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Travelwise: The birthplace of jazz
By Suemedha Sood- BBC
Ellis Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins, Irvin Mayfield, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews. Those are just a few of the living legends who keep jazz going strong in the place it all began, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Today, brass bands still invigorate the streets during Mardi Gras, French Quarter jazz clubs deliver the best in live improvisation on any given night, and the Jazz and Heritage Festival brings together the past, present and future of American jazz every spring, proving year after year that New Orleans is still the jazz mecca of the world.
It all started around 1819 in Congo Square, an outdoor space in New Orleans where slaves would congregate on Sundays when they didn’t have to work. According to the Ken Burns documentary Jazz, they would sing, play music and dance, swaying back and forth to the songs of their home countries. Caribbean music from the West Indies mixed with beats from Africa and church melodies from the United States’ south. Meanwhile, in New Orleans theatres, the stages were overtaken by racist minstrel shows, in which white performers sang and danced in blackfaceto upbeat tunes. And all the while, the sound of the brass marching band provided a soundtrack to the ongoing American Civil War.
When the war ended in 1865, all of these musical styles blended to form a new genre called ragtime, which syncopated the rhythms of previous genres and made songs that everyone wanted to dance to. Around the same time, former slaves from other parts of the American south brought the blues to Louisiana, combining spiritual music from the Baptist church with secular lyrics that told the painful stories of slaves’ lives.
Blues musicians used the trumpets and trombones left over from wartime music to mimic the sound of their voices, literally singing out their pain through their instruments. It made the blues even more mournful, even more poignant and even more cathartic for anyone listening.
When ragtime and the blues came together, it created a completely novel style of music – a truly American art form. In the late 1890s, syncopation joined with soulful melodies, upbeat dance tunes united with the sultry sound of brass instruments, and jazz began to emerge.
Buddy Bolden, an African-American bandleader called “the first man of jazz” by historian Donald M Marquis, was at the forefront of the jazz movement. Bolden played the cornet in dance halls during the day and in the red light district of New Orleans’ Storyville at night. Although no recordings of Buddy Bolden exist today, his music is said to have incorporated the improvisation characteristic of jazz. A heavy drinker with mental health problems, Bolden’s career abruptly ended in 1907, when he was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at the age of 30.
Many other African-American jazz legends also rose to popularity in the beginning of the 1900s, wrote jazz critic and historian Ted Gioia in The History of Jazz. Black musicians included Bunk Johnson, Mutt Carey and Joe “King” Oliver, while Creole musicians (Americans who were descendants from white European colonists and their black slave mistresses) included Sidney Bechet, Freddie Keppard and Jelly Roll Morton, who was famous for falsely claiming to have invented jazz. A talented composer of jazz tunes such as Black Bottom Stomp andGrandpa’s Spells, Morton also lied about his birth date to convince contemporaries that he was older and more experienced than he actually was, Gioia wrote. White musicians who started playing jazz included Papa Jack Laine, Sharkey Bonano and Nick LaRocca. More often than not, bands would self-segregate according to race.
Keppard was touring the country with his esteemed band the Original Creole Orchestra when the Victor Talking Machine Company approached him about recording the world’s very first jazz record in 1915. But the cornet player was so worried about other musicians stealing his ideas that he turned down the offer. Instead, a white band called the Original Dixieland Jass Band, led by LaRocca, recorded with the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1917. This came as a major blow to African-American musicians in particular because of LaRocca’s outspoken racism. He claimed that jazz was invented by white musicians and that black musicians would never play as well. “Since jazz music is at the center of the American mythology, it necessarily deals with race. The more we run from it, the more we run into it,” said New Orleans native and jazz great Wynton Marsalis in the documentary Jazz,
As historian Gioia wrote, it wasn’t until local musicians left the city for greener economic pastures in Chicago and New York that most gained fame and success. In 1918, musician James Reese Europe took jazz across even greater distances. During World War I, he led an infantry band called The Hellfighters that introduced French and British soldiers to the new American sound. Europe then helped stage the inevitable spread of jazz worldwide.
The most important figure for jazz’s future was the great trumpeter and cornetist Louis Armstrong, whose undeniable talent pulled him out of the wreckage of an impoverished and violent New Orleans neighborhood. Under the tutelage of Joe “King” Oliver, Armstrong went from child prodigy to travelling horn player to illustrious soloist. His impact on the world of jazz can be felt throughout New Orleans and around the world today.
With strong roots in the tradition of improvisation, jazz continues to evolve, collecting accents from Afropop, Latin dance music, eastern classical music, and pretty much every other music it comes into contact with, all while transforming other genres around the world. And so has been the story of jazz, ever since its birth in the vivacious city of New Orleans.
Travelwise is a BBC Travel column that goes behind the travel stories to answer common questions, satisfy uncommon curiosities and uncover some of the mystery surrounding travel. If you have a burning travel question, contact Travelwise.
Travelwise: The dual sides of destination wedding etiquette
By Suemedha Sood, BBC
There is any number of reasons for having a destination wedding.
Maybe you’ve always dreamt of getting married on an Indonesian beach or in a French chateau. Maybe you want to keep your wedding small and get your honeymoon started early. Or maybe a significant chunk of your family lives abroad. Whether your reasons are romantic or logistic, throwing a destination wedding comes with an etiquette all its own. To help avoid any social faux pas, we scoured the internet for answers to some of the most common questions about destination weddings – from the perspective of both those hosting and those attending.
Tips for the happy couple:
Who pays for what?
The travel agency and website DestinationWeddings.com points out that guests should not be expected to pay for any events they are invited to as part of the wedding – the ceremony, the reception, group activities, rehearsal dinners, etc. Everything else is their responsibility – airfare, accommodations, salon appointments, etc. To cut down on guests’ costs, search for group travel deals and offer options for vacation rentals, such as beach houses and villas that sleep multiple people.
When should we send invitations and what do they need to include?
Try to announce the date of your destination wedding as far in advance as possible – at least eight months before, advises the wedding planning website The Knot. Online “save-the-dates” and invitations are becoming more commonplace, as are wedding websites, which can include information about the ceremony, reception and any other events you invite your guests to.
Can we invite folks to local, pre-wedding events who we can’t invite to the wedding?
If you are not inviting certain people to the wedding, it is bad form to invite them to you engagement/bachelor/bachelorette parties or bridal shower, said Elise Mac Adam, author of the book Something New: Wedding Etiquette for Rule Breakers, Traditionalists, and Everyone in Between. “The exceptions to this policy are very specific, for instance, office bridal showers where co-workers aren’t going to be invited to the wedding,” shetold About.com.
What about friends and family who can’t attend?
Some couples who throw destination weddings are surprised when very close friends or family members are unable to attend. Be prepared for this and do not let your feelings get hurt. Instead, Brides Magazine suggests hosting a hometown reception after the main event to accommodate anyone who cannot make it to the wedding. Consider keeping your destination wedding small, allowing room in your budget to make a second celebration feasible. If you do this, Mac Adam stresses the importance of making two separate guest lists, even if there is overlap between them, to ensure that neither event becomes massive (and massively expensive).
What about registering for gifts?
Martha Stewart Weddings declares that it is not tacky to register for giftswhen having a destination wedding, as long as your registry includes low-priced items. But also don’t forget how much money your guests arealready spending to come to your wedding – “[T]hat’s a huge gift in itself”, wedding planner Brenda Babcock said.
After the wedding festivities are over, how do we gently let guests know that our honeymoon has started?
While it is generally understood that the newly married couple needs some time alone after the wedding events have concluded, you can also expect that some guests may wish to stay in town to enjoy the rest of their vacation. So Brides Magazine recommends taking this opportunity toexplore a new part of the country or city that you are in. If you had been taking advantage of a resort package, Brides points out that some hotel chains will give you the same deals for any of their locations. Otherwise, you can choose to stay somewhere cheaper, saving yourself some money after the big day.
Tips for guests:
How to save yourself some dollars
Going to a destination wedding is expensive. You often have to take off work, buy a plane ticket and book a hotel room, not to mention any additional money you may need to spend on a suit, dress or gift. If the wedding you are attending is being held at a resort or hotel, do not feel obligated to stay there. You can usually find cheaper accommodations elsewhere – especially if you split rooms with friends. Also, as per usual, check sites like Kayak, Priceline, and Hipmunk for deals on airfare and hotels (and for packages that let you book both together for lower rates).
How to get a vacation out of it
The key to making a destination wedding worth your while is to pair it with a vacation. Luckily, most weddings take place over the weekend, so even if you have limited time off, you can have a few days to yourself. Do not feel obligated to attend every wedding-related event you are invited to. If you would rather use the days before the wedding to travel, do that.
What to wear
If the wedding invitation or website does not specify, the lifestyle network TLC says, men can never go wrong with “a tailored shirt, tie, slacks and a sport coat”, and women can never go wrong with a suit or “a dress that hits somewhere between mid-calf and six or so inches above the knee”. Generally speaking, TLC adds, an outdoor wedding in hot weather tends to indicate less dressy attire. If the ceremony or reception is very formal (think black tie) or very casual (think flip flops), the invitation should make a note of that.
Travelwise is a BBC Travel column that goes behind the travel stories to answer common questions, satisfy uncommon curiosities and uncover some of the mystery surrounding travel. If you have a burning travel question, contact Travelwise.