Re: Quicky about naming a chord

On Mar 18, 4:28 am, "David Webber" <d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> "LJS" <ljsche...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
>
news:2a02ab80-321f-49c3-812e-81d08b70ef09@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> > On Mar 17, 9:28 am, "David Webber" <d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> >>  Rule no 1 of survival, give or take hurricanes, in New
> >> Orleans is to go for Creole music and Cajun cuisine - not the other
way
> >> round :-)
>
> > ...Creole refers to a
> > cuisine and to a mixture of native ethnic groups that has has various
> > subtleties over the years. Some of the early musicians to play Jazz
> > were Creole, but I have yet to hear or read about the term "Creole
> > Music". Would you care to tell me where you ran across this term and
> > what is means?
>
> Aside: More generally "a creole language" refers to a pidgin language
which
> has achieved the status of being the native language in a community (as
> opposed to one simply used to communicate among non-native speakers).

Yes and I often hear it in Florida. You don't hear it in New Orleans
and it is not really a big part of our culture. The term came here
through the Caribbean, not the culture except as I have mentioned.

The
> Caribbean coast of the USA has (had?) a French Creole which is the
example
> in question here.   As applied to people it can mean the community which
> speaks the language,  a Latin American of West Indian of mixed race,  or
a
> citizen of the southern USA of French or Spanish descent.   "Cajuns"
were
> French speakers originally de****ted from Canada to Louisiana in the 18th
> century - by the good old Brits of course :-)   (I believe the word
comes
> from "Arcadia" which is where they came from.)

Well,

>
> But you got the point when you said "Some of the early musicians to play
> Jazz were Creole".   But you understated it.   The Creoles were very
central
> in the development of early jazz (around 1920+/-),  and it was jazz to
which
> I was referring (rather than what I suspect may be more modern usages
> outlined by Tom).
>
> In fact the person who invented jazz (and I know because he said so and
> often <g>) was a Creole:  Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe (among other
spellings)
> 1885-1941, known to history as Jelly Roll Morton.   All his stuff is
> brilliant, but his ca1926 Red Hot Peppers recordings are the absolute
> epitome of New Orleans (creole) jazz and have never been bettered IMHO.

>
> Another of the truly great early jazz bands was "King Oliver's Creole
Jazz
> Band".    This was the one in which Louis Armstrong played 2nd cornet
> before, arguably, surpassing the master.     Joe Oliver notably took the
> band up the river to Chicago (at the very start of the process of
ex****ting
> jazz from New Orleans) and so the name of the band was clearly a claim
to
> authenticity as jazz was starting to establish itself there!

I think that your cart has somehow gotten in front of your horse.
Notice some of the things that you have said.
Louis played 2nd cornet (the jazz chair) in the King Oliver band. Joe
Oliver took the band etc.

Louis was not Creole. Oliver was. This is a good example of what was
going on. The music was created by the workers, the peons both black
and white. It came from the fields of slavery. Creoles were not slaves
or low class workers. Jazz developed in the brothels of Storyville by
the working class blacks and it was their ticket to a better life. The
pay was good, the surroundings were nice, and the work was a lot
easier than most of the other choices. The owners that hired them were
American owners and Creole owners. The Creole people were not related
to the black  slave culture in New Orleans. They were the educated
class and the class with money and the class that was the most
cultured at that time. They promoted Jazz, they did not create it.
Very early on, so did the White people. There were of course educated
Creoles that exploited the medium. They hired the musicians and made
money off of it, it was not, however, Creole music.

Today, the lines are very blurred. You will have long lines of Creole
families that are big local (and national) names in the music
business. But at its inception, the Jazz musicians that created the
style were the workers. They were hired to play the music. I don't get
the feeling that the difference of the Creole and the freed Slaves are
understood here. They were not the same people. Creoles did not mix
with the Blacks. Many Creoles were slave owners themselves. Things did
meld together to a great extent, through the 60's even, there were
very strong divisions between the Blacks and Creoles. Even today, the
Creole and the Blacks are very different demographic groups.

If you enjoy the fantasy of the Creole stories that romanticize the
history, enjoy. But that is not the way that it came about. The music
is the music not matter how it came to be, but it is really one of the
true "grass roots" movements of all times. It came from the Black
churches and the fields and from using the European instruments to
play popular songs. The Creoles were Catholic. They were the business
people. Only later did they join the Jazz bandwagon. They were not the
originators.
LJS

>
> So yes, for me "creole music" = "jazz"  definitely.
>
> Dave
> --
> David Webber
> Author of 'Mozart the Music Processor'http://www.mozart.co.uk
> For discussion/sup****t
seehttp://www.mozart.co.uk/mozartists/mailinglist.htm