Totally Stockholm 1
WITH JAZZ Back with a bang. Coinciding with the m
uch-awaited return of live music for the masses, Stockholm Jazz Festival is serving up a ten-day programme filled with almost 200 gigs. Words: Peter Steen-Christensen It can be traced back to 1819 and Congo Square in New Orleans, Louisiana. An outdoor space where slaves would congregate on Sundays and sing, dance and sway, creating a musical mix of sounds from the Caribbean, the churches of the American south and hypnotic beats from Africa. Some 40-50 years later the genre ragtime emerged, which, when it eventually crossed an intersection with blues, started to create something new. They called it jass. Perhaps it’s not readily remembered now, but back in the day the word carried sexual connotations and even some jazz greats made it clear they didn’t care for the word. Duke Ellington tried to call his music something else. “By and large, jazz always has been like the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with. The word ‘jazz’ has been part of the problem. The word never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos,” he said. Jass became jazz because people kept scratching the J off of any posters or signs. The Original Dixieland Jass Band kept their original name though, despite the influx of z’s. But where did the word actually come from?* And what is the sexual connection? Well, jazzing was a slang term for having sex, but where did that come from? Saxophonist Garvin Bushell, who lived and performed in Louisiana during that era, did shed some light. “They said that the French had brought the perfume industry with them to New Orleans and the oil of jasmine was a popular ingredient locally. To add it to a perfume was called ‘jassing it up’. The strong scent was popular in the red light district, where a working girl might approach a prospective customer and say ‘Is jass on your mind tonight young fellow?’ The term had become synonymous with erotic activity 8 ON OUR MINDS Ida Sand, Photo: Josefine Bäckström Photo: Fredrik Söder