"The Ancestry Of Jazz
A Musical Family History" BY DANIEL HARDIE
(Lincoln NE: iUniverse Inc, 2004, 260pp paperbound)
Daniel Hardie is an Australian writer and sometime clarinetist who has
written extensively on the history of jazz; this is his third book.
This
volume takes a look at all the components that led to what we regard as
New Orleans jazz. He traces the music back to its roots in Africa and the
Scottish-Irish music brought to the US with its earliest settlers. It serves
as a fairly complete history of popular music in the US, discussing what
people were listening to at each juncture up until New Orleans jazz began
to flower in the first part of the 20th Century.
Like Ralph Collins, Hardie has looked at the Congo Square phenomenon and
found it wanting - while the slaves no doubt beat their drums in New Orleans,
they were long gone when Buddy Bolden developed his hot blues into what
we commonly understand as jazz. Hardie places greater emphasis on the Holy
Roller churches that were then dotting Uptown New Orleans, and they basically
fall into a religious music tradition that goes all the way back to England
and Dr. Watts' hymnals.
The book is drawn from a variety of sources and is well-footnoted. Hardie
is particularly good at explaining the history of American music to people
that aren't from here, showing what was going on musically and elsewhere
during various periods, though I think the Singing Brakeman was Jimmie
and not Kenny Rodgers.
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for a background
in the prehistory of jazz - basically this brings you up to the point where
the music we know and love began and identifies all the ancestors going
all the way back to the Old World. The book also includes a very good listing
of recordings enabling one to trace the music back to its origins by listening
to surviving field recordings, etc. that document how the music got to
where it was when jazz as we know it began.
Available from the book trade, $20.95 list."
Jazz Beat is the Journal
of the G.H Buck Foundation's Jazzology organisation you will find it at:
http:// www.jazzology.com
Click Back on your browser to return to the main page