The Role Of Ragtime In The Emergence Of Jazz

The Emergence of Jazz was the result of varying musical styles that were established due to an especially high intensity of musical activity in New Orleans during the 1800s, originally for the entertainment of social dancers. Two primary genres of music that played an essential role in contributing to what is known as Jazz, include “blues” and “ragtime”, these genres of music both carried imperative value in the creation of Jazz, however, each has its own set of normality’s that distinguish one from the other. Moreover, both there is an extensive amount of contributors that helped each genre to expand on a much greater scale. Despite blues and ragtime having different musical elements, together each had a lasting impact in the development of

Some of his most popular pieces included the “Memphis Blues” and “St. Louis Blues”. Handy’s well known blues classics served a crucial role in spreading the popularity of blues, causing it to be played by many other popular jazz artists. As said by William Howland Kenney in “The Influence of Black Vaudeville on Early Jazz” “Early jazz giants including Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong used blues songs as the foundation for many of their most important creations, while Duke Ellington, continued to employ the blues as the primary template in his arsenal.” (235). In other words, many popular Jazz artists incorporated the popular musical elements of blues into some of their jazz songs. Specifically, the twelve-bar blues, known for its repetitive harmonic structure, was extremely common for improvisation in jazz. Although at times it was slightly altered, jazz artist continued to use the style of blues in their pieces. Moreover, there was a large amount of interactions amongst blues and jazz musicians that enabled each music genre to help one another grow. Some of these interactions included blues vocalist Mamie Smith and jazz sax player Coleman Hawkins, or blues composer Bessie smith and jazz player Louis Armstrong. These relationships between both musical styles displays how blues

One similarity is the fact that both ragtime and blues were originally played by African Americans, and surfaced in areas with great ethno-diversity. Moreover, both are attributed to being crucial in the rising of jazz, however many say that ragtime’s impact was much more substantial compared to that of the blues. In Ted Giova’s book The History of Jazz he states how “ragtime music rivals the blues in importance---and perhaps surpasses it in influence---as a predecessor to early jazz. Indeed, in the early days of New Orleans jazz, the line between ragtime and jazz was so fine that the two terms were often used interchangeably” (20) Meaning, that although both musical genres contained their own significance, ragtime’s outweighed that of the blues and by 1914 ragtime was Americas most popular music. Unlike ragtime, blues included hardly any syncopation and was known for its improvisation. This improvisation was a large part of the blues and often it was the leader would take the first solo, then after the chorus was winding down the soloist would commonly turn to someone in the band and nod at them implying that it is their turn, with usually the last improviser being the bass player. Blues songs also were known for their way of expressing