Having evolved out of the music of marching bands and ragtime, much of the music heard in this earlier period of jazz has similar instrumentation (drums, trumpets, trombone, sax etc) and feel.
Having evolved out of the music of marching bands and ragtime, much of the music heard in this earlier period of jazz has similar instrumentation (drums, trumpets, trombone, sax etc) and feel. Also the influence of Afro Latin rhythms from places such as Cuba can be heard (from music as far back as the 1880's). The tresillo) rhythm is heavily used in the New Orleans Jazz of this time and can be directly linked to the music of the Caribbean. Dixieland bands played rag style music but also incorporated collective and solo improvisation within their performances which was something that hadn't been done before in traditional marching,ragtime or vaudeville bands. In Chicago, a different more soulful and vocal oriented jazz developed with artists such as Louis Armstrong, who played trumpet and popularized the use of scat singing. During the 1920s and prohibition, Jazz existed in the darker parts of society in brothels and speakeasies and was heavily racially segregated. Some notable artists of this time are Jellyroll Morton, Louis Armstrong and Buddy Bolden. Music to check out: