At the dawn of the 20th century, a young, black cornetist - a native of New Orleans - generated music from his instrument which would later become known as “jazz” – a new musical genre that would go on to influence all music that would succeed it. About a decade later, or in 1917, jazz was recorded for the first time and the record sold more copies than any record ever released. Jazz was introduced to the world for the first time, and became an instant hit. It created a cultural gap between the old and young, and it was a way for people to break from old traditions brought to this country from Europe. In short, jazz defined America, it looked to the future of the nation, and became its first original form of music. But Buddy Bolden didn’t anticipate all this when he invented the “big four” amongst the bordellos of Storyville. Nicknamed “King Bolden” and known as the best black musician of New Orleans at the time, Bolden’s path had already been forged by his processors.

During the 19th century, New Orleans was known as the most cosmopolitan city, as well as the musical capital, of the United States. It was a French city by birth, so it was sophisticated and cultural, but it was also a major port city of the South which drew a lot of business, including the one of slave trade. It was America at its best and its worst in the same instant. It was a city of multiple nationalities and cultures which invented itself as it went along, improvising its history, just like jazz.

Slaves had to learn how to improvise more than any newcomers in the new country, having been deprived of their freedom and torn away from a culture very different from the Western way of life. A century before jazz was first recorded, slaves were gathering in New Orleans’ Congo Square, singing and dancing in front of the Sunday strollers. Many of them had just arrived from the West-Indies and their rhythms were influenced by Caribbean currents; others came from the interior South, bringing with them work and spiritual songs from the black Baptist church.

Amongst the audience were Creoles, descendants of African-Americans and French settlers of Louisiana. Creoles identified with Europeans and were elegant upper-class people with classical music training. Along with other aristocratic citizens of New Orleans they enjoyed the arts of the many flourishing opera houses and symphonies of the city. But being an extremely heterogeneous town, New Orleans offered its citizens a large variety of music, including military style brass bands (marching bands) which entertained the flora of inhabitants during parades of all sorts, Mardi Gras being the best known. The town was simply billowing with music - even the street vendors sold their goods through song - and this living jukebox sifted through its people.

Minstrel shows were a tremendously popular form of entertainment in the 19th century. They were based on plantation songs and blended music, comedy and elegance. They also marked the beginning of a creative relationship between black and white musicians as the songs were written by people of both races, and the shows were performed by white actors in blackface, and later by black actors posing as white minstrel performers! A big hit of the Minstrel era was “Jim Crow,” a title which would later be used to define laws that segregated African-Americans from white society.

When slavery was finally terminated, a wave of creative energy swept the nation. Many former slaves migrated to New Orleans, bringing a new form of music in their luggage. In the 1890s, two original styles reached the musical melting pot – ragtime and blues. Ragtime was invented by black piano players of the Midwest and drew on African-American spiritual songs, minstrel music, European folk melodies, and military marches. It became immensely popular with young people who loved it because their parents did not, and it remained the most popular music genre in the country for a couple of decades.

Blues on the other hand came from the impoverished Mississippi delta region. It traveled to New Orleans with former slaves on the flight from Jim Crow laws, in search for work at the docks. Blues is about finding meaning in a situation that seems to defy being able to find meaning in and blues musicians were searching for means to separate themselves from the minstrel stereotype that had prevailed in the country for so long. Blues was closely related to the call-response music of the black Baptist church, “one was praying to god, the other to what was human (Ken Burns’ Jazz vol. 1).” Blues was a personal form of music, the songs told a story and freed the musicians from their troubles.

When Jim Crow laws eventually hit New Orleans it made no distinction between black people and Creoles. Suddenly Creoles found themselves in the quarters of African-Americans, living side by side in their realms, their musical cultures intertwining and complimenting each other. The music genres that preceded jazz already existed, but at this point in history they came together to form a novel breed. Musicians started using left over military instruments from the Civil War to imitate church singing, and the spiritual sounds of the church and the secular sound of the blues meshed together. “The musicians who could understand both and put both in their horns, side by side, so they could represent that angel and that devil, that were the ones who could play (Ken Burns’ Jazz vol. 1).”

Jazz was a spontaneous art form which would mature for years without being captured - no one thought of recording it at first because you had to be there to appreciate its beauty. Under extreme circumstances - slavery and segregation – jazz was born, representing the perseverance, hopefulness, and liberation of its creators.