Remember the Blues?  How America used slavery (slaves of African origin) for 400 years until slavery was made illegal in the 1800s?  Maybe you remember learning about how the slaves loved church music and made their own “Spiritual” songs (songs of hope of being freed, such as “Swing Low”, and “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore”)… and how, when they eventually were freed, life was just as bad for them, because, never having been allowed to go to school and therefore unable to read and write, African-Americans could only get very poorly-paid jobs.  The Blues was a style of sad, slow song, accompanied by a banjo, and was invented by African-American musicians who wandered from town to town trying to find work.

However, there were African-Americans who still loved church music and who found hope in God and the Church.  They had a more joyful view of life from Blues-makers.  Gospel churches formed choirs who sang what came to be known as “Gospel Music” – joyful, upbeat religious hymns with catchy rhythms, partly influenced by the earlier “Spirituals”.  At the same time, many all-black marching bands and military bands were formed, playing lively up-beat marching tunes.  As the years went by, a style of piano playing emerged out of these two new styles of lively music: Ragtime. 

Ragtime’s main feature is SYNCOPATION.  This was the first time in history that syncopation was so strongly used.  Syncopation is when part of the rhythm or the tune plays off-beat: in other words, not on the pulse beats, but between them, as demonstrated below:

Can you see how both sounds start at the same time, but then the tune sounds play BETWEEN the pulse sounds?

The most famous Ragtime composer was Scott Joplin, who composed “The Entertainer”.  Born in 1867, little Scott had a banjo that he became very good at playing by the age of seven.  His mother, a cleaner, was determined that he should play the piano so she saved up for two years until she could buy him one.  Scott later became very good at the piano.

He grew up to compose several famous Ragtime pieces, and he was important to the development of jazz; because in the 1910s, another sort of sound started to happen that was influenced by Ragtime AND Blues.  This was: 

Dixieland music.  Dixieland was syncopated just like Ragtime, but it was played by a band and included IMPROVISATION.  Improvisation is when a player makes the tune up as he goes along.  The way this happened was usually that the trumpeter would play a tune, and the other instruments would take turns to improvise around the tune. 

Dixieland drew influence from Blues music by using notes from the Blues scale: using the flats of the third, fifth and seventh notes. 

So now we have the three key factors to the development of Jazz:  SYNCOPATION, IMPROVISATION and BLUE NOTES.