Source+Six

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 * Jazz & the Blues:**

1. At the turn of the century, the streets of New Orleans were awash in blues music, ragtime and the native brass-band fanfares.

2. The influence of blues music could be heard in the way these instruments were played, because they basically imitated the vocal styles of blues music (often on a syncopated rhythm borrowed from ragtime).

3. Unlike blues music, that was exclusively performed by blacks, jazz music was as inter-racial as the melting pot of New Orleans.

4. New York was the epicenter of a fusion of the three great fads of the time: syncopated orchestras, ragtime and blues.

5. Harlem musicians were evolving ragtime into a faster and louder syncopated style, that relied a lot more on individual improvisation.

6. Its roots were still in blues music: the soloists were often trying to emulate the singing of the blues, and the counterpoint was trying to emulate the call-and-response of the blues.

7. Many jazz musicians cut their teeth accompanying blues singers, and learned to respond to the nuances of those passionate singers.

8. But the popularity of blues singers in the 1920s was such that New York's recording industry did not show much interest for jazz orchestras.

9. If the origins of jazz music were confusing, the difference between New Orleans and the other epicenters was more clear: improvisation.

10. The real improvisation was done only in the south, first by blues musicians (who mainly used vocals and guitar) and then by the musicians of New Orleans (who used also the horns).

11. Jazz music was very much a continuation of blues music, except that it took advantage of the instruments of the marching band.

12. The jazz musician was basically "singing" just like the blues singers even though he was playing an instrument instead of using his vocals.

13. After all, many jazz instrumentalists made their living accompanying blues singers in the vaudeville circuit.

14. The main difference between jazz and blues, i.e. the heavy syncopation, was the original contribution of ragtime.

15. For some observers of the time jazz music may have sounded simply like the instrumental side of blues music, or the group version of ragtime, or a non-marching club-oriented evolution of the marching bands.

16. The secret was in a rhythmic invention that knew no boundaries, at times reminiscent of the blues, of the march, of the square dance, even of Latin-American dances.

17. The big difference between jazz and blues (or the spiritual or the work song) was that jazz was indeed an "American" phenomenon, not an "African" one.

18. The roots of jazz music were in the South of the USA, not in West Africa. There was little relationship between the instruments of jazz and the original instruments of the West African slaves.

19. The lyrics of blues songs were emotional and documentary representations of harsh conditions of life. Jazz music had no lyrics or lyrics that were as artificial as the lyrics of pop songs. Jazz lyrics were, ultimately, disposable.

20. Blues music, on the other hand, was very much about the lyrics: instrumental-only blues music was almost an oxymoron. Thus, in spirit, jazz was closer to pop than to blues music.

21. Jazz was born as music to dance to. Blues music was born as music to mourn to. Again, jazz was closer to dance music than to blues music.

22. Last but not least, there were white jazz musicians from the very beginning, whereas there were no white blues musicians until the 1950s.

23. Thus it is not surprising that it would be blues music, not jazz music, to send seismic shock waves into white music, once it began to percolate into white society