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The “French tinge”. Jazz and its Paris-New Orleans connection

In recent years, musicological research proved how relevant have been, besides African sources, the European roots of jazz. These can be traced also in the French musical heritage, ideology and culture, including the 1789 Revolution’s freedom principle and the liberal attitude of French governors concerning black slavery in the American colonies, starting from Louisiana. The article suggests the importance of a Paris-New Orleans connection. French and Parisian musical traits were basic ingredients of New Orleans jazz melting pot, whereas the Parisian and French circulation of some important creole musicians from New Orleans like Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Edmund Dedé, during the nineteenth century, helped the latter circulation and proper cultural perception of Afro-American music. Due to these facts, Paris, since then, became the second capital for jazz in the world.
Abstract in Slovak:
Muzikologický výskum v posledných rokoch dokázal, že okrem afrických zdrojov sú pre jazz relevantné aj európske korene. Možno ich sledovať aj vo francúzskom hudobnom dedičstve, ideológii a kultúre, vrátane princípu slobody v revolúcii v roku 1789 a liberálneho prístupu francúzskych guvernérov k čiernemu otroctvu v amerických kolóniách počnúc Louisianou. Príspevok naznačuje význam spojenia Paríža s New Orleans. Francúzske a parížske hudobné črty boli základnými zložkami jazzového taviaceho kotla v New Orleans. Migrácia niektorých významných kreolských hudobníkov z New Orleans, akými boli Louis Moreau Gottschalk a Edmund Dedé v devätnástom storočí v Paríži a vo Francúzsku, pomohla poslednej výmene hudobníkov a správnemu kultúrnemu vnímaniu afroamerickej hudby. Vďaka týmto skutočnostiam sa Paríž stal druhým hlavným mestom jazzu na svete.

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Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (1911), the “first” black opera. A new ethnoanthropological and musicological analysis

More than one century after its birth and its unlucky efforts to stage it properly, Scott Joplin’s complex and beautiful opera Treemonisha calls for a new, interdisciplinary critical analysis. African-American music needs to be viewed not only as a synthesis of oral and written sources, but also in light of how popular music and the mass media have influenced its development. This requires a revision of the musicological study of jazz and related genres to include ethnographic, anthropological and systematic points of view.

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Miles Davis – From Bebop to Hip Hop. The Fifties

Tonality, which began in Europe, challenges the Second Viennese School of Schöenberg, Webern and Berg, again strongly reinforces the American pop music, while tonal feeling of jazz already with bebop elements (chromaticisms, bitonality, seconds, expansion of forms and structures) were in crisis and it started in the 50s its own way; a path that indicates further new perspectives for the future: moving away from the song form and improvisation based on chords performed by Cecil Taylor, a tendency towards expressive possibilities offered by modality and the nascent interest in multinational elements of ethnic music. A new musical language is coupled with technological innovations; while the radio is added to television and film production and is progressing rapidly as a worldwide phenomenon. Recording on magnetic tapes and LPs birth (ie disc 33 rpm) again extends and modifies creative relationships and the pursuit of confrontation in music. But it is hard-bop stream that Miles Davis intuitively senses and spreads even before pianist Horace Silver, drummer Art Blakey, trumpeter Clifford Brown and others formally directed the use of the typical African-American themes.

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