a slower, steady rhythm.
The listening of these two songs have been one approach to the complexities in African music that provide the basic understanding of jazz traditions.
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