Creole music
Encyclopedia
Creole music applies to two genres of music from south Louisiana
: Creole folk and Creole. Creole folk dates from the 18th century or before, and it consists primarily of folk songs. Many were published, and some found their way into works by Louisiana composers such as Louis Moreau Gottschalk
, Basil Barès, Camille Nickerson
, and Moses Hogan
. Andrus Espree ( Beau Jocque ) is a Creole musician .
, sometimes including dance-related instrumental accompaniments, sung in French patois
by Creole people of French and African descent; however, this depends on a definition of Creole people, which is notoriously problematic. A simpler definition, in view of the relatively few Creole folk melodies that have survived, is this: music represented as Creole folk music in certain compilations, such as those listed here (with full citations in the References):
In America's Music (2nd edition, p. 302-3), Gilbert Chase
describes the cultural setting in which Creole folk music developed. To summarize, in 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory
, including New Orleans, from France, and in 1809 and 1810, "more than ten thousand refugees from the West Indies arrived in New Orleans, most originally from [French-speaking Haiti]. Of these, about three thousand were free Negroes." At the time of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's birth in 1829, 'Caribbean' was "perhaps the best word to describe the musical atmosphere of New Orleans."
Central to Creole musical activities was Place Congo (in English: Congo Square
). The much quoted 1886 article by George Washington Cable
offers this description:
Cable then describes a variety of instruments used at Congo Square, including gourds, triangles, jaw harps, jawbones, and "the grand instrument at last", the four-stringed banjo. The bamboula
, or "bamboo-drum", accompanied the bamboula dance and bamboula songs. Chase writes, "For Cable, the bamboula represented 'a frightful triumph of body over the mind,' and 'Only the music deserved to survive, and does survive...'"
Among other Creole dances mentioned by Chase (p. 312) are the babouilee, the cata (or chacta), the counjaille (or counjai), the voudou, the calinda, and the congo. "Perhaps the most widespread of all was the calinda..." The melody "Michié Préval", for example, was sung to the calinda. In Spanish, the name of this dance is calenda.
The words "obtained from a lady who heard them sung" suggest that the songs were written down by someone, perhaps the lady herself, but certainly someone adept at music notation who was able to understand and write down the patois. It seems likely that she or he was a guest or a member of the La Branche family, who resided at the plantation until 1859, shortly after which the plantation was devastated by flood. This family included United States chargé d'affaires to Texas and a Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Alcée Louis La Branche.
We may never know the identity of the person who wrote down the seven Creole folk songs as sung at Good Hope Plantation, but it is noteworthy that Good Hope (town), Good Hope Floodwall, Good Hope Oil and Gas Field, Bayou La Branche, and, especially, La Branche Wetlands are today well known names in St. Charles Parish, where the seven songs were once sung.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
, widely acknowledged as America's foremost concert artist of the nineteenth century, was born in New Orleans in 1829. Perone's bio-bibliography lists hundreds of Gottschalk's compositions. Among them are three solo piano works based on Creole melodies:
In America's Music (revised third edition, page 290), Chase writes:
Chase apparently overlooked a fourth Creole melody used by Gottschalk. In her 1902 compilation, Gottschalk's sister arranged "Po' Pitie Mamzé Zizi", and included a footnote: "L. M. Gottschalk used this melody for his piece entitled 'Mancenillier', [full name Le Mancenillier, sérénade]."
Regarding "Misieu Bainjo", used in Gottschalk's Bamboula, the editors of Slave Songs write "...the attempt of some enterprising negro to write a French song; he is certainly to be congratulated on his success." The song has been published in more than a dozen collections prior to 1963, listed by the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress.
(1888–1982) performed Creole folk music professionally as "The Louisiana Lady." During an interview with Doris E. McGinty, She performed in New Orleans and in Opelousas to a crowd of whites , only to receive an appreciative crowd .
Creole music
Creole music", often reduced to "Creole music", designates a genre found in connection with Cajun music, zydeco, and swamp pop. The beginnings of this genre are associated with accordionist Amédé Ardoin
(1896–1941), who, in the early 1930s, made influential recordings with Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee.
Subsequent developments, in which Creole and Cajun styles became increasingly inseparable, are covered at Contemporary Louisiana Cajun, Creole and Zydeco Musicians. Among the many pages, under the auspices of Louisiana State University Eunice, are tributes to black Creole musicians
Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin (1915-2007) and
Boozoo Chavis (1930-2001). Andrus Espree aka Beau Jocque (1956–1999)
External links
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
: Creole folk and Creole. Creole folk dates from the 18th century or before, and it consists primarily of folk songs. Many were published, and some found their way into works by Louisiana composers such as Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
, Basil Barès, Camille Nickerson
Camille Nickerson
Camille Nickerson was a pianist, composer, arranger, collector, and Howard University professor from 1926–1962. She was influenced by Creole folksongs of Louisiana which she arranged and sung....
, and Moses Hogan
Moses Hogan
Moses George Hogan was an African-American composer and arranger of choral music. He was best known for his very popular and accessible settings of spirituals. Hogan was a pianist, conductor and arranger of international renown...
. Andrus Espree ( Beau Jocque ) is a Creole musician .
Creole folk music
One possible definition of Creole folk music is this: melodiesCreole music melodies
Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:...
, sometimes including dance-related instrumental accompaniments, sung in French patois
Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
by Creole people of French and African descent; however, this depends on a definition of Creole people, which is notoriously problematic. A simpler definition, in view of the relatively few Creole folk melodies that have survived, is this: music represented as Creole folk music in certain compilations, such as those listed here (with full citations in the References):
| Date | Code | Compilation |
|---|---|---|
| 1867 | SS Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Slave Songs of the United States (final 7 songs) |
| 1902 | CS Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Creole Songs from New Orleans in the Negro-Dialect |
| 1915 | AA Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Afro-American Folksongs |
| 1921 | CF Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Six Creole Folk-Songs |
| 1921 | BB Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Bayou Ballads: Twelve Folk-Songs from Louisiana |
| 1939 | LF Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Louisiana French Folk Songs (Chapter 6: "Creole Folk Songs") |
| 1946 | DS Creole music melodies Several melodies appear in more than one Creole music compilations; in each case, the title, spelling, etc., are as found in the earliest compilation in the table below:... |
Creole Songs of the Deep South |
Cultural Setting and Congo Square
Gilbert Chase
Gilbert Chase was an American music historian, critic and author, and a "seminal figure in the field of musicology and ethnomusicology....
describes the cultural setting in which Creole folk music developed. To summarize, in 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory
Louisiana Territory
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805 until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed to Missouri Territory...
, including New Orleans, from France, and in 1809 and 1810, "more than ten thousand refugees from the West Indies arrived in New Orleans, most originally from [French-speaking Haiti]. Of these, about three thousand were free Negroes." At the time of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's birth in 1829, 'Caribbean' was "perhaps the best word to describe the musical atmosphere of New Orleans."
Central to Creole musical activities was Place Congo (in English: Congo Square
Congo Square
Congo Square is an open space within Louis Armstrong Park, which is located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. The Tremé neighborhood is famous for its history of African American music....
). The much quoted 1886 article by George Washington Cable
George Washington Cable
George Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana. His fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner.- Biography:...
offers this description:
The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering... . The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other... . The smaller drum was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo...and this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bamboula.
Cable then describes a variety of instruments used at Congo Square, including gourds, triangles, jaw harps, jawbones, and "the grand instrument at last", the four-stringed banjo. The bamboula
Bamboula
A bamboula is a kind of drum made from a section of giant bamboo with skin stretched over the ends. It is also a secular dance accompanied by the drums. Both were brought to the Americas by African slaves....
, or "bamboo-drum", accompanied the bamboula dance and bamboula songs. Chase writes, "For Cable, the bamboula represented 'a frightful triumph of body over the mind,' and 'Only the music deserved to survive, and does survive...'"
Among other Creole dances mentioned by Chase (p. 312) are the babouilee, the cata (or chacta), the counjaille (or counjai), the voudou, the calinda, and the congo. "Perhaps the most widespread of all was the calinda..." The melody "Michié Préval", for example, was sung to the calinda. In Spanish, the name of this dance is calenda.
Songs Sung at Good Hope Plantation, St. Charles Parish
Songs numbered 130-136 in Slave Songs of the United States, according to a note on page 113,
were obtained from a lady who heard them sung, before the war, on the "Good Hope" plantation, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana... Four of these songs, Nos. 130, 131, 132, and 133, were sung to a simple dance, a sort of minuet, called the Coonjai; the name and the dance are probably both of African origin. When the Coonjai is danced, the music is furnished by an orchestra of singers, the leader of whom—a man selected both for the quality of his voice and for his skill in improvising—sustains the solo part, while the others afford him an opportunity, as they shout in chorus, for inventing some neat verse to compliment some lovely danseuse, or celebrate the deeds of some plantation hero. The dancers themselves never sing...and the usual musical accompaniment, besides that of the singers, is that furnished by a skilful performer on the barrel-head-drum, the jaw-bone and key, or some other rude instrument. Many were performed in Opelousas , St Landry parish . By the Fuseliers and the Carriere families .
...It will be noticed that all these songs are "seculars" [not spirituals]; and that while the words of most of them are of very little account, the music is as peculiar, as interesting, and, in the case of two or three of them, as difficult to write down, or to sing correctly, as any [of the 129 songs] that have preceded them.
The words "obtained from a lady who heard them sung" suggest that the songs were written down by someone, perhaps the lady herself, but certainly someone adept at music notation who was able to understand and write down the patois. It seems likely that she or he was a guest or a member of the La Branche family, who resided at the plantation until 1859, shortly after which the plantation was devastated by flood. This family included United States chargé d'affaires to Texas and a Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Alcée Louis La Branche.
We may never know the identity of the person who wrote down the seven Creole folk songs as sung at Good Hope Plantation, but it is noteworthy that Good Hope (town), Good Hope Floodwall, Good Hope Oil and Gas Field, Bayou La Branche, and, especially, La Branche Wetlands are today well known names in St. Charles Parish, where the seven songs were once sung.
Gottschalk's Use of Creole Melodies
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...
, widely acknowledged as America's foremost concert artist of the nineteenth century, was born in New Orleans in 1829. Perone's bio-bibliography lists hundreds of Gottschalk's compositions. Among them are three solo piano works based on Creole melodies:
- Bamboula, danse des nègres, based on "Musieu Bainjo" and "Tan Patate-là Tcuite"
- La Savane, ballad crèole, based on "Lolotte"
- Le Bananier, chanson nègre, based on "En Avant, Grenadiers", which like other Creole folk melodies, was also a popular French song
In America's Music (revised third edition, page 290), Chase writes:
Le Bananier was one of the three pieces based on Creole tunes that had a tremendous success in Europe and that I have called the "Louisiana Trilogy." [The other two are Bamboula and La Savane.] All three were composed between 1844 and 1846, when Gottschalk was still a teenager... . The pieces that created the greatest sensation was Bamboula.
Chase apparently overlooked a fourth Creole melody used by Gottschalk. In her 1902 compilation, Gottschalk's sister arranged "Po' Pitie Mamzé Zizi", and included a footnote: "L. M. Gottschalk used this melody for his piece entitled 'Mancenillier', [full name Le Mancenillier, sérénade]."
Regarding "Misieu Bainjo", used in Gottschalk's Bamboula, the editors of Slave Songs write "...the attempt of some enterprising negro to write a French song; he is certainly to be congratulated on his success." The song has been published in more than a dozen collections prior to 1963, listed by the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress.
The Louisiana Lady
During the 1930s and 1940s, Camille NickersonCamille Nickerson
Camille Nickerson was a pianist, composer, arranger, collector, and Howard University professor from 1926–1962. She was influenced by Creole folksongs of Louisiana which she arranged and sung....
(1888–1982) performed Creole folk music professionally as "The Louisiana Lady." During an interview with Doris E. McGinty, She performed in New Orleans and in Opelousas to a crowd of whites , only to receive an appreciative crowd .
Compilations and arrangements of Creole melodies
In any discussion of Creole folk songs, compilations of such songs play an essential role, not only for defining "Creole folk music", but also as a source of information, and, for performers, a possible source of arrangements. A brief summary of published compilations (with citations in References) follows:- Slave Songs of the United States (1867) the earliest known compilation; 7 unaccompanied melodies with words.
- Creole Songs from New Orleans in the Negro-Dialect (1902)
- Notes d'ethnographie musicale - La Musique chez les peuples indegenes de l'Amerique du Nord, (1910); this scholarly work by Julien Tiersot contains several Creole folk songs not found elsewhere, notably "Chanson nègre de la Louisiane" obtained from Professor Alcée FortierAlcée FortierAlcée Fortier was a renowned Professor of Romance Languages at Tulane University in New Orleans. In the late 19th and early 20th century, he published numerous works on language, literature, Louisiana history and folklore, Louisiana Créole languages, and personal reminiscence. His perspective...
. - Afro-American Folksongs (1915)
- Six Creole Folk-Songs (1921)
- Bayou Ballads: Twelve Folk-Songs from Louisiana (1921); texts and music collected by Mina Monroe, edited with the collaboration of Kurt Schindler. In the introduction, Monroe (who was born Marie Thereze Bernard in New Orleans, September 2, 1886), offers these insights:
The most definite recollections of my childhood on the Labranche Plantation in St. Charles Parish where we lived, are of the singing and dancing of the negroes. This plantation had been in our family from the days of the early settlers and, by a trick of fortune years after the war, with its resulting shiftings and changes, my grandmother found herself mistress of a plantation on which she had lived as a child. Many of the negroes who had wandered away (in fact, nearly all of them) had by then returned to their birthplace to find themselves practically under the same masters...
- Monroe's compilation includes ample notes about each of the twelve folk songs. The songs are arranged for solo voice with piano accompaniment..."suitable and attractive for concert singers."
- Chansons Nègres, includes arrangements by Tiersot for solo voice and piano of these Creole folk songs: "Papa Dit Non, Maman Dit Oui", "Monsieur Banjo", "Pauv' Pitit' Mamzell' Zizi", "Un Bal" (= "Michié Préval"),"Les Jours du Temps Passé", "Quand Patates Sont Cuites", "Bal Fini", "Compère Lapin", and "Aurore Bradère."
- Louisiana French Folk Songs, Chapter 6: "Creole Folk Songs" (1939)
- Creole Songs of the Deep South (1946)
Creole music
Creole music", often reduced to "Creole music", designates a genre found in connection with Cajun music, zydeco, and swamp pop. The beginnings of this genre are associated with accordionist Amédé Ardoin
Amédé Ardoin
Amédé Ardoin was an American Louisiana Creole musician, known for his high singing voice and virtuosity on the Creole/Cajun Accordion...
(1896–1941), who, in the early 1930s, made influential recordings with Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee.
Subsequent developments, in which Creole and Cajun styles became increasingly inseparable, are covered at Contemporary Louisiana Cajun, Creole and Zydeco Musicians. Among the many pages, under the auspices of Louisiana State University Eunice, are tributes to black Creole musicians
Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin (1915-2007) and
Boozoo Chavis (1930-2001). Andrus Espree aka Beau Jocque (1956–1999)
Sources
- Shane K. Bernard, Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, 1996. (Mentions black Creole music, but not Creole folk songs.)
- Florence E. Borders, "Researching Creole and Cajun Musics in New Orleans", Black Music Research Journal, vol. 8, no. 1 (1988) 15-31.
- George W. Cable, "The Dance in Place Congo", Century Magazine vol. 31, Feb., 1886, pp. 517–532.
- Doris E. McGinty and Camille Nickerson, "The Louisiana Lady", The Black Perspective in Music, vo. 7, no. 1 (Spring, 1979) 81-94.
- Camille Nickerson, Africo-Creole Music in Louisiana; a thesis on the plantation songs created by the Creole negroes of Louisiana, Oberlin College, 1932.
- James E. Perone, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2002.
- Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, Harvard University Press, 1925.
- S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula! The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Julien Tiersot, "Notes d'ethnographie musicale: La Musique chez les peuples indigenes de l'Amerique du Nord", Sämmelbande der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 11 (1910) 141-231. Melodies only, with musicological notes.
- Julien Tiersot, Chansons Nègres, Heugel, Paris, 1933.
- Ching Veillon, Creole Music Man: Bois Sec Ardoin, Xlibris, 2003.
External links
- Contemporary Louisiana Cajun, Creole and Zydeco Musicians, from Louisiana State University Eunice.
- Creole Songs Cable Sang, George Washington Cable's article in The Century Magazine, February 1886.
- Historical Notes for African-American and Jamaican Melodies
- Zydeco in The Handbook of Texas.