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JAZZ GRAMOPHONE RECORDS 113 |
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should be heard and compared with the earthier Lewis pieces. From both records some idea of the pattern of these first New Orleans groups can be obtained.
Spirituals
Meanwhile, during the whole history of jazz, Negro religious music was developing. For many years white Americans and Europeans were erroneously led to believe that the neat, concert-trained and passionless harmonies of such Westernised singing groups as the Fisk University Singers represented genuine American negro religious song. But the real music, fully rhythmical and quite uninhibited, remained in the churches of the American coloured population. It offered jazz proper a significant part of its repertoire, mainly through the bands that marched and played in the traditional New Orleans funerals. It had a beat that was deep in jazz. It possessed the accents of jazz and spoke its "language". Like jazz proper, it sprang right out of the very heart and soul of the Afro-American.
The Reverend Kelsey with his Congregation tapes were recorded during the Petrillo strike in the States as a temporary stop-gap when no Union musician was allowed to record. They reveal the fact that negro religious song in America is extraordinarily close to jazz itself (Brunswick OE 9256).
By now jazz history becomes far clearer, and documentation via the recording studio is a regular |
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