There is a heartbreaking scene from the film New Orleans , in which Billie Holliday, as a maid, gets caught playing the piano and singing the blues when her boss walks in the room. She is embarrassed, apologizes for the disruption, and says, "I just can't seem to remember not to play it.
That's a good explanation for the new musical styles that were exploding from places like New Orleans in the early twentieth century. Despite racism, segregation, and poverty, and despite the music not being respected as anything special, again and again the players seemed to say, "I just can;t remember not to play it.
Take the drum set. It is fair to say that the current collection of instruments that we think of as "the drums" would not have come together in quite that particular way without the influence of New Orleans culture at the beginning of the twentieth century.
For the drums are not one instrument, but many. The drum set is a hybrid of instruments from around the world, from cultures that were assembling in port cities like New Orleans. The snare and bass drum were once slung over shoulders in European militaries, the drum heads pulled tight by ropes, and that tradition carried over to American armies.
Chinese immigrants came to the United States because they were hired or forced into labor, and they brought with them their own centuries-old theater traditions, highlighted by colorfully-painted tom-toms that made a beautiful full sound, distinct from snares or bass drums.
Cymbals evolved from bronze cisterns made in places like Turkey and China; they were later pounded into flatter shapes and supplied to countries around Europe for operas and military music, becoming so popular in the United States that Zildjian, the original Turkish cymbal company, eventually moved to Massachusetts. In the musical chemistry lab of New Orleans in the early s, there was a demand for an ever-increasing variety of sounds from percussionists and a shortage of space on the stage to accommodate those instruments and money in the budget to pay all those musicians.
Bandleaders had to maximize what they could from the percussion section. Drums once were part of the soundtrack to minstrel shows, which, like the vaudeville shows that came later, had to supply not just rhythm but sound effects, atmosphere, and punctuation to jokes.
The instruments had to be portable so that the performers could adapt to different stages in these traveling shows. The drum set was coalescing at the same time jazz was, and they helped to push each other along.
The bass drum pedal appears in the early twentieth century and the hi-hat pedal or "high-hat", "charleston" in French appears in the 20s with the first big bands playing sitting on dancing paddle steamer or ballroom in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz and blues.
In fact, to understand the modern drumset, you must first know that all the instruments that compose it, if we exclude all extensions , pedals and stands , which are there to help to use them, and are the only true inventions that make the drumset a modern instrument, are instruments whose origin dates back to the dawn of humanity as most percussion instruments.
There are representations of drums and cymbals among the oldest sculptures Greek or Assyrian bas-reliefs photo: Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, 7th century BC. The word "tambour" "drum" in French is from Oriental origin, and even the snare of the "snare drum" can be found on the Moroccan tambourines in the form of dried gut, as the European military drums up at last century the "bendirs.
Bronze cymbals with Turkish form have been found the form most commonly used in jazz and rock but small, in ancient Greek tombs. The ancient Greeks believed they had the power to ward off evil spirits, but there are also many representations that are included in the festivities and banquets, where a dancer balancing on one foot plays cymbals.
It is probably only later, with cymbals with larger format, they are used for military purposes, as all the most powerful instruments drums, timpani, foghorns, bagpipes, trumpets, brass horns, etc. This is a tradition that is virtually over in France, which had almost a municipal brass band per town during the Napoleonic era, and people saw this as an opportunity to practice popular music with a national and friendly characteristic, as well as the Samba in Brazil today, for example.
In the early nineteenth century, in the United States of America newly independent, with the departure of French troops from New Orleans sale of the French colony of Louisiana by Napoleon Bonaparte in , all musical military instruments considered too cumbersome for boats are sold off or abandoned. Thus were born the "Brass Bands" or "Marching bands" and the style "New Orleans" first for the burial ceremonies and then carnivals which was allowed since the French Colonies, still called "Mardi gras" "fat Tuesday" in French as in France, with probably a French cultural transmission as evidenced by the specific French rudiments common in New Orleans jazz but not in the American official rudiments of the National Association of Rudimental Drummers, of , balls and weddings to finally "sit" on the paddle boats deck, in the "dance halls", the "brothels", bars, restaurants and cabarets, to become the "jazz" as we know it.
At that time XIX century , appears the practice of "double drumming" for the sake of economy, bass drum and cymbals were played by a single musician, a cymbal being attached to the bass drum see photo. We may wonder if certain virtuosic phrases of "double drummer", still played today in New Orleans and also orally transmitted, come directly from their African deported ancestors, and were not played first in secret in the "bayou" because any expression of African culture has long been prohibited in America.
The percussive Afro-Cuban tradition is probably the closest to the original African phrases such as "cascara" or "clave" , reproduced just as it is and was integrated much later in modern drumset with the "Latin jazz" of New York.
Some historians believe that the word "jazz" comes from the French slang word "jaser" pronounced "jazze" and meaning "to chat" or simply "jazz" for "il jase" meaning "he chats" , which may characterize the dialogue engaged by the soloists who improvise in the "New Orleans" music style. The most famous of these groups, the first to record with a real modern drumset in in Chicago and claims to be the first real jazz band, is that of Joe "King" Oliver playing since the s : the "King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band" founded in , where Louis Armstrong will illustrate, trumpeter and singer then beginner, Warren "Baby" Dodds photo , the first recorded jazz drummer if we exclude Tony Spargo with the "Original Dixieland Jass Band" which for me is more a caricatural pastiche played by "whites", than some true jazz.
It is at this time that the bass drum pedal was invented to reduce the number of percussionists with a number of versions and inventors quite impressive from the late nineteenth century, but this is probably the version of William F.
Ludwig the "toe operated bass drum pedal", which is the closest to the one we know today, allowing to play fast and powerful, and whose success allowed for the first time its industrial production in The Prohibition of the s, allows "black music", appreciated by wealthy gangsters, to find generous sponsors and develop the "big bands", where thrive large horn sections "Duke" Ellington with drummer Sony Greer , or Louie Bellson later photo below , the first drummer to play with two bass drums , Bill "Count" Basie with notably "Papa" Jo Jones photo above , "Cab" Calloway , Chick Webb drums soloist and band leader are the most famous band leaders, composers, arrangers or pianists, who appears in the equally famous "Cotton Club" and "Savoy Ballroom" in New York.
The notion of "Nightclub" "cabaret" or "cafe-concert" in French , where an initiated public listen to improvised music sipping quietly a drink or dancing, becomes inseparable from jazz, which the "clubs" are still concert venues of current best soloists.
Big orchestras were great for hymns and monumental masterpieces, but these are hardly useful in playing rudimentary songs, meant for casual listeners.
While there were a lot of different percussion elements and instruments, it was very impractical for one to fit big elements, especially bass drums, into a single kit. That being said, a lot of people felt the need for a compact percussion kit to fit into modern day bands of the time. The 20th century has started treating already-existing musical instruments in an unconventional way. One of the best examples of this is the bass viol, which is clearly meant to be played by using a fiddlestick.
To adjust to the industry, bands started to quickly gain popularity in the modern world, as opposed to orchestras. Jazz, for instance, is one of the first genres of music that recognized the importance of percussion instruments in bands. Jazzmen have started to see that the bass viol bassline could be complemented by a percussion element.
In the early 20th century, a man with a vision managed to solve the biggest problem that was stopping musicians from making a drum kit — an easy solution to integrate a bass drum into a somewhat compact drumming kit. In , William Ludwig invented the bass drum pedal. This is a chain-action accessory that allows the musician to hit the center of the membrane with a stick without being awkwardly positioned.
In the span of 50 years, the music industry evolved more than in the past hundreds of years, the drum pedal being a not too modest contributor to the change. Percussion has since become one of the foundations of the modern day band. Other musicians merely noticed that a bass drum would vastly improve the overall tone of their music style.
Elvis became a big cultural icon, bringing more fast-paced, blue-collar music to the mainstream. Over the next 20 years, the fact that the electric guitar, bass, and drums were basically a staple of any successful band has contributed to different variants of this basic setup.
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