Editing Jazz (section)

== Early development ==
Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century.  It developed out of many forms of music, including [[blues]], [[ragtime]], European [[harmony]], African rhythmic rituals, [[spirituals]], [[hymns]], [[march (music)|marches]], [[vaudeville]] song, and [[dance music]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/art/jazz |title=Jazz |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=September 2, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nps.gov/jazz/learn/historyculture/history_early.htm|title=Jazz Origins in New Orleans – New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park |publisher=National Park Service |access-date=March 19, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.sbg.ac.at/ges/people/wagnleitner/usa3/nov26frame.htm |title='The Jazz Book': A Map of Jazz Styles |last=Germuska |first=Joe |publisher=WNUR-FM, Northwestern University |via=[[University of Salzburg]] |access-date=March 19, 2017}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |title=On the Instrumental Origins of Jazz |last=Roth |first=Russell |journal=[[American Quarterly]] |issn=0003-0678 |date=1952 |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=305–16 |doi=10.2307/3031415 |jstor=3031415}}</ref><ref>Ferris, Jean (1993). ''America's Musical Landscape''. Brown and Benchmark. {{ISBN|0-6971-2516-5}}. pp. 228, 233.</ref><ref>Starr, Larry, and Christopher Waterman. [http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2008/08/20080812212457eaifas0.7410852.html#axzz3QeZKNVtc "Popular Jazz and Swing: America's Original Art Form"] ({{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170203024847/http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2008/08/20080812212457eaifas0.7410852.html#axzz3QeZKNVtc |date=February 3, 2017}}). IIP Digital. Oxford University Press, 26 July 2008.</ref><ref name=encyclopedia>{{cite book |author1= Tammy L. Kernodle |author2= Horace Maxile |author3= Emmett G. Price III |date=2010 |title=Encyclopedia of African American Music |publisher=Greenwood |page=426}}</ref>{{citekill|date=November 2024}} It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and the influences of West African culture.<ref name=listverse>{{cite web|title=15 Most Influential Jazz Artists|url=http://listverse.com/2010/02/27/15-most-influential-jazz-artists/|publisher=Listverse|access-date= July 27, 2014|date=February 27, 2010}}</ref> Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre.<ref name=definejazz>{{cite web|last1=Criswell |first1=Chad |title=What Is a Jazz Band? |url=https://suite.io/chad-criswell/88s26b |access-date= July 25, 2014  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140728201650/https://suite.io/chad-criswell/88s26b |archive-date= July 28, 2014}}</ref>

===Blended African and European music sensibilities===

[[File:Dancing in Congo Square - Edward Winsor Kemble, 1886.jpg|thumb|right|Dance in Congo Square in the late 1700s, artist's conception by [[E. W. Kemble]] from a century later]]
[[File:Slave dance to banjo, 1780s.jpg|thumb|right|The late 18th-century painting ''[[The Old Plantation]]'', depicting African-Americans on a [[Virginia]] plantation dancing to percussion and a banjo]]
By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as [[Congo Square]], famous for its African dances.<ref>{{cite web|url = https://www.nps.gov/jazz/learn/historyculture/history_early.htm|title = Jazz Origins in New Orleans|publisher = U.S. National Park Service|website = New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park|date = April 14, 2015}}</ref>

By 1866, the [[Atlantic slave trade]] had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/|title=How Many Slaves Landed in the U.S.? |website =The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross |date= January 2, 2013|publisher=PBS|url-status=live  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150921182328/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us |archive-date=September 21, 2015|author-link=Henry Louis Gates Jr|last = Gates|first = Henry Louis Jr.}}</ref> The slaves came largely from [[West Africa]] and the greater [[Congo River]] basin and brought strong musical traditions with them.{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=7–9}} The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and [[Call and response (music)|call-and-response]] pattern, and the rhythms have a [[cross-beat|counter-metric]] structure and reflect African speech patterns.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=DeVeaux|first=Scott|date=1991|title=Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography|jstor=3041812|journal=[[Black American Literature Forum]]|volume=25|issue=3|pages=525–560|doi=10.2307/3041812|issn=0148-6179}}</ref>

An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and a drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel.<ref name=":0"/><ref name="Hearn2017">{{cite book|last=Hearn|first=Lafcadio |title=Delphi Complete Works of Lafcadio Hearn|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XlwvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT4079|access-date= January 2, 2019|date= August 3, 2017|publisher=Delphi Classics|isbn=978-1-7865-6090-2|pages=4079–}}</ref>

Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843.<ref>"The primary instrument for a cultural music expression was a long narrow African drum. It came in various sized from three to eight feet long and had previously been banned in the South by whites. Other instruments used were the triangle, a jawbone, and early ancestors to the banjo. Many types of dances were performed in Congo Square, including the 'flat-footed-shuffle' and the 'Bamboula.'" [http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/congo-square-soul-new-orleans African American Registry.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141202083601/http://aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/congo-square-soul-new-orleans |date=December 2, 2014}}</ref> There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. [[Robert Palmer (American writer)|Robert Palmer]] said of percussive slave music:

<blockquote>Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when the year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from the period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War.{{sfn|Palmer|1981|p=37}}
</blockquote>

Another influence came from the harmonic style of [[hymn]]s of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as [[spirituals]].{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=14–17, 27–28}} The [[origins of the blues]] are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as [[Gerhard Kubik]] points out, whereas the spirituals are [[Homophony|homophonic]], rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of [[heterophony]]".{{sfn|Kubik|1999|p=112}}

[[File:Virginia Minstrels, 1843.jpg|thumb|right|The blackface [[Virginia Minstrels]] in 1843, featuring tambourine, fiddle, banjo, and [[Bones (instrument)|bones]]]]

During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own [[cakewalk]] dances. In turn, European American [[minstrel show]] performers in [[blackface]] popularized the music internationally, combining [[syncopation]] with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer [[Louis Moreau Gottschalk]] adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures.

===African rhythmic retention===
{{See also|Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony}}

The [[Black Codes (United States)|Black Codes]] outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and [[Juba dance|patting juba dancing]].{{sfn|Palmer|1981|p=39}}

In the opinion of jazz historian [[Ernest Borneman]], what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time.<ref>Borneman, Ernest (1969: 104). "Jazz and the Creole Tradition." ''Jazz Research'' I: 99–112.</ref> A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as [[tresillo (rhythm)|''tresillo'']] is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the [[Afro-Caribbean music|Afro-Caribbean]] folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic [[cell (music)|cell]] in [[sub-Saharan African music traditions]] and the music of the [[African Diaspora]].<ref name="Sublette">{{cite book |last1=Sublette |first1=Ned |title=The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square |date=2008 |publisher=Chicago Review Press |location=Chicago |isbn=978-1-5565-2958-0 |pages=124, 287}}</ref>{{sfn|Peñalosa|2010|pp=38–46}}

:<score override_audio="Tresillo divisive.mid">
\new RhythmicStaff {
   \clef percussion
   \time 2/4
   \repeat volta 2 { c8. c16 r8[ c] }
}
</score>

[[Tresillo (rhythm)|Tresillo]] is heard prominently in New Orleans [[second line (parades)|second line]] music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present.<ref>Wynton Marsalis states that [[tresillo (rhythm)|tresillo]] is the New Orleans "[[clave (rhythm)|clave]]". "Wynton Marsalis part 2." ''60 Minutes''. CBS News (June 26, 2011).</ref> "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian [[Gunther Schuller]] observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed."{{sfn|Schuller|1986|p=19}}

In the post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures.{{sfn|Kubik|1999|p=52}} This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated [[cross beat|cross-rhythms]]," observed the writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured."{{sfn|Palmer|1981|p=39}}

===Afro-Cuban influence===
{{Further|Music of African heritage in Cuba}}
[[African-American music]] began incorporating [[Afro-Cuban]] rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the [[habanera (music)|habanera]] (Cuban [[contradanza]]) gained international popularity.<ref>"[Afro]-Latin rhythms have been absorbed into black American styles far more consistently than into white popular music, despite Latin music's popularity among whites" (Roberts 1979: 41).</ref> Musicians from [[Havana]] and New Orleans would take the twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. [[John Storm Roberts]] states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published."<ref name="JSRoberts">{{cite book |last1=Roberts |first1=John Storm |title=Latin Jazz |url=https://archive.org/details/latinjazzfirstof00robe |url-access=registration |date=1999 |publisher=Schirmer Books |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/latinjazzfirstof00robe/page/12 12], 16|isbn=978-0-0286-4681-7}}</ref> For the more than quarter-century in which the [[cakewalk]], [[ragtime]], and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music.<ref name="JSRoberts"/>

Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were the first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803).<ref name="Manuel">{{cite book |last1=Manuel |first1=Peter |title=Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean |date=2000 |publisher=Temple University Press |location=Philadelphia |pages=67, 69}}</ref> From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"),<ref name="Manuel"/> "tango-congo",<ref name="Acosta">{{cite book |last1=Acosta |first1=Leonardo |title=Cubano Be Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba |date=2003 |publisher=Smithsonian Books |location=Washington, D.C. |page=5}}</ref> or [[tango (music)|tango]].<ref name="Salsa">{{cite book |last1=Mauleon |title=Salsa guidebook: For Piano and Ensemble |date=1999 |publisher=Sher Music |location=Petaluma, California |isbn=0-9614-7019-4 |page=4}}</ref> can be thought of as a combination of [[tresillo (rhythm)|tresillo]] and the [[beat (music)|backbeat]].{{sfn|Peñalosa|2010|p=42}} The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired the use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music.

: <score override_audio="Tresillo+ backbeat.mid" lang="lilypond">
    \new Staff <<
       \relative c' {
           \clef percussion
           \time 2/4  
           \repeat volta 2 { g8. g16 d'8 g, }
       }
   >>
</score>

New Orleans native [[Louis Moreau Gottschalk]]'s piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand.<ref name="Sublette"/>{{rp|125}} In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant [[cinquillo]] appears extensively.<ref name="SubletteCuba">{{cite book |last1=Sublette |first1=Ned |title=Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo |date=2008 |publisher=Chicago Review Press |location=Chicago |page=125}}</ref> The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.

:<score override_audio="Cinquillo.mid">
\new RhythmicStaff {
   \clef percussion
   \time 2/4
   \repeat volta 2 { c8 c16 c r[ c c r] }
}
</score>

Comparing the music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, [[Wynton Marsalis]] observes that [[tresillo (rhythm)|tresillo]] is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery.<ref>"Wynton Marsalis part 2." ''60 Minutes''. CBS News (June 26, 2011).</ref> Although the pattern is only half a [[Clave (rhythm)|clave]], Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the [[bell pattern|guide-pattern]] of New Orleans music. [[Jelly Roll Morton]] called the rhythmic figure the [[Spanish tinge]] and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz.<ref name="ReferenceB">Morton, Jelly Roll (1938: Library of Congress Recording) ''The Complete Recordings By Alan Lomax''.</ref>

===Ragtime===
{{Main|Ragtime}}
[[File:Scott Joplin 19072.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Scott Joplin]] in 1903]]
The abolition of [[slavery]] in 1865 led to new opportunities for the education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, [[minstrel show]]s, and in [[vaudeville]], during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as [[ragtime]] developed.{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=28, 47}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://cnx.org/content/m10878/latest |title=Ragtime |access-date=October 18, 2007 |author=Catherine Schmidt-Jones |date=2006 |publisher=Connexions}}</ref>

Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as the entertainer [[Ernest Hogan]], whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, [[Vess Ossman]] recorded a medley of these songs as a [[banjo]] solo known as "Rag Time Medley".{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=28–29}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.redhotjazz.com/firstragtimerecords.html |title=The First Ragtime Records (1897–1903) |access-date=October 18, 2007 |archive-date=December 1, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101201055033/http://www.redhotjazz.com/firstragtimerecords.html }}</ref> Also in 1897, the white composer [[William Krell]] published his "[[Mississippi Rag]]" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and [[Tom Turpin]] published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American.

Classically trained pianist [[Scott Joplin]] produced his "[[Original Rags]]" in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with "[[Maple Leaf Rag]]", a multi-[[strain (music)|strain]] ragtime [[march (music)|march]] with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious [[seventh chord]]s. Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the [[syncopation]]s in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time.<ref name="TMG">{{cite book |last1=Tanner |first1=Paul |last2=Megill |first2=David W. |last3=Gerow |first3=Maurice |title=Jazz |date=2009 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |location=Boston |pages=328–331 |edition=11}}</ref> The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below.

:<score override_audio="Maple Leaf Rag seventh chord resolution.mid"> {
   \new PianoStaff <<
      \new Staff <<
         \new Voice \relative c' {
             \clef treble \key aes \major \time 2/4
             <f aes>16 bes <f aes>8 <fes aes> <fes bes>16 <es aes>~
             <es aes> bes' <es, c'> aes bes <es, c'>8 <d aes'>16~
             <d aes'> bes' <d, c'> aes' r <des, bes'>8 es16
             <c aes'>8 <g' des' es> <aes c es aes>
             }
            >>
     \new Staff <<
         \relative c, {
             \clef bass \key aes \major \time 2/4
             <des des'>8 <des des'> <bes bes'> <d d'>
             <es es'> <es' aes c> <es, es'> <e e'>
             <f f'> <f f'> <g g'> <g g'> <aes aes'> <es es'> <aes, aes'> \bar "|."
             }
         >>
    >>
}
</score>

African-based rhythmic patterns such as [[Tresillo (rhythm)|tresillo]] and its variants, the habanera rhythm and [[cinquillo]], are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's "[[Solace (Joplin)|Solace]]" (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre:<ref name="ReferenceA">Manuel, Peter (2009: 69). ''Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.</ref><ref>Matthiesen, Bill (2008: 8). ''Habaneras, Maxixies & Tangos The Syncopated Piano Music of Latin America''. Mel Bay. {{ISBN|0-7866-7635-3}}.</ref> both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a [[March (music)|march]] rhythm. [[Ned Sublette]] postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk,"<ref>Sublette, Ned (2008:155). ''Cuba and its Music; From the First Drums to the Mambo.'' Chicago: Chicago Review Press.</ref> whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass".<ref>Roberts, John Storm (1999: 40). ''The Latin Tinge''. Oxford University Press.</ref>

===Ragtime in other regions===
In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably [[James Reese Europe]]'s symphonic [[Clef Club]] orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at [[Carnegie Hall]] in 1912.<ref name=hellfighters>{{cite web|url=http://www.redhotjazz.com/hellfighters.html|title=Jim Europe's 369th Infantry "Hellfighters" Band|access-date=October 24, 2007|author=Floyd Levin|date=1911|publisher=The Red Hot Archive|archive-date=August 18, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160818065421/http://www.redhotjazz.com/hellfighters.html}}</ref>{{sfn|Cooke|1999|p=78}} The Baltimore rag style of [[Eubie Blake]] influenced [[James P. Johnson]]'s development of [[stride piano]] playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline.{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=41–42}}

In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by the Black middle-class.{{sfn|Palmer|1981|p=67}}{{full citation needed|date=November 2024}}

===Blues===
{{Main|Blues}}

====African genesis====
{{Image frame|content=<score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
  \clef treble \time 6/4
  c4^\markup { "C blues scale" } es f fis g bes c2
} }
</score>

<score sound="1"> {
\override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f
\relative c' {
  \clef treble \time 5/4
  c4^\markup { "C minor pentatonic scale" } es f g bes c2
} }
</score>|width=300|caption=A hexatonic [[blues scale]] on C, ascending}}Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre,<ref>Kunzler's ''Dictionary of Jazz'' provides two separate entries: blues, an originally African-American genre (p. 128), and the blues form, a widespread musical form (p. 131).</ref> which originated in [[African-American]] communities of primarily the [[Deep South]] of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their [[spiritual (music)|spirituals]], [[work song]]s, [[field holler]]s, [[Ring shout|shouts]] and [[chant]]s and rhymed simple narrative [[ballad (music)|ballads]].<ref name="The Evolution of Differing Blues Styles">{{cite web |title=The Evolution of Differing Blues Styles |publisher=How To Play Blues Guitar |access-date=August 11, 2008 |url=http://how-to-play-blues-guitar.com/the-blues/the-evolution-of-different-blues-styles |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100719033905/http://how-to-play-blues-guitar.com/the-blues/the-evolution-of-different-blues-styles |archive-date=July 19, 2010 }}</ref>

The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to the development of [[blue note]]s in blues and jazz.{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=11–14}} As Kubik explains:

<blockquote>Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are ''stylistically'' an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt:
* A strongly Arabic/Islamic song style, as found for example among the [[Hausa people|Hausa]]. It is characterized by melisma, wavy intonation, pitch instabilities within a pentatonic framework, and a declamatory voice.
* An ancient west central Sudanic stratum of pentatonic song composition, often associated with simple work rhythms in a regular meter, but with notable off-beat accents.{{sfn|Kubik|1999|p=96}}</blockquote>

====W. C. Handy: early published blues====
[[File:WC Handy age 19 handyphoto10.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[W. C. Handy]] at 19, 1892]]
[[W. C. Handy]] became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within a limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice".{{sfn|Palmer|1981|p=46}} Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in a popular music form.

Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues:

<blockquote>The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well.{{sfn|Handy|1941|p=99}}</blockquote>

The publication of his "[[The Memphis Blues|Memphis Blues]]" sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although [[Gunther Schuller]] argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk").{{sfn|Schuller|1986|loc=66, 145n}} This composition, as well as his later "[[St. Louis Blues (song)|St. Louis Blues]]" and others, included the habanera rhythm,{{sfn|Handy|1941|p=99–100}} and would become [[jazz standard]]s. Handy's music career began in the pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music.

===New Orleans origins===
{{Main|Dixieland jazz|Music of Louisiana}}
{{Culture of Louisiana}}
[[File:Bolden band.gif|thumb|left|[[Buddy Bolden|The Bolden Band]] around 1905]]

The music of [[New Orleans]], [[Louisiana]] had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/music/musichistory/jazzbirthplace.html |title=Birthplace of Jazz |website=www.neworleansonline.com|access-date=2017-12-14}}</ref> Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called [[Storyville, New Orleans|Storyville]].{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=47, 50}} In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called [[jazz funeral]]s). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became the instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, [[Louisiana Creole people|Louisiana Creole]] and African-American musicians played in [[vaudeville]] shows which carried jazz to cities in the northern and western parts of the U.S.<ref name=creoleorch>{{cite web|url=http://www.redhotjazz.com/creole.html|title=Original Creole Orchestra|access-date=October 23, 2007|publisher=The Red Hot Archive|archive-date=November 5, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191105235418/http://www.redhotjazz.com/creole.html}}</ref> Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist [[Freddie Keppard]] performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the [[Pantages Playhouse Theatre]] in [[Winnipeg]], Canada.<ref>{{cite web|title=Such Melodious Racket|date=March 3, 2004|publisher=Quill and Quire|url=https://quillandquire.com/review/such-melodious-racket-the-lost-history-of-jazz-in-canada-1914-1949/|access-date=January 3, 2021}}</ref>

In New Orleans, a white bandleader named [[Papa Jack Laine]] integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of the many top players he employed, such as [[George Brunies]], [[Sharkey Bonano]], and future members of the [[Original Dixieland Jass Band]]. During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and [[mulatto]] communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nps.gov/jazz/learn/historyculture/jazz-map.htm|title=Jazz Neighborhoods}}</ref> Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included [[Buddy Bolden]] and [[Jelly Roll Morton]] in addition to those from other communities, such as [[Lorenzo Tio]] and [[Alcide Nunez]]. [[Louis Armstrong]] started his career in Storyville<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.storyvillelife.com/eksempel-side |title=The characters |access-date=January 13, 2016 |archive-date=January 4, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220104182749/http://www.storyvillelife.com/eksempel-side/ }}</ref> and found success in Chicago. Storyville was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917.<ref name="web.archive.org">{{cite web |url=http://web.wm.edu/americanstudies/370/2001/sp3/legend_of_storyville.htm |title=The Legend of Storyville |date= May 6, 2014 |url-status=unfit |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140506062223/http://web.wm.edu/americanstudies/370/2001/sp3/legend_of_storyville.htm |archive-date=May 6, 2014}}</ref>

==== Syncopation ====
[[File:MortonBricktopRowCropMortonFace.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|right|[[Jelly Roll Morton]], a [[Louisiana Creole people|Louisiana Creole]] jazz artist, {{Circa|1917}} or 1918]]
Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/jazz/classroom/rhythmicinnovations.htm |title=Marsalis, Wynton (2000: DVD n.1). ''Jazz''. PBS |website=Pbs.org |access-date=October 2, 2013}}</ref> As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm.

:<score override_audio="Big four Buddy Bolden.mid" lang="lilypond">
    \new Staff <<
       \relative c' {
           \clef percussion
           \time 4/4  
           \repeat volta 2 { g8 \xNote a' g, \xNote a' g, \xNote a'16. g,32 g8 <g \xNote a'> }
           \repeat volta 2 { r8 \xNote a'\noBeam g, \xNote a' g, \xNote a'16. g,32 g8 <g \xNote a'> }
       }
   >>
</score>

Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville. Beginning in 1904, he toured with vaudeville shows to southern cities, Chicago, and New York City. In 1905, he composed "[[Jelly Roll Blues]]", which became the first jazz arrangement in print when it was published in 1915. It introduced more musicians to the New Orleans style.{{sfn|Cooke|1999|pp=38, 56}}

Morton considered the tresillo/habanera, which he called the [[Spanish tinge]], an essential ingredient of jazz.<ref>Roberts, John Storm 1979. ''The Latin Tinge: The impact of Latin American music on the United States''. Oxford.</ref> "Now in one of my earliest tunes, "New Orleans Blues," you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz."<ref name="ReferenceB"/>

An excerpt of "New Orleans Blues" is shown below. In the excerpt, the left hand plays the tresillo rhythm, while the right hand plays variations on cinquillo.

:<score override_audio="New orleans blues corrected.mid">
    {
      \new PianoStaff <<
        \new Staff <<
            \relative c'' {
                \clef treble \key bes \major \time 2/2
                f8 <f, f'> <g g'> <f~ cis'> <f d'> <f f'> <g d' g>4
                r8 <f f'> <g g'> <f~ cis'> <f d'> <f f'> <g d' g>4
                r8 <f d' f> <g d' g> <f~ cis'> <f d'> <f d' f> <g d' g> <f d' f>
                }
            >>
        \new Staff <<
            \relative c {
                \clef bass \key bes \major \time 2/2
                <bes bes'>4. <f' d'>8~ <f d'>4 <f, f'>4
                <bes f' bes>4. <f' d'>8~ <f d'>4 <f, f'>4
                <bes f' bes>4. <f' d'>8~ <f d'>4 <f, f'>4
                }
            >>
    >> }
</score>

Morton was a crucial innovator in the evolution from the early jazz form known as ragtime to [[jazz piano]], and could perform pieces in either style; in 1938, Morton made a series of recordings for the Library of Congress in which he demonstrated the difference between the two styles. Morton's solos, however, were still close to ragtime, and were not merely improvisations over chord changes as in later jazz, but his use of the blues was of equal importance.

====Swing in the early 20th century====
{{Image frame|content=<score override_audio="Shuffle feel straight.mid">
\new RhythmicStaff {
   \clef percussion
   \time 4/4
   \repeat volta 2 { c8^\markup { "Even subdivisions" } c16 c c8 c16 c c8 c16 c c8 c16 c }
}
</score>

<score override_audio="Shuffle feel.mid">
\new RhythmicStaff {
   \clef percussion
   \time 4/4
   \repeat volta 2 { c8[^\markup { "Swung correlative" } \tuplet 3/2 { c16 r c] }  c8[ \tuplet 3/2 { c16 r c] }  c8[ \tuplet 3/2 { c16 r c] }  c8[ \tuplet 3/2 { c16 r c] } }
}
</score>|width=385|caption=}}Morton loosened ragtime's rigid rhythmic feeling, decreasing its embellishments and employing a [[Swing (jazz performance style)|swing]] feeling.<ref>Gridley, Mark C. (2000: 61). ''Jazz Styles: History and Analysis'', 7th edn.</ref> Swing is the most important and enduring African-based rhythmic technique used in jazz. An oft quoted definition of swing by Louis Armstrong is: "if you don't feel it, you'll never know it."{{sfn|Schuller|1986|p=6}} ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music'' states that swing is: "An intangible rhythmic momentum in jazz...Swing defies analysis; claims to its presence may inspire arguments." The dictionary does nonetheless provide the useful description of triple subdivisions of the beat contrasted with duple subdivisions:<ref>''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music'' (1986: 818).</ref> swing superimposes six subdivisions of the beat over a basic pulse structure or four subdivisions. This aspect of swing is far more prevalent in African-American music than in Afro-Caribbean music. One aspect of swing, which is heard in more rhythmically complex Diaspora musics, places strokes in-between the triple and duple-pulse "grids".<ref>{{cite book |first=David |last=Peñalosa|author2= Peter Greenwood|title=The Clave Matrix: Afro-Cuban Rhythm: Its Principles and African Origins |date=2009 |publisher=Bembe Books |location=Redway, CA |isbn=978-1-8865-0280-2 |page=229}}</ref>

New Orleans brass bands are a lasting influence, contributing horn players to the world of professional jazz with the distinct sound of the city whilst helping black children escape poverty. The leader of New Orleans's [[Camelia Brass Band]], D'Jalma Ganier, taught Louis Armstrong to play trumpet; Armstrong would then popularize the New Orleans style of trumpet playing, and then expand it. Like Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong is also credited with the abandonment of ragtime's stiffness in favor of swung notes. Armstrong, perhaps more than any other musician, codified the rhythmic technique of swing in jazz and broadened the jazz solo vocabulary.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gridley |first1=Mark C. |title=Jazz Styles: History & Analysis |date=2000 |publisher=Prentice Hall |location=Upper Saddle River, NJ |isbn=978-0-1302-1227-6 |pages=72–73 |edition=7th |url=http://www.biblio.com/9780130212276}}</ref>

The [[Original Dixieland Jass Band]] made the music's first recordings early in 1917, and their "[[Livery Stable Blues]]" became the earliest released jazz record.<ref>{{cite web|last=Schoenherr |first=Steven |title=Recording Technology History |website=history.sandiego.edu |url=http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/recording/notes.html |access-date=December 24, 2008  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100312213800/http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/recording/notes.html |archive-date=March 12, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Martin |first1=Henry |last2=Waters |first2=Keith |title=Jazz: The First 100 Years |publisher=Thomson Wadsworth |date=2005 |page=55 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kuz4EHH05I4C&q=first+jazz+recording&pg=PT84 |isbn=978-0-5346-2804-8}}</ref> That year, numerous other bands made recordings featuring "jazz" in the title or band name, but most were ragtime or novelty records rather than jazz. In February 1918 during World War I, James Reese Europe's [[369th Infantry Regiment (United States)|"Hellfighters" infantry]] band took ragtime to Europe,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scott |first=Emmett J. |author-link=Emmett Jay Scott |date=1919 |title=Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=obUHAAAAIAAJ |chapter=Chapter XXI: Negro Music That Stirred France |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=obUHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA300 |location=Chicago |publisher=Homewood Press |isbn=978-0-2436-2721-9 |access-date=19 June 2017}}</ref>{{sfn|Cooke|1999|p=44}} then on their return recorded Dixieland standards including "[[Darktown Strutters' Ball]]".<ref name=hellfighters/>