Free Topic: jazz origins

Jazz is one of the best exponents of cultural and musical miscegenation. The word itself has a mystery. There are historical claims, different theories, but there is an approximation that seems to be the most approximate, because it is very likely that the origin is due to the English word, clearly in disuse and typical of the 19th century, "jasm", which was equivalent to energy or vitality, enthusiasm. Then like everything in life evolved and began to have a more rogue, more sensual cognition, and that gave us the idea that jazz was not going to penetrate so deeply within the white upper class. 

Now, the roots of jazz are tied to the black slaves who came to the southern United States. In countless movies it is seen how those men who came from Africa had a very intimate relationship with music, how they sang acapella or rudimentary instruments in a very particular way. In some areas, this traditional routine was prohibited, but it was not so in a place in New Orleans: Plaza del Congo, where that Spanish and French tradition lived, and also Cuban or Caribbean. There they could meet, sing, dance and play instruments during their day off, Sunday. The melodies were those that were sung while working on the plantations, and had great rhythmic richness, elements that would soon coexist with the instrumentation and harmony of the European musical tradition, laying the foundations for what we now know as jazz. Blacks became familiar with European instruments, something new emerged from that mix of cultures.

This went away gradually. First the blacks, then among the poor whites, then throughout the country and throughout the world. From the iconic Storyville neighborhood to New York or Chicago. The music then developed very locally. I evolve in so many ways that jazz has become a drawer where innumerable musical variants enter, and although we say that jazz is something abstract we can immediately recognize it, when we listen to those instruments that try to excel, when we recognize those ways of escape and return that are the improvisations, when we listen to the percussion in a very determined way, and of course when we listen to great teachers like chet baker