New Orleans Jazz Bands - Research Paper Example

Secret societies ascribed to the Yoruba and Dahomean people assured fellow tribesmen of a proper burial being performed following one’s death. In order to oversee the accomplishment of this guarantee, resources were pooled in order to ensure the formation of what was generally labeled an early insurance form (Hersch, 32). When slaves were shipped to America, the notion of affording proper burials to fellow sisters or brothers remained strong. With the passing of time, the same concepts that had deep roots in African ideology evolved into one of the basic principles that formed the social as well as pleasure clubs in New Orleans.

In a similar way that numerous fraternal orders did, this social club guaranteed proper conditions of burial to any member who eventually passed. These organizations emerged as precursors to companies dealing with debit insurance and burial insurance as a concept (Jacobsen, 55). In New Orleans, they talk of an individual ‘being sent off with music’. The Jazz funeral is New Orleans’s fundamental music experience. It is imperative that an individual be buried properly to ensure that their souls are at peace.

The African protocols that marked a proper burial in New Orleans encountered those of Europe. Dancing during funerals was not only a guarantee in Africa, but also an old Spanish tradition that hailed from African heritage. The South embodied an African burial tradition that usually took place at night. Meanwhile, New Orleans’s Catholic City, held processional funerals that were led by the church, dating back as far as the Spanish era (Jacobsen 59). The beginning of the nineteenth century saw band instruments beginning to play during funerals for back people in New Orleans.

By the end of the century, the funerals were held for uptown Protestants of Anglo-American descent and Catholic Creoles alike. Many of the former embodied what New Orleans refers to as a ‘spiritual church’, renowned for its music traditions that are quite powerful. Brass bands had grown to great popularity in New Orleans and the rest of the country. Jazz had its roots nourished in the African-American community to a great extent, but grew into a broader phenomenon drawing from numerous ethnic groups and communities in New Orleans.

A collaborative relationship that was special developed New Orleans’s brass bands and societies for mutual aid and benevolence. Societies for Mutual Aid and Benevolence were common in New Orleans among numerous groups during the nineteenth century (Hersc, 47).Following the Civil War, these organizations took on adopted a special meaning for the emancipated African Americans with limited economic resources. These societies served the purpose of helping the sick and burying the dead. These were important functions, seeing as there was a general prohibition barring blacks from securing health insurance and commercial health services.

Whereas numerous organizations in New Orleans utilized brass bands in concerts, parades, funerals, and political rallies, the African-American societies for mutual aid and benevolence took on a distinctive expressive approach to parades and funeral processions-something which goes on at present. During their events, celebrants in the community would join the exuberant processions of dance. The phenomena that characterized the community participating in parades came to be known as ‘