Jazz and New Orleans

New Orleans is a city of music. From street performers to small bands in speak-easy bars or improvisation on concert hall stages, the sounds of stories reverberate across the Crescent City. Jazz traces its origins to New Orleans, a uniquely American genre of music rooted in 19^th Century Sundays and sounds.

The exact origin story of jazz is almost as fluid as the music’s melodies with hints of mystery. Jazz is generally believed to trace its musical traditions to West African and Caribbean rhythms with influence from European instruments and genres of spiritual tunes and slave songs. In New Orleans, this blend of sound and culture came together. Many historians point to the 1810s and 1820s as a foundation of jazz’s sound. The city’s rules which governed the conduct of enslaved people also limited the work that could be required on Sundays. Many enslaved people in New Orleans gathered at Congo Square on Sundays to visit, rest and make music. Here, traditional African culture and New World influences united as men and women sang, chanted, played instruments and created uniquely new music. 

The sounds from Congo Square evolved over time, and more musical influences were added. Instruments of traditional marching bands joined the tunes as Mardi Gras festivities grew in popularity in New Orleans before and after the American Civil War. Blues arrived in the post-Civil War years, too, as formerly enslaved families came to New Orleans, bringing their own regional songs and sounds into the city. 

While elements of jazz go back to Congo Square and the early 1800s, the modern recognized jazz is associated with Buddy Bolden, a cornet player, African American bandleader and sometimes called the “first man of jazz.” His band’s popularity soared in the early 1900s and other musicians followed his variations of ragtime and improvisation which became the genre of Jazz. Other musicians around the same time also gave inspiration, like Mutt Carey, Bunk Johnson, Joe Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard and Sidney Bechet. 

In Storyville—the red-light district of New Orleans—musicians of many different backgrounds performed in bars, dance halls and brothel parlors. The uncritical audiences gave musical performers a chance to explore and improvise their sounds, rhythms and tunes. The evolving music became popular, and when the district of Storyville was closed in 1917, many musicians found other venues ready to welcome their jazz bands. Other musicians left New Orleans around this time, taking the notes of jazz to other parts of the country and continuing to expand the subgenres of the music. 

In the 1920s, the sounds of jazz were fully emerging on the national scene. The music that was so popular in New Orleans spread around the country, helped by early records and traveling musicians. Associated with the “Roaring Twenties”, speakeasies and flappers, jazz reached mainstream American culture through the performances and recordings of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. In 1938, jazz musicians performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The sounds of jazz would be incorporated into the early era of Big Bands, though jazz would also remain its own unique genre of music. Each generation of musicians brings new ideas and flairs to jazz, and the improvisation style allows many stories to be told musically. 

Today, music clubs, local bars, modern parades and festivals keep the traditions of jazz alive. Music brings people together—just like it did in Congo Square in the early 1800s. The rhythms of past homelands, the influence of blues and marching bands intertwine with the improvisation of the musicians. The origins of jazz may be challenging to pin down in exact citations, but the flow and the rhythm is there through history and still invites listeners to relax, sway, remember and dream as the music continues to evolve. 

Further Reading:

• The Origins of Jazz, published by the Jazz Observer (accessed May 2025).
• Jazz by Dr. John Edward Hasse, Smithsonian Music (accessed May 2025).
• Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans by Thomas Brothers (W.W. Norton, 2007).
• The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square by Ned Sublette (Chicago Review Press, 2008).