New Orleans is well-known as the “Birthplace of Jazz,” home of great artists like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. It’s so intertwined with the city’s identity that it almost rivals Mardi Gras, proclaimed loudly in every tourist ad, billboard, mural, or other medium promoting the city. New Orleans Jazz has long held a special place in the hearts of music enthusiasts worldwide, drawing them to the center of a historic, cultural phenomenon. Yet, prominent as it was throughout the pop culture and trends of the 20th century, Jazz has been comparatively quiet in this new millennium. It begs the question, what is the New Orleans Jazz scene like now, and how does it manifest the rich musical history that gave the city its reputation?

To answer that question, we have to start at square one: the conception of Jazz itself. While it’s debated, many historians trace jazz’s roots to the early-mid 19th century, crediting Tremé’s Congo Square as its impetus. In those times, Le Code Noir still outlined strict rules concerning the treatment of enslaved African peoples, but official practice dictated that they be free from work on Sundays and Catholic holidays. With this freetime, people of color throughout the city often came together to enjoy a day in the Square. Reflecting the port city, it came with a blend of West African, Creole, and European musical stylings. By the start of the 20th century, a genre known as jass began to take shape, and cornet player Buddy Bolden brought into the spotlight. Drawing from its myriad roots and characterized by unique drumming and singing brass, the freeform nature of what became jazz resonated with audiences from all over. Johnny Vidacovich, acclaimed jazz drummer, singer and songwriter, attributes jazz’s appeal to its infectious swing, its rhythm. “[Jazz] got into me – it was around me. It was in the air, in the music, on the radio, in a bar room with open windows and open doors.” And the music’s irresistible danceability is what drew him in. “Swinging is smooth and it’s a feeling – it doesn’t come at you in your face, it isn’t aggressive. It pushes and you sway, you swing.”

The unbounded swing of Jazz is rooted in the genre’s propensity to incorporate a wide range of influences. This point is a sentiment that Ashlin Parker, an accomplished Jazz trumpeter and Professor of Practice at Tulane University, considers to be a fundamental truth. “Traditional New Orleans jazz is already a fusion, a fusion of elements from blues, ragtime, and from the African rhythms they built on – add stride piano to the mix and we’ve already got a gumbo. And so, once you get to its big band influences, saying that any of this is pure… it’s not. There is no pure sound, there are no pure styles.” Musicians and enjoyers alike believe this to be the true essence of jazz, and it’s what keeps the music vibrant and alive. It’s this very quality that inspired Vidacovich and his influential musical style. “The neighborhood people listened to a lot of music,” recalling his childhood growing up here in Mid-City. “Next door to us there were Hondurans, Italians, [and more], each shotgun house right next to each other, windows open, you can hear different music, accents, foods, everything.” 

Though born in and owing much to New Orleans, jazz has long since grown its wings and flown across the country and the world. It’s grown, changed, and originated new genres itself, and discourse around Jazz has since reflected said changes along with the cries for traditionalism that sound with it. However, the foundation of the music lies in it being a cultural mosaic. Parker explains that “when jazz left New Orleans, it changed really fast, really fast – from Chicago to Kansas City […] to New York.” By the 1940s, Jazz began to truly evolve with the development of the sub-genre bebop. The sub-genre “came to light right at the end of World War II. As these big bands fell out of line with the economy and the war machine, there became smaller and smaller outfits [groups], but that didn’t create the new music.” Instead, bebop was most notably a result of the free spirited attitude that created Jazz in the first place.

“What was going on is there were jam sessions going on in the wee hours. I’m talking about the late night jam, the jam after the jam after the main session in Minton’s Playhouse. All the musicians that were in the big bands were basically feeling limited by the music…they get maybe one or two solos a night on the same song. You know, not as much freedom as a small outfit – you play your role. Yet, these are folks that could literally change music.” And they did – musicians like Dizzy Gillepsie rose to the forefront of this fresh take on New Orleans jazz, characterized by fast tempos, complex and rapid chord progressions, and frequent improvisation. Bebop reflected the private, musician-only jam sessions that birthed it, embodying the root of what continues to be the biggest schism in the Jazz community: traditional vs. contemporary, entertainment vs. artisanship. Through a better understanding of bebop, we can better understand the jazz scene today in New Orleans.

All the traits that made bebop so recognizably different to its predecessor are the same that rejected jazz as purely dance music, alienating wide audiences of people looking to “swing” and “cut a rug.” And so, many denounced bebop’s sound in favor of more traditional-leaning artists, entertainers like Louis Armstrong. As a sign of the times in the US, many bebop musicians and aficionados critiqued these cheerily lighthearted performances of traditional jazz as pandering to wider (white) audiences and lacking innovation. On the other side, these musicians labeled as traditionalists argued that they make their music in spite of the hardships they face, and that the swing of New Orleans Jazz moved people’s feet, contributing to a large part of what made it so popular. 

Traditional jazz being not as technical and complex as the chords in bebop doesn’t mean it’s any less jazz – any less art. Rather, both the artisan’s desire to explore and the showman’s exuberance in entertaining are crucial elements of jazz’s identity. This schism describes the underlying divisiveness between what’s considered contemporary versus traditional jazz, but many would argue that it shouldn’t be divisive at all. “They both have to exist, because the contemporary grew out of the traditional music, and the traditional music was contemporary when it grew out of the music before it. I just don’t get what the big deal is,” Vidacovich says. The fine line between the two is jazz itself, and it is what drives its evolution.

Looking at the past 30 years, however, one might wonder “where is this evolution, has jazz even changed?” Including bebop, a myriad of new subgenres and styles emerged up until around the 1960’s. But “after ’59, it’s as if everything became cumulative or something, everything starts saying fusion, it’s this mixed with that,” Prof. Parker explains. So where did real creation go? First, it’s imperative to see jazz not simply as a cultural mosaic but as Black music. Black Americans have historically had to navigate and integrate different cultures into their own while still attempting to retain their roots, the cornerstones of the very jazz music they created. Parker emphasized this point, reminding that “this is OG Black music we’re talking about, so everything you see: R&B, hiphop, soul –Boom! All of that is where jazz went, it evolved into that […] You gotta make sure we understand the timeline here, right? Beyonce grew up listening to Aretha Franklin, Franklin grew up listening to Dinah Washington, Washington grew up listening to Billie Holiday, and Holiday grew up listening to Louis Armstrong. Those could be five different styles of music, but it’s a lineage.” 

This same ancestral quality is shared in the Birthplace of Jazz as well. To this point, Prof. Parker argues that New Orleans is the only place where you’re going to see a 15 year old drummer sitting in with an 85 year old jazz master when there’s a 40 cover charge. The intergenerational passage of knowledge has thrived and survived in the city, emphasizing the preservation of heritage within a modern context. As with Vidacovich, it was his teachers that urged him along in his musical journey, and his teachers inspired him to do the same and pay it forward. Music is rarely so well shared, learned, and digested. In that same breath, this has contributed to the city’s continued ability to produce new sounds and talents, from Big Freedia to Lil Wayne to Trombone Shorty. And even apart from the new genres it birthed, jazz itself is still alive and well. Various forms of contemporary and modern jazz keep the New Orleans scene vibrant with multiple shows, concerts, and jam sessions across an eclectic range of venues every week.

In the present day, the New Orleans jazz scene is a testament to the cultural depth and resilience of the spirit of jazz. The city continues to be a hub for creativity, a melting pot where tradition and innovation intersect – a delicate balance, much like the groove of an ensemble ringing through the night. Vidacovich puts it well, celebrating jazz as “ smooth, the tempo and the timing of the city.” Jazz isn’t just another part of New Orleans’ culture, but a part of its soul.