UNIT: JAZZIN’ IT UP
This lesson will concern the development of jazz from earlier musical
styles.
It will utilize the two CD set Songs of the Lower Mississippi Delta.
SONGS TO USE:
1. Bamboula
2. Just a Closer Walk with Thee
3. Brass Band Medley
4. Eyesight to the Blind
5. I Hate a Man Like You
6. Indians Here They Come.
OVERVIEW: This unit makes use of the free National Park Service double CD set
Songs of the Lower Mississippi Delta, created by the New Orleans Jazz
National Historical Park (www.nps.gov/jazz) . The park, located in the French
Quarter, interprets the origins, early history, and development of jazz
music. The CD is funded through a grant from the Lower Mississippi Delta
Initiative (www.cr.nps.gov/delta), whose goals are to preserve the regions’
and natural resources and to enhance heritage tourism within the region.
Please visit www.nps.gov for more information about the relevant parks.
The CD contains a total of 29 songs, many of which are used in lesson plans
available elsewhere on this site.
The selections used in this unit are as follows:
1. Bamboula: Disc 1, Selection 3
2. Just a Closer Walk with Thee: Disc 1, Selection 6
3. Brass Band Medley: Disc 1, Selection 7
4. Cascades: Disc 1, Selection 8
5. Delta Bound: Disc 1, Selection 10
6. Eyesight to the Blind: Disc 1, Selection 12
7. Mama Inez: Disc 1, Selection 18
8. Indians Here They Come: Disc 2, Selection 15
CURRICULUM STANDARDS: From The History Standards Project, directed by the
National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS).
http://www.uni.edu/icss/standards.html http://nchs.ucla.edu/
LANGUAGE ARTS: From the Common Core State Standards Initiative
http://www.corestandards.org/ . http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
LESSON 1: Bamboula and the mixing of African music with the music of Europe
and America.
In this lesson students are exposed to a composition by Louis Moreau
Gottschalk, a composer of Creole ethnicity from Ante-Bellum New Orleans.
The lesson concerns the influence of African musical traditions on pre-
jazz music in New Orleans. Later lessons will look at subsequent developments
in the genre.
OBJECTIVES: Students will
• Come to appreciate the connections between various styles of music.
• Appreciate the fact that modern American music developed from earlier
forms.
• Appreciate the contributions of various ethnicities to the
development of American music.
• See that African slaves in America succeeded in maintaining links to
their cultural past.
• Read a selection on the Gottschalk and answer question through
justification.
MATERIALS NEEDED:
• CD player or some other method of playing an audio CD.
• The two CD set Songs of the Lower Mississippi Delta (free from the
New Orleans National Jazz Historical Park, http://www.nps.gov/jazz/index.htm
• A board or some means of projecting a document.
• One copy for each student of the reading “Bamboula” .
• One highlighter per student.
1. Play selection #3, Bamboula, from Disc 1.
• Play the piece through one time as students listen
2. Next, students take out a sheet of paper. The piece is played again.
On the second listen the students are to write down at least five adjectives
that they feel describe either the piece or their reaction to it.
• They are to do this at certain times during the piece. On their paper
have them make number 1 through
Section 1 is the first 15 seconds. This is a section of driving beat
reminiscent of the beginning of the African dance.
Section 2 is the next 30 seconds. This section begins to use more European
style piano techniques while continuing the strong African influenced beat.
Section 3 is the next 35 seconds. In this section we hear a more traditional
piano piece which makes less use of driving rhythm, but has a gentle beauty.
Section 4 is the next 15 seconds. It maintains the European theme, but
strongly incorporates the African rhythm.
Section 5 is the remainder of the song, which totals 1 minute 10.
3. The adjectives are then written on the board or typed into a computer
for projection on a screen.
4. Play the song again. At this point the class could engage in a
discussion about the song, and their agreement or disagreement in the
adjectives they have chosen. The recording could be stopped at the end of
each section for discussion of the adjectives.
5. At this point the students will read a selection that discusses the
influence of African music on Gottschalk. The selection is found below under
READINGS.
• Depending upon the academic level of the students, the reading could
be done whole class, in groups (this site will randomly arrange a list of
student names: http://www.random.org/lists/ ) , or individually.
6. After reading the selection, students answer the questions given
below, at the end of the reading. The questions have been designed to use
with the system of justification using highlighters in which they highlight
text as a way of answering the questions.. Instructions are included with the
reading. Alternatively, students could simply answer the questions in the
usual method of writing answer.
7. After grading the exercise, or after completion and before grading,
the song could be played again for another discussion now that the students
have greater understanding. It might be interesting to play the song again to
see if students view of the song has changed.
READING AND JUSTIFICATION
INSTRUCTIONS: After completing the following reading, you are to answer the
questions by justifying your answers with use of a highlighter. Read each
question. Then find an answer in the document itself (questions are in
order). Highlight sections from the text to give your answer. The number in
parenthesis after each question indicates the number of words that you should
highlight. A hyphenated word counts as one word.
“Bamboula” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Richard Scott, former New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park employee
and frequent guest musician, performs this classic piece written by Louis
Moreau Gottschalk (1829 – 1869). While historians may debate whether Louis
Gottschalk was exposed to the African dances and drumming of New Orleans’
Congo Square as a child, it is certain that Gottschalk’s music was influenced
by the African rhythms that pierced the thick air in New Orleans. Nobody
knows exactly where he learned the song “Quan' patate la cuite”, which is the
main theme of this song. It is clear, however, that this piece is a
delightful combination of European piano styling’s, Creole melodies, and
African rhythms. Gottschalk was the United States’ first well-known classical
music composer, a piano prodigy who was born at the corner of Royal St. and
Esplanade Ave and later moved to North Rampart Street, across the street from
Congo Square.
Amy Elizabeth Unruh of Kent State University writes this about the music
played in New Orleans by African Americans in Congo Square:
“Some researchers immediately accept the significance of Gottschalk’s
exposure to African music in New Orleans as fact. For ragtime and jazz
researcher Rudi Blesh, and co-author Harriet Janis, the proof was in the
music, both Gottschalk’s compositions and his successors’ ragtime and jazz.
They never question Gottschalk’s musical link to Africa:
The first seventy-five years of American rule after the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803 produced only a fractional alteration of the New Orleans
Latin character, and even then the African revels went on in Congo Square.
What Louis Moreau Gottschalk heard as a boy in 1840 was still to be heard by
the casual bystander of 1880.(Rudi Blesh, and Harriet Janis, They All Played
Ragtime, 4th ed. (New York: Oak Publications, 1971), 166.)
Blesh and Janis were convinced by the music.
In his biography of Gottschalk written in 1856, Henry Didimus describes
the music and dance of Congo Square in reference to Gottschalk’s Bamboula:
In order to appreciate the full merit of this popular composition, one
should have seen something of the dance upon which it is founded. Let a
stranger to New Orleans visit, on an afternoon of one of its holydays, the
public squares in the lower portions of the city, and he will find them
filled with its African population, tricked out with every variety of a showy
costume, joyous, wild, and in the full exercise of a real saturnalia. As he
approaches the scene of an infinite mirth, his ear first catches a quick,
low, continuous, dead sound, which dominates over the laughter, hallo, and
roar of a thousand voices, while the listener marvels at what it can be doing
there. . . .(Didimus, Henry. Biography of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the
American Pianist and Composer. Philadelphia: Deacon & Peterson, 1853.)
From LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869): THE ROLE OF EARLY EXPOSURE
TO AFRICAN-DERIVED MUSICS IN SHAPING AN AMERICAN MUSICAL
PIONEER FROM NEW ORLEANS by Amy Elizabeth Unruh, Kent State University, 2009
QUESTIONS:
1. Who wrote Bamboula? (3)
2. Where in New Orleans was Gottschalk exposed to the dancing and
singing? (2)
3. What kind of rhythms affected his music? (1)
4. On what song is the main these of Bamboula based? (4)
5. Bamboula is a combination of what three things? (8)
6. How far from Congo Square did Gottschalk live? (3)
7. Where do Blesh and Janis see the real proof that Gottschalk was
influenced by African music? (3)
8. When as Louisiana purchased by the United States? (1)
9. How does Didimus describe the sound of the music in Congo Square? (3)
10. What does Creecy say the motion of the dancers has? (9)
11. With what parts of the body was the beat kept? (6)
12. What happens when a dancer becomes exhausted? (14)
KEY
“Bamboula” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Richard Scott, former New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park employee
and frequent guest musician, performs this classic piece written by Louis
Moreau Gottschalk (1829 – 1869). While historians may debate whether Louis
Gottschalk was exposed to the African dances and drumming of New Orleans’
Congo Square as a child, it is certain that Gottschalk’s music was influenced
by the African rhythms that pierced the thick air in New Orleans. Nobody
knows exactly where he learned the song “Quan' patate la cuite”, which is the
main theme of this song. It is clear, however, that this piece is a
delightful combination of European piano styling’s, Creole melodies, and
African rhythms. Gottschalk was the United States’ first well-known classical
music composer, a piano prodigy who was born at the corner of Royal St. and
Esplanade Ave and later moved to North Rampart Street, across the street from
Congo Square.
Amy Elizabeth Unruh of Kent State University writes this about the music
played in New Orleans by African Americans in Congo Square:
“Some researchers immediately accept the significance of Gottschalk’s
exposure to African music in New Orleans as fact. For ragtime and jazz
researcher Rudi Blesh, and co-author Harriet Janis the proof was in the
music, both Gottschalk’s compositions and his successors’ ragtime and jazz.
They never question Gottschalk’s musical link to Africa:
The first seventy-five years of American rule after the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803 produced only a fractional alteration of the New Orleans
Latin character, and even then the African revels went on in Congo Square.
What Louis Moreau Gottschalk heard as a boy in 1840 was still to be heard by
the casual bystander of 1880.(Rudi Blesh, and Harriet Janis, They All Played
Ragtime, 4th ed. (New York: Oak Publications, 1971), 166.)
(0ver)
In his biography of Gottschalk written in 1856, Didimus describes the
music and dance of Congo Square in reference to Gottschalk’s Bamboula:
In order to appreciate the full merit of this popular composition, one
should have seen something of the dance upon which it is founded. Let a
stranger to New Orleans visit, on an afternoon of one of its holydays, the
public squares in the lower portions of the city, and he will find them
filled with its African population, tricked out with every variety of a showy
costume, joyous, wild, and in the full exercise of a real saturnalia. As he
approaches the scene of an infinite mirth, his ear first catches a quick,
low, continuous, dead sound, which dominates over the laughter, hallo, and
roar of a thousand voices, while the listener marvels at what it can be doing
there. . . .(Didimus, Henry. Biography of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the
American Pianist and Composer. Philadelphia: Deacon & Peterson, 1853.)”
Later in her work, Unruh quotes from a traveler of the 1800’s , Colonel
James Creecy,who witnessed the dancing which Gottschalk saw as a child:
Sometimes much grace and often surprising activity and long-continued
rapid motions are seen. The dancers are most fancifully dressed, with
fringes, ribbons, little bells, and shells and balls, jingling and flirting
about the performers’ legs and arms, who sing a second or counter to the
music most sweetly; for all Africans have melody in their souls; and in all
their movements, gyrations and attitudinizing exhibitions, the most perfect
time is kept, making the beats with the feet, heads, or hands, or all, as
correctly as a well-regulated metronome! Young and old join in the sport and
dances. One will continue the rapid jig till nature is exhausted; then a
fresh disciple leaps before him or her and “cuts out” the fatigued one, who
sinks down gracefully on the grass, out of the way, and is fanned by an
associate with one hand, while water or refreshments are tendered by the
other.
From LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869): THE ROLE OF EARLY EXPOSURE TO
AFRICAN-DERIVED MUSICS IN SHAPING AN AMERICAN MUSICAL
PIONEER FROM NEW ORLEANS by Amy Elizabeth Unruh, Kent State University, 2009
LESSON II
JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE (disc 1, #6)
AND
BRASS BAND MEDLEY (disc 1, #7)
DISC 1 SELECTION 6
This song is an example of a traditional hymn that came out of the church
and then entered the New Orleans jazz repertoire.
OBJECTIVES: Students will
1. Develop a familiarity with traditional New Orleans brass band music.
2. See the connection between the earlier music of New Orleans, such as
Bamboula by Gottschalk, and later music such as the selections heard here.
Just A Closer Walk with Thee
While “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” was a popular song to emerge from the
development of African American gospel music in the 1920s, it has also become
associated with the New Orleans jazz funeral. Old hymns and spirituals are
played achingly slowly during a funeral procession on the way to the
cemetery, and happy celebratory music is played on the way back. “Just a
Closer Walk with Thee” is perhaps the most well-known funeral dirge and is
guaranteed to be played by the brass band as they slowly travel to the
deceased’s final resting place. There is some debate to the origin of this
song but most indications lead to at least a portion of “Just a Closer Walk
with Thee” going back to the mid 19th century.
Bruce Barnes (narration), Joshua Walker (vocal), Ben Polcer (cornet), Bruce
Brackman (clarinet), Jason Jurzak (bass), Richard Scott (trombone), Matt
Hampsey (guitar)(from liner notes by Matt Hampsey)
Brass Band Medley
In New Orleans, life is celebrated through a recognition that every day is
precious and that life can be fleeting. An emphasis is placed on celebrating
life and enjoying leisure time with family and friends, always with good food
and music. Death is celebrated, as well, with a brass band funeral, meant to
encompass all the imaginable emotions involved when a loved one passes away.
Slow dirges, always hymns and spirituals, are played on the way to the
cemetery, and raucous up-tempo brass band numbers are played on the way
back. The whole event seems to echo the old saying sometimes heard in New
Orleans that one is to “cry when the baby is born and rejoice when they die.”
During a brass band funeral, all the uninvited guests that follow the brass
band form what is known as the “second line.” The “first line” is made up of
the band, family members of the deceased, or the members of a benevolent
society or social aid & pleasure club to which the deceased may have
belonged.. ( from liner notes by Matt Hampsey)For more information about jazz
traditions in New Orleans, visit the New Orleans Jazz National Historical
Park online at www.nps.gov/jazz
Bruce Barnes (vocal), Ben Polcer (cornet), Bruce Brackman (clarinet), Jason
Jurzak (bass), Richard Scott (piano and trombone), Matt Hampsey (guitar)
