Dixieland Jazz

Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century.

The first use of the term "Dixieland" with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, whose 1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of the new style of music. At that time, there was no issue of subgenres of jazz, so "Dixieland" referred to the band and not the music. A revival movement for traditional jazz, formed in reaction to the orchestrated sounds of the swing era and the perceived chaos of the new bebop sounds of the 1940s (referred to as "Chinese music" by Louis Armstrong), pulled "Dixieland" out from the somewhat forgotten band's name for the music they championed. The revival movement included elements of the Chicago style that developed during the 1920s, such as the use of a string bass instead of a tuba, and chordal instruments, in addition to the original format of the New Orleans style. That reflected the fact that virtually all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was already evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format. "Dixieland" may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz revival movement of the 1940s and 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz. The essential elements that were accepted as within the style were the traditional front lines consisting of trumpets, trombones, and clarinets, and ensemble improvisation over a 2-beat rhythm.

The Dixieland revival renewed the audience for musicians who had continued to play in traditional jazz styles and revived the careers of New Orleans musicians who had become lost in the shuffle of musical styles that had occurred over the preceding 20 to 25 years. Younger coloured musicians largely shunned the revival, largely because of a distaste for tailoring their music to what they saw as nostalgia entertainment for white audiences with whom they did not share such nostalgia. The Jim Crow associations of the name "Dixieland" also did little to attract younger coloured musicians to the revival.

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