ILLUMINATING
OUR JAZZ & RIVERFRONT
LEGACIES
On Saturday , September 18 th , the New Orleans Jazz Museum ’ s NOLA River Fest will celebrate the cultural , economic , environmental , and inspirational impacts and contributions of the Mississippi River to the Crescent City . For centuries , Old Man River has been an important route for trade and travel , has sustained livelihoods , offered opportunities for recreation , and has had a significant role in the culture , health and livelihoods of people along its long route .
The Mississippi River , the longest river of North America , with its major tributaries drains approximately 1.2 million square miles or about one-eighth of the entire continent . As rich as the literary tradition that grew up along the Mississippi is , the river ’ s musical legacy is arguably even more profound . The music that developed on its shores has largely been the product of the cultural crosspollination of black and white folk music and
30 | The French Quarterly popular styles , with roots in both West Africa and Europe . Growing from the creations of African American slaves who were prevented from maintaining their native musical traditions and felt the need to substitute some homegrown form of musical expression , jazz evolved in the complex cultural mix of New Orleans and traveled up the river , finding its way to cities north and beyond . The museum offers witness to the journeys of jazz pioneers King Oliver and Louis Armstrong . Before the emergence of jazz , the predominant style of American popular music was ragtime , which evolved in the last decades of the 19th century in the playing of honky-tonk pianists along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and reached its peak in the St . Louis-based career of Scott Joplin .
The Mississippi River may be the most musical river in the entire world ! Drum songs , folk songs , blues and jazz were all created and recreated along