ABSTRACT
New Orleans is generally acknowledged as the birthplace of jazz. The city has been called a melting pot of cultures enabling the mixture of European and African elements (as well as the “Spanish tinge,” as the Caribbean influence has been called) in the late nineteenth century. Other Southern cities in the United States have shown similar musical developments; however, New Orleans certainly was the most important of these and thus deserves its legendary status. This chapter discusses the founding myths of jazz; it looks at the music to be heard in the Crescent City then and now; it analyzes the relationship between “class” and “community,” which has changed considerably since the birth of jazz; and it discovers sort of a “creole concept” that has an impact on jazz to this day (without widely being connected to New Orleans).
