Juré (music)

The music of Louisiana can be divided into three general regions: rural south Louisiana, home to Creole Zydeco and Old French (now known as cajun music), New Orleans, and north Louisiana. The region in and around Greater New Orleans has a unique musical heritage tied to Dixieland jazz, blues, and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. The music of the northern portion of the state starting at Baton Rouge and reaching Shreveport has similarities to that of the rest of the US South.

New Orleans (Traditional Genres)

In the 19th century, there was already a mixture of French, Spanish, African and Afro-Caribbean music. The city had a great love for Opera; many operatic works had their first performances in the New World in New Orleans.

Early African, Caribbean and Creole music

Unlike in the Protestant colonies of what would become the USA, African slaves and their descendants were not prohibited from performing their traditional music in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. The African slaves, many from the Caribbean islands, were allowed to gather on Sundays, their day off, on a plaza known as Congo Square. Permitted as early as 1817, dancing in New Orleans had been restricted to the square, which was a hotbed of musical fusion, as African styles from across America and the Caribbean met and danced in large groups, often in circle dances. The Congo Square gatherings became well known, and many whites came to watch and listen. Nevertheless, by 1830, opposition from whites in New Orleans and an influx of blacks from elsewhere in the U.S. caused the decline of Congo Square's prominence. The tradition of mass dances in Congo Square continued sporadically, though it came to have more in common with minstrelsy than with authentic African traditions.

Caribbean dances known to have been imported to Louisiana include the calenda, Congo, counjai, and bamboula.

Louis Gottschalk was an early 19th-century white Creole pianist and composer from New Orleans, the first American musician/composer to become famous in Europe. A number of his works incorporate rhythms and music he heard performed by African slaves.

In addition to the slave population, antebellum New Orleans also had a large population of free people of color, mostly Creoles of mixed African and European heritage who worked as tradesmen. The more prosperous Creoles sent their children to be educated in France. They had their own dance bands, an opera company, and a symphony orchestra. The community produced such composers as Edmund Dede and Basil Bares. After the American Civil War many Creole musicians became music teachers, teaching the use of European musical instruments to the newly freed slaves and their descendants.

Jazz

Probably the single most famous style of music to originate in the city was New Orleans jazz, also known as Dixieland. It came into being around 1900. Many with memories of the time said that the most important figure in the formation of the music was Papa Jack Laine who enlisted hundreds of musicians from all of the city's diverse ethnic groups and social status. Most of these musicians became instrumental in forming jazz music including Buddy Bolden, Bunk Johnson and the members of Original Dixieland Jazz Band. One of early rural blues, ragtime, and marching band music were combined with collective improvisation to create this new style of music. At first, the music was known by various names such as "hot music", "hot ragtime" and "ratty music"; the term "jazz" (early on often spelled "jass") did not become common until the 1910s. The early style was exemplified by the bands of such musicians as Freddie Keppard, Jelly Roll Morton, "King" Joe Oliver, Kid Ory. The next generation took the young art form into more daring and sophisticated directions, with such creative musical virtuosos as Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Red Allen.

New Orleans was a regional Tin Pan Alley music composing and publishing center through the 1920s, and was also an important center of ragtime. Louis Prima demonstrated the versatility of the New Orleans tradition, taking a style rooted in traditional New Orleans jazz into swinging hot music popular into the rock and roll era. He is buried in New Orleans. Contemporary jazz has had a following in New Orleans with musicians such as Alvin Batiste and Ellis Marsalis. Some younger jazz virtuosos such as Wynton Marsalis and Nicholas Payton experiment with the avant garde while refusing to disregard the traditions of early jazz.

Continuing development of the traditional New Orleans jazz style, Tom McDermott, Evan Christopher, New Orleans Nightcrawlers.

Harry Connick Jr. was raised in New Orleans and attended Loyola University New Orleans.

New Orleans blues

The blues that developed in the 1940s and 1950s in and around the city of New Orleans was strongly influenced by jazz and incorporated Caribbean influences, it is dominated by piano and saxophone but has also produced major guitar bluesmen. Major figures in the genre include Professor Longhair and Guitar Slim, who both produced major regional, R&B and national hits. Louisiana blues created a specialized form of blues music sometimes using zydeco instrumentation and slow, tense rhythms that is closely related to New Orleans blues and swamp blues from Baton Rouge.

R&B/gospel

Allen Toussaint composed or produced many songs, including "Mother-in-Law", " I Like It Like That", "Fortune Teller", " Ride Your Pony", "Get Out of My Life, Woman", "Working in the Coal Mine", "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky", "Freedom For the Stallion", "Yes We Can Can", and " Southern Nights". He was a producer for hundreds of recordings, for example " Right Place, Wrong Time", by his longtime friend Dr. John ("Mac" Rebennack), and "Lady Marmalade" by Labelle. The Meters, Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe gained hit songs. New band Galactic released jazz funk album.

The city also has a rich tradition of gospel music and spirituals; Mahalia Jackson was the most famous of New Orleans' gospel singers. She is buried in Metairie.

The Dixie Cups had a #1 Hot 100 hit with "Chapel of Love" in 1964. They also recorded the song "Iko Iko" about Mardi Gras. In the 1950s, New Orleans again influenced the national music scene as a center in the development of rhythm and blues. Important artists included Fats Domino (d. 2017), Snooks Eaglin, Dave Bartholomew, Professor Longhair, and Huey "Piano" Smith.

Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. (born November 21, 1940), better known by the stage name Dr. John a New Orleans-born singer/songwriter, pianist and guitarist whose music combined blues, boogie woogie and rock and roll. Dr. John cited Professor Longhair as one of his musical influences and has recorded a number of his compositions, most notably "Tipitina".

1980s new style of "street beat" brass bands combining the jazz brass band tradition with funk and hip hop was spearheaded by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, then the Rebirth Brass Band.

New Orleans (Modern Genres)

Rock/pop

Significant New Orleans rock band, and alternative bands include Zebra, The Radiators, Better Than Ezra (singer Kevin Griffin graduated from Louisiana State University in 1990), 12 Stones, and Cowboy Mouth. Popular alternative rock bands include Mutemath and Meriwether.

Louisiana is known as the most important place for the development of a style of heavy metal: sludge metal. Two of its founding acts, Eyehategod and Crowbar, are from New Orleans, where the genre's most important scene can be found. Other notable sludge metal bands such as Acid Bath, Down, Soilent Green and Choke are based in Louisiana. Blackened death metal band Goatwhore are from New Orleans.

Britney Spears (from Kentwood) has had four #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including the dance-pop song " ...Baby One More Time" from 1999. R&B singer Frank Ocean had a #1 album on the Billboard 200 with ''Blonde'' in 2016.

Hip-hop

Beginning in the mid-1990s, New Orleans became a hub of Southern hip hop. First with Master P and his No Limit clique based out of the 3rd Ward, then later came the Cash Money clique who popularized a unique semi-melodic Louisianian style of rapping to the hip hop mainstream. The city has also been a center of Southern hip hop, and the birthplace of mainstream Bounce music which originated in New Orleans.

The rapper Juvenile had a #1 hit on the Hot 100 with "Slow Motion" ft. Soulja Slim, from 2004 and a #1 album on the Billboard 200 with '' Reality Check'' in 2006. Lil Wayne became one of the most prominent New Orleans rappers in the mid-2000s. He has had two #1 hits on the Hot 100, including "Lollipop" from 2008.

Southern region (Traditional Genres)

The music of rural south Louisiana features significant input from non-Creoles, most notably African Americans who are critical to the cultural/musical identity. Four main musical genres are indigenous to this area — Creole music (i.e. zydeco), swamp pop, and swamp blues. These historically-rooted genres, with unique rhythms and personalities, have been transformed with modern sounds and instruments. The southwestern and south central Louisiana areas herald many artists and songs that have become international hits, won Grammy awards, and become highly sought after by collectors.

In southwestern Louisiana in the 1800s, the fiddle was the most popular Cajun instrument and the music still carried clear influences from the Poitou region of France and the Scottish/Canadian influences of their earlier homeland. In the late 19th century German immigrants spreading outward from central and eastern Texas and New Orleans soon brought the accordion as well. Creoles at the time sang a rhythmic type of song called juré. When accordion, fiddle and the triangle iron were added later, the music evolved into French music or form la la, a central component of Creole music. La la was primarily rural, played at house dances also known as ''la las'', and found in towns in the prairie regions like Mamou

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