For the midterms there will be study guides during lecture (first half of class). But as you're taking your notes before the midterm, he'll have us write midterm questions and submit them which may appear on the midterm. There are some listening questions, but they are pretty easy (bigger concepts over anything). For the paper, you should try to start thinking about a concept to write about.
A place in New Orleans where you could just dance and play music. This was a common place where people would mix their cultures and have a voice.
The place originally was native land, and native Americans lived there and shed their culture there.
Redlight district (party district) in New Orleans, similar to Congo Square.
They had 800 bars and 200 brothels. If that's not the epidome of a red-light district I don't know what is. The brothels would usually lack these jazz bands, but the bars would have those bands. On the contrast the brothels would have a lot of piano players though. These brothels would host a lot of Ragtime.
Started around the 1890s (we still don't have Jazz (Definition) yet). Prior you'd hear The Blues. Sometimes you'll hear what's call a rag, which is a verb meaning to add syncopation.
No one really knows where the term jazz came to be from this. Some people used to use the term "jass" instead, which meant being very loud and flamboyant. See also the wiki article.
Initially it wasn't written down, but as EU influence came in with their composition, it eventually started to get written down.
There's one important thing that stops ragtime from being jazz:
Ragtime is not swung.
See also Ragtime. They changed their name from "Original Dixieland Jass Band" since someone grafitied the 'J' to make 'ass' in their name.
They were the first band that had their jazz recorded in 1917 (as most recorded to this point were field recordings by Alan Lomax). There was a fear at the time that recording would lead to other musicians stealing their ideas, so this first recording is pretty monumental. This recording is seen in:
Hear the intense syncopation used, but also the same AABBCCC (trio) form used in old marching band music similar to Jelly Roll Morton's music.
See also this song:
They do a lot of kooky things like making the trumpet and clarinet sound like horses. Did you also catch the 12 bar blues? They also did the Collective Improvisation idea.
Ragtime at Its Peak
Wrote a lot of Ragtime music in the late 1890s to 1910s, emphasizing syncopation (think The Entertainer, one of his own pieces).
This is a piece called The Magnetic Rag, played by Avery (at Cal Poly):
![[Recording 20250116084809.m4a]]
You can hear the classical influence in ragtime. The sounds though don't sound anything like traditional jazz.
Another one was The Entertainer. The left-hand acts like the tuba in a marching band.
The Big Switch
Also known as "Jelly Roll LaMothe" (real name Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe) played a lot of rags. However, the key think is that he started swining it, bringing it into the earliest form of real Jazz (Definition) music. There's a lot of audio clips of him claiming to have invented jazz in its own right.
He started to improvise, a huge thing of jazz! He specifically turned it into an art (ex: he would comp with the left hand for the improv. on the right hand).
More tunes from him and his band, the Red Hot Peppers (with drummer Dee Dee Chandler):
Everyone is playing at the same time! This is in contrast to what we saw say Sonny Rollins do later down the line. This was an early form of Collective Improvisation.
Also we saw more clarinet, which would later be replaced by saxes.
We even see the banjo, which would also see its exist relatively soon.
We'd even see Jelly Roll start to take his own solo, along with the trumpet player and clarinetist.
Halfway through he picks up new Jazz Form. Namely he picked it up from marching bands, like the AABBCCC (trio) form (the C is a whole new theme!) like in The Stars and Stripes Forever.