NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/bit/listserv/allmusic/15640

Text File | 1993-01-28 | 3.4 KB | 61 lines

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Date:         Wed, 27 Jan 1993 22:59:12 EST
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From:         Sonia Kovitz <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Re: Something about nothin'
In-Reply-To:  <[e-mail]>; from "BEN
              WERTH" at Jan 27, 93 10:44 am
Lines: 46

OK Ben, you said your band just played and it was a barrel of laughs (or
something like that).  So WHAT's the band called? who's in it? where'd you
play?  who was there? what'd they do? so talk that talk, walk that walk, I'm
waitin'...

In the meantime, Dave, in response to your post (really nice reply, thanks!)
here's something just for starters.  I'll be getting back to you again on it
because that's a lot of good stuff there.  You said that "jazz was a term used
by white people to describe African-American music..."  We're all in the dark
(no pun intended) on the REAL origins of a word like "jazz" so there's
obviously no one right answer, but there are many possible answers.  Here's
another shot at it, from _I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of
American Words and Phrases_ :

The word jazz was first reported in the New Orleans area in the mid 1870s, as
used by Blacks to mean to speed up and as a primitive form of syncopated music.
 By 1913 Blacks and Whites were using jazz to refer to a style of ragtime music
having syncopated rhythm and by the end of 1917 American jazz music and jazz
bands were a major attraction in New York, London, and Paris.  Because of its
early New Orleans Black use, most linguists believe the word jazz is of West
African or Creole origin, though a specific etymology or African source wordd
has never been pinpointed.
[end of quote]

from _Black Talk_ by Ben Sidran:

Jazz music, a result of the combination of the circus and minstrel bands with
the blues tradition, is, strictly speaking, the urban voice of the black
culture.  In the process of urbanization, the rural blues musician met the
organized band musicians and the result is what we have come to recognize as
early jazz.  This is not to say that jazz is alien to rural areas and rural
musicians but that increasing mobility and the rise of the recording industry
in the first part of the 20th century virtually brought the urban environment
into rural life.  Also the general cultural flow of black Americans beginning
with the Great Exodus of 1879 is toward the urban areas.  Jazz is a product of
a peculiarly black voice (blues) in a peculiarly white context (Western
harmony), and the result is a generally urban idiom.  It is interesting to note
that jazz is popular among South African blacks who have been exposed to and
vilified by Western culture, but is virtually absent from West Africa where
there is little Anglo-conformity, and an idiom known as "high life" is played
to the exclusion of jazz.... Whereas black minstrelsy was an acceptance and an
imitation of white modes, jazz--and the blues idiom on which it was based--
was an assimilation of these modes.
[end of quote]

Whew--Sonia