Jazz in Mexico. Fusion, Creation, and Transformation

This article analyzes the relationships between Mexican, Cuban, and Afro-American musicians who participated in the genesis of a jazz scene in Mexico, through a brief overview of this musical genre’s history for almost a century.

ORIGINS
Jazz came from the cultural fusions of transatlantic peoples, some of whom were violently subjected in America, especially in the territory known today as the Caribbean. From 1900 to 1960, these fusions expanded and consolidated in Mexico. The 60s are known as the boom phase, which lasted approximately ten years and then declined (Hernández, 2020). Since then, there has not been such a luminous moment. Although these fusions continued to exist in urban life, they are the result of a permanent crisis. The lack of spaces, the lack of interest from the recording industry, and the lack of attention from the government have been constant problems for jazz musicians.

Nevertheless, jazz in Mexico cannot be limited to a specific period; this is a task for historians to solve. Socio-cultural relations are much more complex and do not obey a particular date; they are part of a process in which multiple intersectional aspects of given cultures—such as race and religion—are present. These aspects appeared in the second half of the 19th century in the form of musical expressions, which date back to the period of kidnapping of African people and the establishment of the slavery system imposed on that population in the American continent. During this period, African peoples left an indelible footprint on music.

I argue that performers of African-American musical expressions experienced a continuous process of producing sonorities since slavery, both in Africa and in America. These sonorities appeared at the end of the 19^th century and transformed continuously throughout the 20^th. Just as it was once asserted by the double-bassist Roberto Aymes (Montenegro, 2005), there aren’t many origins for jazz. When we try to relativize them, African peoples’ relevance gets lost in establishing jazz’s foundations. Many peoples may have contributed to its origins and proliferation, but we can’t be certain of each story.

The English who colonized North America, and to a lesser extent, the French, instituted their own transit routes, which, in most cases, connected the newly colonized territories with West Africa. The peoples of that region, in their condition as slaves, developed new musical expressions in permanent contact with the West. These expressions became later known as Afro-American, one of the first fusions that made the creation of new musical forms possible. The slave population developed their interpretations of music with the use of musical resources, such as syncopated beats and polyrhythm, melismatic singing, modulated or specular blue notes—which would become characteristic of the blues—and changes in harmonic conventions (chords) that would lead to the twelve-bar blues structure. These innovations led to the development of jazz.

However, these musical resources cannot be separated from the beats developed by slaves in the Caribbean—the Afro-Caribbean peoples. Even though these beats are as diverse as the different African regions, they echoed with Latin beats in the Antilles. This led to the development of musical genres like Cuban son, danzón, mambo, and, in a sense, jazz. The populations from Southern Africa transmitted to the American continent a different musical tradition due to the influences exerted by the great powers who enslaved them. These groups gave rise to what would later be known as Latin jazz and other musical genres; that is, interpretations in which we can detect a linear timing, syllabic singing, and the use of the rhythmic clave with continuous notes and a repetitive two-chord cycle. On many occasions, the beats of Latin and Afro-American jazz would meet and merge, but on other occasions, they would take different parting ways. Jazz produced in Mexican territory was not only present in both Latin and Afro-American forms but also as a fusion of both.

NEW ORLEANS’ WORLD EXPOSITION
Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean musicians interacted—directly or indirectly—with Mexican musicians in some cities of the United States. Latin American musicians’ contribution to developing new musical expressions, like jazz, had an important place in history. The experiences of Mexican performers, through the mobility and travels made from Mexico to New Orleans, in the World Cotton Centennial Exposition, as well as other places in Louisiana, are part of the general period of development of jazz. Mexican musicians contributed with marches, waltzes, and contradances to the development of jazz. Mexican military orchestras interpreted a repertoire composed of the following musical genres: 1) concert hall and opera; 2) dancing music—such as waltzes and polkas; 3) popular music; and 4) martial music or marches. Mexican musicians, in collaboration with Afro-American and Caribbean musicians, worked in New Orleans and other U.S. cities and contributed to establishing the foundations of the new musical genre.

The visit of Mexican groups to New Orleans, such as the Mexican Army’s Eighth Cavalry Regiment Band (OORCEM, Spanish initials), led in time to the modification of how musical groups were formed. Additionally, the presence of academic musicians contributed to Jazz. For instance, pianist Ricardo Castro and saxophonist Florenzo Ramos worked in the United States. They participated in the scene and development of the musical field in New Orleans and the whole United States. During the Cotton Exposition, which ended in June 1885, the OORCEM played in much of the city, causing great impression and admiration in the streets, mainly due to their musical repertoire and the orchestral performance. Their presence gave rise to new Afro-American group formations until the first decade of the 20^th century.

Mexican music had an innovative role. It influenced Afro-American, Caribbean, and Latin American musicians. For example, it was formerly uncommon to use wind instruments in the United States; Mexican music popularized their use among Afro-American performers. The population was not used to listening to those instruments since their sonority was foreign to the socio-cultural landscape of New Orleans, even though it was a city with a vast cultural diversity. These sonorities were added to the musical atmosphere shared by different socio-musical groups. As we can see, Mexican musicians who lived in New Orleans before, during, and after the Cotton Exposition interacted with Afro-American musicians.

The Mexican Typical Orchestra (OTM, Spanish initials) also traveled to New Orleans by the end of the Cotton Exposition in July 1885, contributing to the socio-cultural relations system. OTM’s musicians influenced the region, and, in a certain way, generated a cultural change that would impact the new rythms that musicians transmitted to other places.

Mexican was not the only presence to contribute to Afro-American rhythms. Haitians and their descent, who had traveled through Latin America following different routes, also did. Musicians moved not only through the Caribbean but also through ports and trade routes on the Pacific side. This was the case of Afro-American musician Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869), of Haitian migrant parents, born in New Orleans. Gottschalk gave a series of concerts in February 1854. He performed a repertoire of European academic music and expressions of popular music, such as habaneras. European piano music was thus also disseminated in the Caribbean by Afro-American people. Contradance, a dance of European origin prevalent in France, was adopted in Cuba and other parts of the region transformed in the habanera dance or, simply, habanera. This dance was popularized in Cuba thanks to Gottschalk’s musical works—such as “Bamboula”—and other sources.

European piano music, marches, and dances consolidated, in a way, some of the Afro-American rythms that would later become ragtime. These rythms are recognized as roots of jazz because interesting jazz improvisations arose from rag song interpretations.

So, Mexican and Caribbean musicians proposed beats that would be the basis for both ragtime and jazz itself. Nevertheless, by the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20th, some musicians used to separate rag from jazz, without considering that ragtime was a precursor of jazz. For instance, Jelly Roll Morton said that the Spanish tinge is the ingredient that differentiates jazz from ragtime. According to him, “If you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning for jazz.” (Derbez, 2012, p. 339). In the last decade of the 19^th century, Cuban and Mexican musicians interacted with Afro-American musicians by playing and sharing Cuban music. In turn, Afro-American performers played some versions of ragtime.

Cuban contribution to Afro-American music can be appreciated, for example, in a musical work from 1909 by pianist Scott Joplin, named “Solace,” in which the bassline marks the beat of a habanera. Joplin’s ragtime “Eugenia” (1905) used the rhythm of a march for its bassline and made its melody from the Cuban tresillo, which, just like the rhythmic pattern of the contradance in the habanera and tango, derives from the vertical hemiola (a term describing a form of polyrhythm). Just like what happened with Joplin, the politicalmedia industry turned Jelly Roll Morton into a popular figure. This musician was always linked to Mexicans and Mexico. He traveled from New Orleans to Los Angeles at the turn of the century. Later on, he crossed the border and moved to Tijuana, where he worked playing the piano in the Kansas City Bar.

NIGHTLIFE AND ORCHESTRAS
The continuous displacement, transformation, contributions, and fusions that characterized the musical field of Mexican, Cuban, and Afro-American musicians in Mexico—as well as their relationship with the United States and the Caribbean—led to the diffusion of jazz during the decade of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917). At the end of the conflict, a new musical context emerged at Mexico’s northern border: Afro-American beats were listened to in cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. Jelly Roll Morton arrived in Tijuana in the 1920s and deepened ties with the Mexicans. In that city, he created one of his most famous pieces, “The Pearls,” which he dedicated to one of the Kansas City Bar’s waitresses. Some hints of the new beats were known in other Mexican states like Durango, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Puebla, and Chiapas. Mexico City became a focal point for Afro-American musical activity since it was the most symbolic urban-industrial region. Foxtrot, shimmy, and jazz became popular there. Foxtrot was a dance tightly associated with jazz, dominating the dance music scene. The Mexican capital was, at the time, the most emblematic hub for the propagation of music and other arts, such as cinema, painting, and poetry. Two musical expressions that converged and, at the same time, differentiated themselves stood out: Afro-Antillean and Afro-American music. This binomial was also part of the socio-cultural relationship between Mexico and Cuba—for example, the foxtrot fused with the danzon. Between 1919 and 1927, Mexican musicians founded groups like All Nuts Jazz Band, Los Siete Locos del Jazz, the Winter Garden Jazz Band, and the Norman King.

The political-media industry introduced itself into ballrooms, the radio, the press, and the record industry, where Mexican and some Afro-American musicians met to play together.

THE RADIO
Commercial and state-owned radio broadcasting was consolidated in the national territory. Between 1919 and 1925, XYZ station in Mexico City invited jazz orchestras from New Orleans and Mexico. XEW became one of the most active and influential radio companies under the slogan “The Voice of Latin America,” and served as a platform for musicians since it hired different ensembles to play on various programs. Over time, radio stations employed prominent musicians, composers, and band conductors known for developing the Glenn Miller style during the swing and big band era: Gonzalo Curiel, Pablo Beltrán Ruiz, Juan García Esquivel, and Luis Arcaraz. Afro-American music in Mexican territory and the activity of Mexican musicians, both in the country and in the United States, awakened afresh in the 1940s when the influence from the United States was more openly and decisively manifested.

A new encounter occurred, and a new fusion appeared when Dámaso Pérez Prado promoted the mambo, creating original jazz versions of his pieces (Pareyón, 2006, p. 534). The new kind of music integrated two styles that were very popular in Mexico and the Caribbean at the time: the syncopated beat of danzón and the brass sound of swing. This was a new encounter between Afro-American and Afro-Antillean beats that originated from the historical context of the middle of the century.

LIVE: JAZZ NIGHTLIFE
Musicians moved both inside and outside Mexico City, in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. New musical influences were established in Mexican territory, such as the arrival of rock ’n’ roll. At first, rock was adopted by orchestras and jazz ensembles, but then youth groups proliferated and gave it a particular meaning. The influence of existentialist thought changed the musical landscape and the spaces where these performances took place at the time. New styles were played: bebop and cool. The spaces of consumption were also transformed. Jazz bars, which were attended by a more refined and much more selective social sector, drifted from what was previously produced. Since the big orchestra format was no longer attractive to the audiences, a new organization in small groups, known as “combos,” arose.

During this period, a new work dynamic for musicians emerged. It was announced as “come, play, and shove off” because performers would arrive at a jazz bar to play and immediately leave to go play in another one. The corresponding dynamics of consumption became socially and culturally elitist.

These relationships took place in a period of contradictions and confrontations within the ruling classes. While the approach to jazz was a common practice, it remained intolerable for some of the post-revolutionary political elites. Therefore, the system of social and musical relations came into conflict. The “defense of the family and good customs” carried out by the mayor of Mexico City, Ernesto Peralta Uruchurtu, confronted the European and American cosmopolitan invasion represented by cinema, music, and nightlife venues. Some of the development of jazz musicians slowed down, but it did not stop altogether because there were plenty of places to play. These were years in which jazz musicians and the genre itself had great acceptance: a public willing to consume these musical expressions proliferated. The years from 1955 to 1965 became a boom period for jazz, albeit confined to hotels and universities. During the 1960s, the spaces where these rhythms were performed tended to disappear, which is related to the political and social context of the country.

CRISES
The Mexican railroad workers strike of 1958-1959, the medical workers movement of 1964-1965, the students movement of 1968, and the attitude of the post-revolutionary State showed new social conditions. The accumulated discontent, which stemmed from the 1950s, worsened with the aforementioned movements. University students, who were part of the jazz audience, were upset by the conditions of life. Confrontation with the State’s closed-mindedness increased; students demanded better social and working conditions and the end of authoritarianism and abuse of power. The political crisis within the middle class was reflected in the musical culture. For example, the audience was reduced since part of it no longer had the conditions to consume what was previously affordable. For this reason, jazz and its performers would never again experience such prominence. Nowadays, it’s still out there, but it no longer has the same place it had occupied then and during its origins.

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