Where Did Jazz Begin?

The Congo Square in New Orleans is now seen by jazz scholars as the originating locus of American jazz.  In Marshall Stearns’ history of jazz the beginnings of jazz are situated in Congo Square. Dancing and socializing was permitted to African slaves in antebellum New Orleans from economic motives of the New Orleans establishment.  The dances, which records indicate began as early as 1817, became an important tourist attraction for the city.  –Ron Price with thanks to Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz, Oxford Univ. Press, NY, 1956, p. 50.

Most recent narrative jazz histories begin their discussions of the music at a much later date, during the rigid, post-Reconstruction imposition of Jim Crow in New Orleans. The subsequent enforced musical fraternization between light-skinned, high-caste Creoles of color, who favored European styles of music, and the Africanist music making of darker-skinned, working-class blacks has also played an important part in most histories of jazz. But Stearns’s work, though in some ways superceded by efforts of contemporary jazz scholars, remains important. His discussion of Congo Square, while often ignored, has not, to my knowledge, been disputed. The Congo Square dances began “at a signal from a police official” that “summoned” the slaves to the square. –See Herbert Asbury, The French Quarter, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1936, p. 269; quoted in Stearns, The Story of Jazz, p. 51. 

In a later study, Stearns notes that the Congo Square dances were “a tourist attraction that had the sanction of the city government.” -Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance:The Story of American Vernacular Dance, Da Capo Press, NY, 1968, p.19.

1817 was a big year for the Baha’is.

Six million of them now celebrate the 

birth of Baha’u’llah on 12/11/....1817.

The 1st American school for the deaf

opened, and construction began on the 

Erie Canal. Alexander Lucius Twilight was 

the 1st black to graduate from a US college.

John Quincy Adams became Secretary of State
The 1st Mississippi "Showboat," left Nashville

on its maiden voyage. The 1st sword swallower 

performed in the U.S. Indeed 1817 was a big year.