Every stranger should visit Congo Square
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The variety of sounds at Congo Square was commented on by James Creecy who, visiting fifteen years after Latrobe’s description (1818) and more favorably disposed
The African sense of using song for purposes of satire and praise
And then there was Black Benny, the drummer, six foot six, nothing but muscle. He was handsome in some sort of African way. He was all man, physically. He feared nobody. He was raised in the Third Ward – Perdido and Bolivar Streets – that was called “the battleground.” It was one of the toughest neighborhoods in New Orleans other than the ”Irish Channel.” EDIT APRIL
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And then there was Black Benny, the drummer, six foot six, nothing but muscle. He was handsome in some sort of African way. He was all man, physically. He feared nobody.
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He was raised in the Third Ward – Perdido and Bolivar Streets – that was called “the battleground.” It was one of the toughest neighborhoods in New Orleans other than the ”Irish Channel.”
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Map of New Orleans c. 1900, from the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Source
Taylor's map of New Orleans, Edition 1924-1925. © 1924 by Sam W. Taylor, Printer and Publisher. Courtersy New Orleans Public Library Archives, Louisiana Map Collection. Source
Buildings on Gallatin Street, New Orleans, Uncredited WPA photographer. 1930s (Between the 1820s and 1880s, a two-block section of New Orleans was considered the most violent place in the country. In fact, the New Orleans States wrote an article about this area in 1925, and reported that it was the "toughest two city blocks of all the waterfronts of the world.") Source
Black Benny was a great drummer. He had an African beat. He was something to see on the street with his bass drum that looked like a snare drum in front. You’d have to ask all the drummers how he did it, but he could move a whole band with just that bass drum.
Danny Barker quoted in: Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya, Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Dover Publications Inc.1955, p. 52
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Black Benny was a great drummer. He had an African beat. He was something to see on the street with his bass drum that looked like a snare drum in front. You’d have to ask all the drummers how he did it, but he could move a whole band with just that bass drum.
Danny Barker quoted in: Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya, Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Dover Publications Inc.1955, p. 52
The Creole songs, then, were developed by Creole slaves in the eighteenth century and continued to be created during the nineteenth. This body of music is not to be confused with Zydeco or LaLa, the dance music of the country part of Louisiana, which was influenced by blues and rock and roll, although a few tunes overlap the categories.
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The melody of the Creole songs dominates the rhythm pattern. There are no blues or spirituals per se, although some of the songs have the feeling of the blues in theme and a blues-like form of AAAB, as in the example below. There is literally one religious song. ”Marie Madeline,” but no outpouring of songs about God, faith, or church. The song writers seem to have remained and emphasized, instead, the African sense of using song for purposes of satire and praise.
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"Musicians", from Giovani Antonio da Montecuccolo Cavazzi in Istorica descrizione de’ tre regni : Congo, Matamba ed Angola, 1687 Book 1, page 47 Source
They also created songs to memorialize remarkable events or people and to accompany activities such as religious rituals and hunting. The largest portion of the Creole songs is concerned with love and courtship, including one between a female slave and her master. This is a love duet in which she is clearly in control of the situation. The title is ”Z’amours Marianne.”
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Marianne:
Si l’amour vous si fort, Michie-là,
Si l’amour vous si fort, Michie-là,
Si l’amour vous si fort,
Faut plein d’argent dans poche!
Michie:
Toutes mes cannes sont brûlées, Marianne, Toutes mes cannes sont brûlées, Marianne, Toutes mes cannes sont brûlées,
Ma récolte est flambée!
Marianne :
Si cannes à vous brûlées, Michie-là,
Si cannes à vous brûlées, Michie-là,
Si cannes à vous brûlées,
L’amour à vous flambé!
Characteristics of the melodies of the Creole slave songs is the rhythmical ”scotch snap” at the beginning of a song and the use of syncopated rhythm throughout, although some songs, notably ”Soulangae,” have a very smooth melody line.
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”Misu Banjo” is a good example of the use of the snap. Also found in many of the songs is the initiation of the melody on the second beat of the measure instead of the first beat.
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”Misu Banjo” is a good example of the use of the snap. Also found in many of the songs is the initiation of the melody on the second beat of the measure instead of the first beat. The emphasis on the second beat was carried over into the development of early jazz, and is a hallmark of that music.
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The emphasis on the second beat was carried over into the development of early jazz, and is a hallmark of that music.
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The second-beat start can be heard today in the singing and playing styles of some of the older musicians who play the early jazz in New Orleans. They will ”hesitate” for one beat before starting a song, even though that song may have been written to start on the first beat.
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Sweet Emma Barret, an early jazz musician, was noted for this style of singing. Another attribute of the Creole tunes is their simplicity. ”To elaborate, Afro-American Creole folk musicians were able to structure most of the syncopated and complex rhythmic patterns in two-four, three-four, and six-eight meters.”
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Sweet Emma Barrett at the piano Photo courtesy of the Louisiana State Museum © Emma Barrett (1897-1983) was also called the "Bell Gal" for the bells she wore around her knees. Accession Number 1978.118(B).07780
The harmony is not unlike those found in France or Spain, or the Caribbean. These close harmonies, however, are not as important as the melody line, which is set in major keys, minor keys being the exception and not the rule.”
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Danse d'esclaves, 1770, attribué à Augustin Brunias. Lieu de conservation: musée d’Aquitaine (Bordeaux) © Mairie Bordeaux - Photo JM Arnaud Source
The harmony is not unlike those found in France or Spain, or the Caribbean. These close harmonies, however, are not as important as the melody line, which is set in major keys, minor keys being the exception and not the rule.”
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Some of the Creole songs have found a niche in the Louisiana popular culture. A call and response tune , ”Eh, Là-Bas,” which is based on ”Vous Conné Tit la Maison Denis,” was sung by Creole men dressed as women and playing small guitars on Mardi Gras as late as the 1940s.
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”Eh Là-Bas,” and ”Yé Tou Mandé pour Toi” or ”They All Asked for You,” are still very popular in the state;
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”Eh Là-Bas,” and ”Yé Tou Mandé pour Toi” or ”They All Asked for You,” are still very popular in the state; the latter was recorded by Dave Bartholomew in the early 1950s and again by The Meters in the 1970s.
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the latter was recorded by Dave Bartholomew in the early 1950s and again by The Meters in the 1970s.
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The chants of the Mardi Gras Black Indians also use the Creole language, although they have been diluted over the years by American black speech. A good example of the Black Indians’ Creole is in the chant or prayer that opens their Mardi Gras observance.
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They sing ”M’allé cu defio, en dans dey,” which is a corruption of the old Creole song, ”M ‘allé couri dans déser,” used in connection with Voodoo rituals and associated with the Calinda dance.’
Sybil Kein, Creole, The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. 2000, Louisiana State University Press, p. 122 123,124
Within New Orleans, string bands flourished in the late nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth. Samuel Charters lists several in his index of African-American New Orleans musicians, making the point that many of the formal brass bands also had counterpart string orchestras that furnished music for ”dances in the smaller halls.”
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Generally jazz historians have placed emphasis on the brass-band tradition because of the obvious instrumental links with early jazz bands, but since many of the same musicians were playing in string groups, tackling a similar repertoire, and belonging to a more widespread Southern tradition among African-Americans, string bands were every bit as significant as their louder, brassier counterpart.
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New Orleans string groups, extant before the turn of the century, include the Big Four, the Excelsior, the Tio and Doublet (or Dublais) Orchestra, and the Union String Band.
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Portrait of Lorenzo Tio Sr. 1894 - Courtesy of Rose Tio Winn - Kinzer, Charles E. “The Tios of New Orleans and Their Pedagogical Influence on the Early Jazz Clarinet Style.” Black Music Research Journal 16, no. 2 (1996) Source
By 1911, the white ensemble known as the Six and Seven Eighths Band was in existence (a group 
which recorded into the 1940s), and there was an informal tradition of string groups perpetuated by young musicians who grew up in the early years of the twentieth century.
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The 6 & 7/8s Stringband of New Orleans (1949?): Bill Kleppinger (mandolin), Bernie Shields (slide guitar), Frank 'Red' Mackie (string bass), Edmond 'Doc' Souchon (Guitar/Vocal/Piano) - not shown: Rene Gelpi (Banjo) and Charlie Hardy (Ukulele) Photo by Rick Mackie, courtesy of Tulane University Archives Source
By 1911, the white ensemble known as the Six and Seven Eighths Band was in existence (a group which recorded into the 1940s), and there was an informal tradition of string groups perpetuated by young musicians who grew up in the early years of the twentieth century.
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Both Danny Barker and ”Cousin Joe” Pleasant (born in 1909 and 1907 respectively) recall playing in a New Orleans children’s string band called the Boozan Kings, which existed into the early 1920s.
Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz, Continuum, 2001, p. 29
(l to r) Joseph “Cousin Joe” Pleasant with Danny Barker - Published by New Orleans Jazz Club and New Orleans Jazz Museum (Louisiana State Museum) Accession Number
1978.118(B).02454 Source
A 1897 photograph of the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band. led by Emile “Stalebread Charlie” Lacoume (second from the far left). Members of the group were Harry Gregson, Emile “Whiskey” Benrod, Willie “Cajun” Bussey, Frank “Monk” Bussey and a boy known only as “Warm Gravy.” Another member who was known as “Chinee” and a singer known as “Family Haircut.” This band performed in the streets of Storyville in the 1890’s and early 1900’s Source
1920s - Boys Jug Band. Louisville Kentucky - Courtesy of University of Louisville Photographic Archives Source
Within the city limits, this middle-class Creole society was predominantly located to the vieux carré (”French Quarter”) of New Orleans, the ”downtown” section of the city…
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Eugene E. Loving (1908 - 1971) etching and aquatint "Wishing Gate, Old New Orleans" (1940s ?) Source
…while, ”uptown”, across Canal street to the West, a newer, tougher American city grew up, with a black underclass that had an altogether more rough-and-ready approach to music, which had much in common with the music of the surrounding rural plantation area.
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Evans, Walker, photographer. New Orleans Negro street. Louisiana. United States, New Orleans, Orleans Parish, 1935. Dec. Source
It seems that this ”uptown” population continued many of the more explicitly African elements of plantation music, from the drumming and dancing traditions of Congo Square to an extrovert and raucous approach to instrumental music. So marked was the difference that some uptown musicians feigned the inability to read music to emphasize the difference between themselves and their well-schooled downtown Creole counterparts.
Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz, Continuum, 2001, p. 23
New Orleans,1900 View up 100 & 200 blocks of St. Charles Avenue. Published by the Detroit Photographic Company - Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Source
Royal St., New Orleans, Louisiana. [Between 1890 and 1901] Detroit Publishing Co., Copyright Claimant, and Publisher. Retrieved from the Library of Congress. Source
The pride of New Orleans, U.S.A. New Orleans, Lousiana 1891. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Source
I’ll explain to the best of my ability, Paul (Dominguez) replied, with utmost seriousness. ”A Creole is a mixture of Spanish and white and must talk French. Now they are folks will say they Creole, but they ain’t. You take in the Seventh and Eight Wards, we are Creoles, mostly, from way back, but you go on across Elysian Fields into the Ninth Ward and the people over there call themselves Creoles, but they’re black and they got bad hair. They’re from the country….
”Of course, they speak the language – speak French, but what does that prove? ”
Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, University of California Press,1950, pp. 81, 83
Now everybody in the world has heard about the New Orleans Mardi Gras, but maybe not about the Indians.
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Portrait of "Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe of New Orleans Black Mardi Gras Indians", Allison Tootie Montana. Photograph by Kathy Anderson Courtesy of New Orleans Times Picayune and Allison Tootie Montana Source
One of the biggest feats that happened in Mardi Gras. Even at the parades with floats and costumes that cost millions, why, if the folks heard the sign of the Indians
Ungai-ah!
Ungai-a
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Now everybody in the world has heard about the New Orleans Mardi Gras, but maybe not about the Indians. One of the biggest feats that happened in Mardi Gras. Even at the parades with floats and costumes that cost millions, why, if the folks heard the sign of the Indians
Ungai-ah!
Ungai-a
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…that big parade wouldn’t have anybody there, the crowd would flock to see the Indians. When I was a child, I thought they really was Indians.
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They wore paint and blankets and, when they danced, one would get in the ring and throw his head back and downward, stooping over and bending his knees, making a rhythm with his heels and singing
T’ouwais, bas q’ouwais
and the tribe would answer
Ou tendais.
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And they’d sing on:
T’ouwais, bas q’ouwais
Ou tendais
T’ouwais, bas q’ouwais
Ou tendais
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Montana family portrait. Left to right: Big Chief Alfred Montana of the Eighth Ward Hunters, Allison "Tootie" Montana's father; Big Chief Alfred's First Queen Anabe; and Allison Montana, 1947. Photographer unknown. Courtsey of Joyce Montana Source
And they’d sing on:
T’ouwais, bas q’ouwais
Ou tendais
T’ouwais, bas q’ouwais
Ou tendais
And then they would stop for a minute, throw back their heads and holler:
Ala caille-yo,
Ala caille wais…
Ouwais bas q’ouwais
T’ouwais bas q’ouwais,
Ou tendais.
Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, Alan Lomax,
University of California Press, 1950, p. 14
…and then they would stop for a minute, throw back their heads and holler:
Ala caille-yo,
Ala caille wais…
Ouwais bas q’ouwais
T’ouwais bas q’ouwais,
Ou tendais.
Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, Alan Lomax,
University of California Press, 1950, p. 14
Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi and adjacent Gulf Coast, by John R. Swanton, 1909. Published by The Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. Source
A very common burthen in these songs is:
Mo l’aimin vous
Comme cochon
aimain la boue!
“I love you just as a little pig loves the mud!”
This refrain I have found attached, in various forms, to at least half a dozen various ditties…
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Portrait of Lafcadio Hearn, Photographer unknown, please contact for credit. From "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn", Volume 1, by Elizabeth Bisland, published December 1906 Source
While on this subject allow me to give you several odd little Creole songs which I have just collected. Some of these are very old. I am told that Bertand Marigny de Mandeville, of famous memory…
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Painting of a street scene, Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans, 1821, by Felix Achille Beaupoil de Saint Aulaire (1801-1889) Source
…used to have them sung in his house for the amusement of guests-among whom, perhaps, was Louis Philippe himself.
The airs are vey lively and very pretty:
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Delaide, mo la reine,
Chemin-là trop longue pour aller,
Chemin-la monté dans les hauts;
Tout piti qui mo yé
M’allé monté là haut dans courant
C’est moin, Liron qui riv
M’allé di yé,
Bon soir, mo la reine.
C’est moin, Liron qui riv
Delaide, my queen,
The way is too long for me to travel
That way leads far up yonder;
But little as I am,
I am going to stem the steam up there
I Liron, am come,
Is what I say to them.
My queen, good night
’tis I Liron who has come
Lafcadio Hearn, Inventing New Orleans, Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), 2001, pp. 36, 37
The mixture of African and European cultures began, of course, long before the slave dances of Congo Square – in fact, at least one thousand years prior to the founding of New Orleans in 1718. The question of African influence on ancient Western culture has become a matter of heated debate in recent years- with much of the dispute centering on arcane methodological and theoretical issues. But once again, careful students of history not rely on abstract analysis to discover early cultural mergings of African and European currents.
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"Battle of the Guadalete River", attributed to Santiago Pérez (?). It was the first major battle of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, fought in 711 at an unidentified location in what is now southern Spain between the Christian Visigoths under their king, Roderic, and the invading forces of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate, commanded by Ṭāriq ibn Ziyad Source
The North African conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the eighth century left a tangible impact on Europe, evident even today in the distinctive qualities of Spanish architecture, painting, and music.
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The civilization of the Caliphate of Còrdova. Abd al-Rahman III (9th century) receiving the Ambassador, by Dionís Baixeras i Verdaguer (1862–1943) Source
As it turned out, the spread of African currents into the broader streams of Western culture took far longer to unfold, spurred in large part by defeat rather than conquest, not by triumphant naval fleets toppling the continental powers, but by the dismal commerce of slave ships headed for the New World.
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The Slave Ship, 1840 (Original title: Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on) Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston object ID: 31102 Source
Yet the traces of the only Moorish incursion may have laid the groundwork for the blossoming of African American jazz more than a millennium later.
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Image from Cantigas de Santa Maria of European and Islamic musicians in 13th century playing stringed instruments. Canticle n°120. Madrid, San Lorenzo de El Escorial library Anonymous artist, Manuscript commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile the Wise (1221-1284) Source
Can it be mere coincidence that this same commingling of Spanish, French, and African influences was present in New Orleans at the birth of jazz? Perhaps because of this marked Moorish legacy, Latin cultures have always seemed more receptive to fresh influences from Africa.
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Indeed, in the area of music alone, the number of successful African and Latin hybrids (including salsa, calypso, tango, and cumbia, to name a few) is so great that one can only speculate that these two cultures retain a residual magnetic attraction, a lingering affinity due to this original cross-fertilization.
Ted Gioa, The History of Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 5, 6
El Jaleo 1882, by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) Courtesy of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA Source
A little-known and undated work, titled ”Los Campanillas,” by black New Orleans composer Basile Barès (1845-192), effectively employs a Cuban habañera rhythm long before W.C. Handy relied on it to make ”St. Louis Blues” into a hit or Morton himself adopted it for his own composition ”The Crave.”
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The Crave (restored version) by Jelly Roll Morton Courtesy of The Kahle/Austin Foundation and The Internet Archive Source
Even earlier, Louis Moreau Gottschalk enjoyed a transatlantic success with his composition Bamboula. As the examples attest, the ”tinge” entered the parlors of the city’s many amateur pianists long before the appearance of jazz music.
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L.M. Gottschalk, by Joseph Mill, for the front page edition of the periodic Ba Ta Clan, June 19th edition, 1869. Courtesy of the Brazil National Library digital archives Source
Bamboula - Original music composed by Louis Moreau Gottschalk Engineer: Jerry Newman - Piano: Alan Mandel - Courtesy of The Kahle-Austin Foundation and The Internet Archive, "Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Alan Mandel – Forty Works For Piano" Source
Moreover, as Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s recent work has shown, the overwhelming number of French colonial Louisiana slaves all came from a single region in Africa, the Senegal River basin, and brought with them an already formed and highly cohesive shared Bambara culture, a happenstance unique in the annals of slavery in the Americas.
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"Types et coiffures de Bambaras" (published 1872) by Mage, E. (Eugène), 1837-1869 - Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. Source
And among the notable attributes of Bambara culture was an established tradition of trade and city marketing.
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Types de cases (Housing types) Bambara, drawn by Riou, from Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi, by Cpt Louis Gustave Binger, Vol 1, 1892 Source
Indeed, the Bambara people were historically thought of as the preeminent ”merchant princes” of the western Sudan.
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Bambara (1902). Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. Source
Indeed, the Bambara people were historically thought of as the preeminent ”merchant princes” of the western Sudan.
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The interaction of the Indian and African communities formed one of the most notable characteristics of New Orlean’s colonial history. Because most African slaves brought to Louisiana were males, great numbers married Indian women, whom the French colonials had early begun enslaving as food growers, cooks, bedfellows, and translators.
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A Choctaw Belle, 1850 Painted by Phillip Romer. Courtsey Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia Source
Consequently, as the decades passed, there developed an unusually high degree of intermixing of the two groups and their cultures, an intermixing that, by the end of the nineteenth century, had resulted in the absorption of the local Indian population into the New Orleans black community.
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Indians of several Nations bound for New Orleans,1735 by Alexander de Batz. Courtesy Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM# 41-72-10/20 (digital file #60741527) Source
As late as 1880 or 1881 Lafcadio Hearn saw, in a woodyard on Dumaine Street, two men beating bones and sticks on drums made from ”a dry goods box and an old pork barrel” while ”some old men and women” chanted an African song…
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Ankle Rattle (made from cut seed pods), courtesy of The Sierra Leone National Museum and The British Museum - Accession No. BM:Af.1954.23.3707 Source
…and ”a few persons” with tin rattles on their ankles did African dances that, as Hearn pointed out, only they, the remnants of such dances, already rare, would soon be completely forgotten in Louisiana.”
Jerah Johnson, Congo Square in New Orleans, The Samuel Wilson, Jr. Publications Fund,1995, p. 48
Griots -Instruments de tam-tam (Bambara). Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. (1901) Source
Are there any other characteristics of West African Music that survive in jazz today?
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Grenadier Guards, Band of Toro – Photo by Rev A.L. Kitching, 1908. Published in “Tramps round the Mountains of the Moon and through the back
Afro-Baroque New Orleans and the Jazz era
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There is a marvelous recording of music from The Ursulines’ manuscript, performed by the French early music group Le Concert Lorrain. (…) “Le soleil heraut