(Jun 19 2025) Is Jazz Really Just The Result Of European Harmony Meeting African Rhythms?

For those keeping track you may have noticed I missed last week’s newsletter entry. While this isn’t completely abnormal, this time it was for a wonderful reason as it was the final week of my wife’s Masters degree. What that meant was a number of celebratory functions to attend which ended up eating away a little bit at the time I usually would spend writing these entries. However, I’m back at it this week and figured I would dive into a topic I’ve been researching over the last month or so.

While I never gave too much thought to the origins of jazz prior to my time at university, once I stepped into my first jazz history class it was as if I encountered thousands of lightbulb moments as my professor John Murphy revealed countless facts each week. Although the class was a fantastic introduction, there is only so much you can cover in one semester. To try and fit over a century of information into about 30 hours of class time is quite the task and inevitably a lot of material will be missed or greatly summarized. Like most teenagers at the time, I cared more about the music I was playing than its origins, yet one question posed by the class has stayed with me since then, so much so that I decided to let it be the title of this particular entry.

As someone who hadn’t really engaged with jazz history, I had never contemplated the inception of jazz as being either simple or complex, I simply didn’t care. Yet over the last decade or so I have grown fascinated with understanding the people and cultures which created the music I love and as such I’ve found myself with many questions regarding the inception of jazz. In Murphy’s class he brought up the concept that the creation of jazz has often been simplified to an absolute bare bones statement, that the music was a result of European harmony meeting African rhythms. However, being the great scholar he was, he immediately challenged that with a number of examples, none of which I particularly remember today but perhaps more importantly he established the rhetoric that the truth was more complex than what most people say. 

In the years following, my time was spent outside of the realm of jazz history until I somehow was reacquainted through my deep dive into Cuban history back in 2020/21. Without realizing it, that particular line of research showed another angle of jazz history, one which was significantly more complex than the European meets African rhetoric and included centuries of Cuban history into the mix. As I was primarily focused on Cuban music at the time, I decided to make a mental note of my findings to revisit at a later date. Although it has been years, I’m now finally taking the time to explore that period of American music history in preparation for a new course I’m launching in September. And let me tell you, the start of jazz is a complex story that makes the more well known areas of jazz history seem rather simple in comparison.

Through my studies so far, I can see how a simple statement on the origin of jazz has remained after so many decades. It’s because there is some level of truth behind those words, however the idea is so broad that it can pretty much cover everything. By saying European, it covers all of the music of an entire continent, with the word African doing the exact same thing. The statement itself is only one step removed from saying that all music everywhere is a result of all the people on this planet, and probably a lot closer to that idea than the specific nuance needed to explain the origins of jazz. So what does the start of jazz really look like?

Well, first of all we need to remember that all of the people at that time have now passed and that we can only really go off of documentation that may or may not exist. As a result, there will inevitably be gaps no matter how thorough we look and we will never be able to completely understand the exact concoction that took place to create the great African American art form. Fortunately, there exists a whole lot of information which gets us significantly closer to the truth compared to the overly simplified African meets European statement. To cover it all properly I would have to write multiple books (which many people already have), so for the purposes of this newsletter I’ve simplified it down to a few core components.

To understand the creation of jazz you have to understand the musical culture that existed in the United States, Caribbean, and specifically New Orleans during the 1800s. If you think back to what the musical landscape of America has been over the last century, then you can start to realize that to do the same for the 19th century would likely be equally as large in scale. Just because they didn’t have the internet or recording technology, didn’t mean they had any less drive to make music and create new styles. Narrowing down that focus to New Orleans, there are a number of different musical styles that played an important role such as:

• Traditional brass band (specifically around the 1830s with the creation of the rotary valve brass instruments)

• Marching/Military Bands

• French Opera

• European classical music (everything from Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven to later composers such as Debussy/Ravel/Stravinsky)

• Afro-Haitian folkloric music

• Afro-Caribbean folkloric music

• Minstrel shows/Hokum music

• Second-line bands

• Blues

• Rural slave music (e.g. work songs, country blues etc)

• Ragtime 

• Dixieland bands

• Creole music

• Gospel/hymns/spiritual music (both African American and white)

• Cuban Contradanza/Danza/Danzon

• European folkloric music from various countries (e.g. Sicillian, Irish, Scottish etc)

Each one of these major musical styles contributed various aspects to jazz and heavily complicates the narrative of European harmony meeting African rhythms. Styles such as the blues most likely have their origin in the singing traditions of West Africa, yet contributed one of the most core aspects to early jazz, blues harmony. On the rhythm front, swing generally is accepted as a creolisation of West African rhythms but other major rhythmic components are clearly derived from elements of marching band music as well as other European folkloric musics. All of these styles, as well as a number I’m sure I’m forgetting, came together through the mixing of class and race guided by many key political moments to create jazz over a period of a century in New Orleans. 

So with that in mind, let’s revisit the original question - is jazz really just the result of European harmony meeting African rhythms? Perhaps when explaining the origins of jazz to someone who isn’t invested in the music, then this definition would be a satisfactory answer as they are likely not to give it any more thought, however for those who play the music and care about its origins, I think it is clear that jazz is the result of far more than two simplistic components. As we get further and further away from that period in time, inevitably history will be simplified in the wake of the more pressing matters of today, but I think it’s important to remember that just because something took place a century ago, or even centuries, doesn’t mean that it is anyway any simpler than the reality we face today. 

The main reason I’m going on this deep dive is to not only understand the history behind jazz but to immerse myself in the culture which created the music I love. Over the last few years I have realized that one of my passions is to be able to understand how to authentically recreate different styles, and to me that means not just knowing a specific musical technique but also understanding what life was like to create such a musical choice to begin with. It makes the music real, something that is almost relatable even though we live in a different time and importantly helps the music speak beyond a bunch of theoretical explanations. In my pursuit I’ve found that a lot of other people also enjoy hearing more about this knowledge, which is what led me to teach arranging to begin with.

I figured I should write a little longer given I missed last week, so hopefully you didn’t find it too much of a slog to get through! Like always, if you enjoyed the newsletter let me know, I always love seeing the replies from those of you who read this. Also, if anyone wants more information about this sort of historical research, let me know, I will happily forward the name of some authors/books depending on what you are looking for.

Until next time,

Toshi