Black Cultural Center
Elements of Jazz
African American art at the Purdue University Black Cultural Center
Compiled by Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, BCC Program and Service Supervisor
Click on an image below to start the slide show. The BCC has on display the following items that are from Africa and can easily be identified as instrumentation in jazz music:
The Marimba (Xylophone)
The Gourd Rattle (now called the Shakere)
The Drum with Human Figure is a musical instrument from Cote D’Ivoire
The Talking Drum with Stick
Metal Sculpture Funk Dancer G by Garry Bibbs
Miles in Transition by Rodgers
The Black Cultural Center is home to what may be called some of the ‘root’ instruments that make up what we know today to be Jazz. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, this ‘new music’ became popular in the 1910s during a time in American history that many Blacks where migrating to the area from the Caribbean, Africa, and places North because of the trading along the Mississippi River. It was this combination of former slaves from various regions and their need to express themselves in forms that were allowed during the time period that gave birth to jazz.

“In New Orleans's Congo Square, a grassy plain where the city fathers had permitted slaves to dance and sing for a few hours on Sundays, African dances were performed with music that featured drumming and stringed instruments. Congo Square was used by American Indians, slaves, and free people of color to market goods, socialize and participate in drumming, music-making, sporting, and dance activities. The square is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But Congo Square was just one cultural element in the vibrant New Orleans mix. There existed European symphony halls and opera houses segregated for white, Creole, and black audiences. Ragtime, created by black musicians in the Midwest, was brought into the city by traveling musicians and published sheet music. Local marching band music, best typified by the New Orleans Funeral Parade, celebrated life's highs and lows. And Mississippi Delta migrants brought their music of sacred gospel and secular blues.

So jazz is the blending of all these elements that existed in New Orleans at the time. It has the syncopation and European sensibility of ragtime. But jazz also features a blues tonality, and is characterized by extensive improvisation, neither of which is found in its predecessor. New Orleans's "local flavor" of ragtime was actually a very new sounding music, though nobody actually used the term jazz.” (About.com, Tim. Matouk, the Birthplace of Jazz)