The Impact Of Music On The Heart Of New Orleans Essay

Music defines our culture. As Americans, we listen to music while we drive our cars, are at work, doing housework, studying, etc. We have songs for special occasions: Christmas, Hanukah, birthdays, weddings, parties, etc. We have taken songs from the various cultures that make us diverse: Arabic, German, Mexican, Native American, etc. We have many genres: country, hip-hop, rap, pop, blues, jazz, rock, heavy metal, etc. And although we may think of music as simple and easy, looking at all this makes one realize how diverse and complex our music truly is. Two things that contribute to this diversity are theme and symbolism.

The second generations of Jazz musicians were some like Joe “King” Oliver, Kid Ory, and Jelly Roll Morton. These people formed a small band and started to reshape the way the original Jazz music was played. They have made it into a different style with more complications and twists and turns. And so it became known as “Hot Jazz”. King Oliver found a young artist by the name of Louis Armstrong. He soon grew to become the greatest Jazz musician anyone has known. He is still a big star in the world today. By the 20th Century, African-American musical styles became the dominant force.

New Orleans has a rich history that can be marveled at, as well as be frowned upon. As a constituent of the greater Louisiana, New Orleans was at the heart of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Slaves were imported from West Africa, as well as India and then tasked with working in the robust cotton farms that characterized New Orleans at the time (Blassingame 5). Women slaves were mostly assigned to households where they worked as house helps, as well as babysitters. To this end, women developed close ties with most of their slave owners. In the image, New Orleans woman and the child she held in slavery, it is apparent that the girl worked for the woman and there was a lot of

32 | spring 2016 get involved www. kappa.org | 33 For more than two centuries, coffee has been a fundamental part of the culinary and social culture of New Orleans. It’s not just the city’s penchant for chicory café au lait served alongside warm beignets.

For as long as mankind has walked on this earth, music has been an important part of our culture and lifestyles. Each walk of life beats to a different drum. Different cultures use music for many aspects of their lives; for religious purposes, for celebrations, for comfort, for sorrow, for relaxation, for sports, for dances, for energy, for learning, for sleeping, and for sexual experiences. Everyone uses music for something. Music connects with people and reaches them in ways that words simply cannot. Music is a representation of what feelings sound like. It expresses emotion and brings that characteristic out from within us; it tells us a story. Every generation has its’ own sound and different music styles have emerged and become

During the early 1900’s, a new style of music began to take shape in the colorful city of New Orleans. People from all over the world came to exchange stories, conversation, and music. Although it is a very hard genre of music to define, it is said that Jazz is the combination of European and African music that was brought in via the ports. With mostly an African American population, the musicians shared their music in Storyville - a cultural melting pot, and began to spread the “New Orleans Sound”. They contributed to what would soon be known as Jazz in 1917. The spontaneous nature of Jazz’s syncopation and sound makes it a very humanistic style of music and makes every performance original. Every day we improvise, whether it is in conversation or spur of the moment decisions. These truly unique elements caused Jazz to become a symbol of America, and changed music forever.

Music is an art that has united people all over the world for centuries and centuries. Evolving throughout the years, music is split up into many different genres. These genres have derived from diverse time periods and cultures throughout the years. Jazz and Country music both originated in the early 1900s, but have had lasting impacts on completely different cultures. The detailed elements of each piece are dissimilar, but are equally effective in providing entertainment for each audience.

New Orleans culture is unlike any other city in the United States. In order to understand, we first need to learn about the history of the city. New Orleans was settled by the French in 1718, but the Spanish ruled from 1765 to 1802. In the mid-1700s, the French and Spanish from Europe were joined by many Cajuns. Thrown out of Acadia, which today is present day New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, by the British, Cajuns ultimately ended up in what is today Louisiana and their culture thrived. The Europeans of New Orleans did not try to conquer the American Indians who lived in the region; instead, the French allowed them to keep their freedom and culture. Also, the Spanish, in an effort to gain support over the French, allowed

What is the purpose of music in society? Foremost, in layman terms, music is just sounds. However, individuals then use these sounds as a medium in order to spread certain ideas and emotions across society. Naturally over time different types of music become associated with different communities; thus, this identification creates an overgeneralized interpretation of who these communities are and what they stand for. One prime example is the stereotype that jazz and swing was the music of the African Americans in 20th century Los Angeles. Even though it may be true, the stereotype does not give an answer as to why or how jazz and swing became to be known as “black music”. In order to answer these questions, it is imperative to know what conditions

Some may say music is just music; a song is just a song. However, music plays an enormous role in our psychology, because a single song has the ability to bring about many kinds of thoughts and emotions in the listener. Music is subtly one of the main factors in which people identify with certain groups and establish their belonging in society. It shapes people’s perspectives on how the world functions and the roles they play within it. Music can function the same way in a culture; it can reflect many of the culture’s values and ideologies. Music can have many effects on culture and the people’s idea of who they think they are within that culture. Music can serve in a way that promotes cultural identity and pride, yet it could also play a

New Orleans is a Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico. Nicknamed the "Big Easy," it's known for its round-the-clock nightlife, vibrant live-music scene and spicy, singular cuisine reflecting its history as a melting pot of French, African and American cultures. Embodying its festive spirit is Mardi Gras, the late-winter carnival famed for raucous costumed parades and street parties.

New Orleans jazz is attractive to the military culture in the shared aspect that “New Orleans jazz developed as a synthesis of social and cultural factors that merged at a particular time and place in history” (Metzger and Ernest 406). Moreover, “the usual New Orleans musicians’ response to disaster … has long been an inclination to use music to mitigate the harsh realities endemic to a city that finds itself perennially in harm’s way” (Raeburn 812) in which, post-WWI, WWII, Cold War, Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and most recently post-9/11, directly relates to military sentimentality. Further justifying the connection of the need to mitigate harsh realities with music, a sentiment shared between both New Orleans natives and U. S. Military communities, “the Naval School of Music add[ed] classes to perform in real-world settings that include performances in war-torn and developing countries” (Jones 52). This resulted in its recent curriculum “innovation [of] a New Orleans style brass band to provide the ability to send small, mobile acoustic groups to entertain audiences in difficult performance conditions” (Jones 52). The Naval School of Music takes direction from the employed fleet musicians and their supervisors’ feedback, rather than faculty, to quickly adapt a curriculum to the changing naval landscape (Jones 47-52).

Music is a universal understanding of one’s culture. It allows people from all parts of the world to come together to appreciate and love one another for their differences. My mother is Filipino and my father is Mexican. Though both ethnicities are rich in history, I have chosen to specifically focus on the land of my father, Jalisco, Mexico. With lively rhythms, different vocalists, and historical dances, Jalisco’s music comes together to tell a story.

Many of us individuals face conflicts almost everyday in our lives. People of all culture have challenging in their lives that they come across a certain incident and get confused in what decision to be made. These conflicts could be a conflict between oneself and another person, an inner-conflict, a conflict between oneself and nature, one and society, or oneself and God. There are positive and negative intercultural conflicts that occurs every day. An example of a positive conflict could be two different cultures compliment one another on the way they dress or how good their food is in the way they prepare it in their culture, or just communicating and respecting one another with the issue that needs to be addressed openly. A negative conflict is when someone has a lack of communication and unwilling to compromise. According to lecture 6, “intercultural conflict occurs when differences in goals, expectations, and values stem from broader cultural differences” (COM-263 Lecture 6, 2017). This paper will describe an incident that happened in France with a Muslim women on how the conflict arose, the best way to handle the conflict, and one recommendation that comes from a Christian Worldview.

When music is created, it integrates the cultural and emotional situations that occur in everyday life. People create dances to the