The Origins of Jass

Christianity and its human vessel were created for a reason.  Who knew that evil, the serpent, the Devil would coexist with God and attempt to fleece man?  If we read the Bible it is all there, but Bible reading is passe.  God is passe.  We as a nation have little way to discern right and wrong, honesty, and deceit, or good and evil.  This is the way the Devil wants it.  How are we to know the difference?  If critical thinking is the only process upon which is relied to makes decisions, especially moral decisions, than what assures us we have made the correct choice?  The answer is God has provided us with a system, a human system which is intertwined with creative and artistic sensibility.  It is an engine, a machine of emotional feelings, instincts, and reactions.  These perceptions and thus reactions are physiological, biological, and organic.  They originate in the processes of the body and are a core part or should be of our human existence.  The trouble is the human race as a whole has been lead away from our consciences for a reason.  If we have no gut reaction upon which to rely than Donald Trump and his administration can lie directly to our faces like Big Brother.  That is what Big Brother is, a falsification of reality to suit the "party."  Why was it banging around in my brain today that Communism all ready has overtaken the American political process.  It is a simple paradigm.  Agree with  "The Party," and your needs will be met.  "The Party."  All you have to do is agree with the  predominant social and political rhetoric, and the socialist system will provide for your needs.  "The Party."  Truth no longer is a matter of importance.  Justice, honesty, and good no longer play a part in human existence.  The reason is simple, and the the reason simply is because it is much simpler only to seek to gain and spend.  If the core of your existence only is to pillage, imperialize, collect, and spend than life is simple.  There is no need for intelligence, thinking, philosophizing, or creativity.  Only we seek to conquer and put heads on stakes as a symbol of our championship.  Life is simple.  Seek and conquer.  Do not think.  Do not create.  Do not quest for beauty, serenity, and spiritual fulfillment.  When are needs are met, then we stare directly into the void, the abyss, the darkness.  Then it is required with our human mind and souls a way to fill this void with human ingenuity, accomplishment, and good.  This is not about what I wished to write today, but my mind is clouded.  Anyone who doubt climate change or global warming only has to walk outside.  Our scorched earth means it is difficult to exist outside without pain and suffering, like the pain and suffering of being forced to pick cotton against your will.  As I have been studying the history of Jazz and necessarily the other forms of indigenous American music, several things have come to light.  One is I would be inclined to call Jazz America's finest folk music.  In a simple definition, folk music means music championed by the folks, folks being not academic or highly educated scholars of music.  Surely we are aware that the human mind is capable of genius in all people, because our founding fathers recognized the need to state such in our Constitution.  All men are created equal.  It is a simple sentence, and life in America would be simpler today if this sentence were reiterated more often.  Jazz was music created by the folks, so my premise largely is correct.  Jazz is America's greatest folk music, but then I must include and consider the other forms of America's great musics, Country, Bluegrass, and what has been considered Folk music for years, the protest music of our Civil Rights Movement.  Is jazz better than these?  I say emphatically, "No."  That would be short-sighted and callow.  The power and integrity of Bluegrass is irrefutable, but this form of American music largely is undefined and thus recognized until much later than its true origins.  Bill Monroe, while credited with creating Bluegrass, is not its father just as W.C. Handy is not the Father of the Blues.  As I watched Wynton Marsalis describe the blues in his recent YouTube tutorial, I was surprised when he cited W.C. Handy as the "Father of the Blues."  Few American including myself know anything about this man, except that he wrote the song, "Saint Louis Blues" which later was morphed into the "Saint Louis Blues March" played by Glenn Miller's band.  Let's qualify.  The first designation in American music history is the difference between composed music, music that is planned and written down on paper, and music which is created, learned and purveyed by an aural tradition.  "By ear."  Let me say that again.  "By ear."  No music.  Nothing written down on paper.  Learned by hearing with the ears, mind, body, and soul.  It is possible to hear with the human skin, and easily this is explained by unborn babies being educated before they develop ears.  The skin, the largest human organ, may be the best hearing device the human being possesses.  Before our corrupt and "Party-lining" medical establishement saw fit, "Otoacoustic" meant this specifically, hearing with the skin.  It stands to reason understanding that feeling or tactile sensations simply are waves understood by the dermis.  Without delving into human anatomy, American music must be classified this way, and it makes the understanding of American music history easier.  Louis Armstrong at first did not read music, he played what he heard, knew, and developed in his own mind and soul.  This is an extraordinary concept, and that which makes this man so notable in American musical evolution.  The majority of what Louis Armstrong performed did not come off a page.   It came out of his soul largely through his ears and mind.  The same is true of blues music, except in the case of the Father of the Blues, a title bestowed upon himself not unlike "The Creator of Jazz," Jelly Roll Morton.  In trying to understand this complicated and diverse chronology of musical evolution in America, qualifying the difference between "composed" music and music in the "aural" tradition is key.  W.C. Handy has been cast "The Father of the Blues" only because he may have been the first to write it down on paper, or less effectively dilute it into something that can be understood by the masses.  This is a twelve bar form with a chord progression of the tonic, subdominant, and dominant which move in logical and cadential way providing a convenient song form for blues performers.  This rather simplistic form, which often is cited as the definition of the blues, is far from its true definition.  While W.C. Handy was authoratative about the blues and its origins, I feel it is inappropriate to bestow this title upon him.  It is an academic accolade, and that is America's tradition.  W.C. Handy certainly provided no semen for the inception of the resulting organic entity of the Blues.  Instead he may be considered a scholar of the Blues.  Because you are the first to document an art form on paper such as Gunther Schuller did for African tribal drumming does not mean you are its father.  This is a ludicrous title.  As America rethinks her African roots and its improper diversions, this is one.  W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton are designated such, because they saw fit to write down their findings.  In the case of Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe accolades should be attributed to him for his pioneering effort at transcribing the aural polyphony of the New Orleans horn section in Early or Hot Jazz.  He was the first to write down the organic counterpoint between trumpet, clarinet, and trombone in early New Orleans jazz bands.  Mr. Marsalis effectively describes how the Blues and the fervor of worship in the black church combine in a swinging of traditional Sousa marches.  These marches, which have been well-studied, are complete and musical entities comparable to European orchestral forms.  They effectively pioneer a more American form of musical expression integrating customs and traditions of a relatively pioneering new nation.  The combining of these elements, slave traditions, worship, Sporting Houses, Blues, Ragtime, and Minstrel Shows resulted in a new form of American music, Jass.  When the "ass" in Jass became recognized and was deemed profane, easily the term was sanitized as "Jazz."