New Orleans and the History of Jazz [Abridged]

1. What form of music has come to be synonymous with New Orleans?

• ragtime

• opera

• jazz

• blues

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The article contrasts ragtime with jazz. What is one difference between these forms of music?

• Improvisation is more important to ragtime than to jazz.

• Improvisation is more important to jazz than to ragtime.

• Jazz is played mainly on the piano, while ragtime is played mainly on the trumpet.

• Ragtime is usually played by many instruments, while jazz is usually played by one instrument.

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Jazz was influenced by other music.

What evidence from the text supports this statement?

• “Music served as a psychological shield against the floods, fires, epidemics, and riots that marked New Orleans history, for it provided an excuse to forget, or a spur to overcome, the problems brought on by both nature and society.”

• “No musical genre was more popular than opera, and the arias that could be heard throughout the city day in and day out had a profound impact on the melodic styles of the musicians who created the jazz idiom…”

• “One way to listen to classic New Orleans jazz at its best is to imagine the complexity of the melodies as a representation of its polyglot communities.”

• “Jazz continued to survive in varying degrees in New Orleans as the music spread around the world, and by the 1940s the Crescent City became a Mecca for jazz lovers.”

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Reread Frederick Law Olmstead’s statement about New Orleans.

“I doubt if there is a city in the world, where the resident population has been so divided in its origin, or where there is such a variety in the tastes, habits, manners, and moral codes of the citizens. Although this injures civic enterprise—which the peculiar situation of the city greatly demands to be directed to means of cleanliness, convenience, comfort, and health—it also gives a greater scope to the working of individual enterprise, taste, genius, and conscience; so that nowhere are the higher qualities of man—as displayed in generosity, hospitality, benevolence, and courage—better developed, or the lower qualities, likening him to a beast, less interfered with, by law or the action of public opinion.”

Based on this statement, how can Olmstead’s opinion of New Orleans be summarized?

• New Orleans is a city whose residents are more generous, noble, hospitable, and benevolent than people anywhere else.

• New Orleans is a city whose lack of legal regulation has harmful effects on its residents.

• New Orleans is a city where cleanliness, comfort, and health are more difficult to maintain than in most other cities.

• New Orleans is a city whose extreme diversity has both positive and negative effects.

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What is the main idea of this article?

• Jazz emerged from the cultural diversity and uniqueness of New Orleans.

• New Orleans was founded because North American settlers needed a way to transport goods along the Mississippi River.

• Congo Square is a place in New Orleans where slaves were allowed to dance and express themselves.

• Lester Young, Ed Blackwell, and Wynton Marsalis are all first-rate jazz musicians who came from New Orleans.

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Read these sentences from the text.

“By virtue of its location and its role in the international economy, New Orleans became home to a population that was as heterogeneous as any. Besides the French and, for a time, Spanish colonial powers, other groups included African Americans (both free and slave), people from the Caribbean and Latin America, and Scandinavians and other Europeans.”

Based on these sentences, what does the word “heterogeneous” mean?

• varied or diverse

• complicated or difficult to understand

• prosperous or wealthy

• violent or combative

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Read this sentence from the text.

“The city that never should have been there gave the world a tremendous cultural gift, jazz, whose progeny, popular music, was ultimately employed in fundraisers around the world to try to save New Orleans.”

Which word does the pronoun “whose” refer to?

• "city"

• "gift"

• "jazz"

• "music"

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How does the author suggest listening to classic New Orleans jazz?

• The author suggests imagining the complexity of the melodies as a representation of New Orleans’s polyglot communities.

• The author suggest listening to gain a calm state of mind

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Name five different groups of people who made up the population of New Orleans.

• the French, the Spanish, African Americans, people from the Caribbean and Latin America, and Scandinavians and other Europeans.

• new orleans

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How does jazz reflect the city of New Orleans?

• the diversity of New Orleans is reflected in the many influences on jazz and its often polyphonic sound. Just as New Orleans took shape as a city populated by many different groups of people, so jazz emerged from a variety of musical genres, including opera, blues, and ragtime.

• Jazz does not reflect New Orleans

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