Todd A. Price, The American South
Published
8:58 pm UTC Feb. 8, 2021
Louis Armstrong
Photo: Library of Congress, Illustration: Brian Gray, USA TODAY Network
As the National Museum of African American Music opens its doors, journalists from the USA TODAY Network explore the stories, places and people who helped make music what it is today in our expansive series, Hallowed Sound.
NEW ORLEANS, La. — Saxophonist Donald Harrison, when he listens to the earliest jazz recordings, hears even older sounds. In the playing of those Black musicians from the early 20th century, Harrison discerns elements forged in New Orleans’ Congo Square.
A public market most days, on Sundays it was the one place in the South before the Civil War where Africans, both free and enslaved, could sing and dance in public. Here, the rhythms of Africa, played openly and with abandon, mingled with the musical forms of Europe.