In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

rainer e. lotz 7 / CROSS-CULTURAL LINKS BLACK MINSTRELS, CAKEWALKS, AND RAGTIME T he prehistory of jazz dates back to the nineteenth century, and thus to a time when there were few documents of recorded sound and apparently little tangible evidence to support discussions on the origins and evolution of these musical developments. It is widely accepted that jazz has black roots. It seems that jazz appeared out of nowhere, and within a very short time spread around the world, with occasional visits to Europe. This article discusses some aspects of how Europeans were first exposed to African American performers and performances, and whether there has been any cross-fertilization between those Americans and Europeans, and perhaps with other music cultures. Early European Writers on Jazz and Blues Most of the early authors of books on jazz, as well as the compilers of blues and jazz discographies, were Europeans who had few or no firsthand impressions of New Orleans or Chicago, of Sedalia, Missouri, or Clarksdale, Mississippi.∞ Their major contact with the music was through the recordings available in Europe from the 1920s,≤ although there were some visiting musicians. A review of record catalogues shows that the number of available recordings was extremely limited.≥ In Britain and Germany (home of the major record companies), and therefore across the rest of Europe, American ‘‘jazz’’ was represented almost exclusively by now mostly forgotten white performers such as Ed Kirkeby, Vincent Lopez, Mike Markel, Harry Reser, Ben Selvin, Sam Lanin, and Paul Whiteman. Authentic hot performances by black bands were as rare as hens’ teeth and could not have achieved broad distribution.∂ The situation was even more drastic with the blues. Before the Second World War, American companies had released some 7,000 double-sided blues and gospel records involving around 1,200 artists. (If recordings for the Library of Congress are included, the estimated total would be around 22,000 titles.) Only about fifty of these were available to record buyers in Europe over a period of twenty years, almost all of them released in Britain and nowhere else.∑ Travelers and sailors brought back discs but in insignificant quantities—although sometimes they had a wide audience. Today we take it for granted that, for all practical purposes, just about any jazz or blues recording is readily available for research. That is not least due to the 144 r a i n e r e . l o t z e√orts of Johnny Parth, an Austrian, who realized his dream of releasing and maintaining permanently in print a complete catalogue of all historical blues and gospel recordings by black American performers.∏ During the 1920s the situation was dramatically di√erent. Those early writers and record collectors were mostly unaware of areas of musical tradition that are now underrepresented or not represented at all on record, or which antedate the 1920s and 1930s. When the European commentators were writing, technologies such as cylinders, player pianos, and musical boxes were at best vaguely remembered by a past generation in Europe.π The prehistory of jazz, blues, and crosscultural links tended to disappear from history. German Musicians and American Audiences from the 1870s up to the First World War At the time, vast stretches of Germany were extremely poor. Poverty and overpopulation in marginal agricultural hinterlands left ambitious people with few choices: become a priest; join the military; start a cottage industry; survive through itinerant activities; or emigrate. Many villagers became itinerant musicians, earning their living abroad—mainly in Britain and the United States. Whole areas of Germany became known as the ‘‘musicians’ belts’’ (Musikantenland), borne out by the heraldic images on the little townships’ coats of arms.∫ The Palatinate (Pfalz) is in the remote southwestern region of Germany. The following statistics are from the tiny village of Hohenöllen, which even today has fewer than four hundred inhabitants. A hundred years ago, around three hundred people from the village worked as itinerant musicians, roughly a quarter of them in the United States. It is only logical to assume that these musicians had to deliver whatever the public demanded. As professional musicians they had to be capable of reading music and playing by sight, and their repertoire had to include ragtime, cakewalks , two-steps, and any other fashionable American dance tunes, many of them with Afro-American influences. There is proof of this, as some of the local history museums maintain the original collections of part books. Four percent may appear a small proportion at...

Share