The Latin Tinge of New Orleans

“Jazz music came from New Orleans, and New Orleans was inhabited with maybe every race on the face of the Globe” – Jelly Roll Morton

The story of jazz begins in the Deep South on the banks of the Mississippi.  It’s roots were nurtured and flourished amongst a diverse group of individuals. Along with Caribbean goods such as tobacco and sugar, New Orleans traded musical ideas of the community. Spanish, French, Italians, Jews, free blacks, slaves, and immigrants of the surrounding area in Mexico and the Caribbean shared this port city with sailors, merchants, and visitors. By the late nineteenth century, New Orleans was a large metropolis that sported a rather large hospitality and entertainment industry in addition to its port town status. As well as the city’s catering towards tourism and trade industries, New Orleans also had fairly different laws and regulation regarding minority populations and had fairly lax segregation laws as compared to other major Southern cities. Raúl Fernandez, notes “African drums, outlawed in most of North American, could be heard on select days in New Orleans’ Congo Square.”[1] Unlike the rest of the United States, cultural practice for many minority groups – though regulated – had the ability to be preserved in some fashion. As this diverse and racially “relaxed” place was gaining in popularity, an important group of immigrants came to stay and bring their own influence into New Orleans culture during its formative years and aided in refining the sound of the South.

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[1] Fernandez, Raul A. Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination. San Francisco: Chronicle Books in association with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, 2002. 14.