When you consider Jazz music, New Orleans could spring to thoughts, or maybe extra typically the United States.
However the style additionally has sturdy roots within the UK, introduced right here in 1919 by an all-black band known as the Southern Syncopated Orchestra (SSO).
Formed by American Composer Will Marion Cook, the orchestra would quickly comprise of musicians from Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, Antigua, Ghana and the US.
Europe was taken by them, and the UK would quickly be blown away by their recent syncopated sound, changing into the primary black group to carry out on the Brighton Dome – and invited by the long run King Edward VIII to carry out at Buckingham Palace.
He was so impressed by the sound, they even satisfied music critic Olin Downes that the “musical art of the negro should be welcomed, encouraged and cultivated in this country, for the great thing that [it] is”. It could also be offensive and maybe stunning to listen to at present, nevertheless it was most actually supposed as a praise.
Speaking to the Brighton and Hove Gazette in August 1921, he continued: “If America had produced no other music she would have made the sufficient contribution to the art of the world.”
A uncommon picture of your entire ensemble taken on the Brighton Dome in 1919 exhibits a bunch of dashing, well-groomed performers.
Among them was Frank Bates, a tenor within the SSO.
His granddaughter, Juliet Jones, mentioned: “He was always known for cutting a dash in his gorgeous clothes.”
She added: “To be a direct descendant, I do feel very proud of what he accomplished because I just assumed that travel was so difficult back then. And originally, when they were coming from New York, it was a three-year tour: that to me is impressive.
“And then the idea that they will be so properly obtained – and properly obtained they had been! [They received] a number of standing ovations.”
But Juliet would never meet her grandfather – 101 years ago, members of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra were travelling from Scotland to Ireland for their next performance when disaster struck.
On a foggy night on 9 October 1921, their ship, the SS Rowan, was struck by two other vessels. Thirty-six people died, including nine musicians, and Frank Bates was among the casualties.
“This was an actual tragedy,” said Kurt Barling, cultural commentator and professor at Middlesex University, pointing out that the group was “simply reaching the height of its powers”.
After the shipwreck, some members of the band continued to play, raising funds at concerts for those badly affected.
But the SSO never fully recovered.
Prof Barling added: “Some of them couldn’t play immediately. They continued with their shows in Ireland – the show must go on after all – but after that, some of them didn’t want to travel anymore. Some of them felt that there were other things they wanted to do.”
However, out of the orchestra would come different well-known bands and musicians, like The Jazz Kings, whose key star was Sidney Bechet.
Prof Barling added: “There are two people in modern jazz who are the foundations of modern jazz, one of them Sidney Bechet, the other is Louis Armstrong. So you can see how the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, with its energy, with its new music, with its sense of possibility, was giving possibilities to some of the more accomplished musicians to go and do their own thing.”
Another unhappy twist to the story is the truth that expertise on the time wasn’t superior sufficient to seize the sound of a bunch of that dimension, which means none of their 500 songs would ever be recorded.
“It’s a real shame,” mentioned jazz pianist Julian Joseph, who added: “We still have the benefit of their story, and the experiences that they had, and how they’ve become part of the fabric of music, in Britain and all over the world.”
Sitting in entrance of a grand Steinway at London’s new live performance corridor, the World Heart Beat Music Academy, he defined why their sound would have been so extraordinary for the time.
“[It was the] complexity of the kind of music they were performing, because it showed they had abilities way beyond expectations of what black people were thought to be able to do.
“They blended so many various types, they had been taking part in items by the good basic composers, nice classical composers and so they had been taking part in the burgeoning music from the good jazz composers who had been simply arising within the United States.
“Spreading the gospel of what intellectual black entertainment was. I would love to have heard that as it was being born, and thinking, My goodness, that is just sensational.”
Juliet has spent a long time researching and documenting the story of her grandfather and the SSO, doing every thing in her energy to consolidate their place in historical past.
“Why shouldn’t our children know all about this?” requested Juliet, suggesting the story of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra ought to grow to be a part of the National Curriculum.
Not just for being among the many first black bands to play for British audiences, however as a result of their story has helped pave the best way for a number of generations to come back – proving that creativity and braveness are essentially the most highly effective instruments we’ve got to make a long-lasting mark on the world.
Source: information.sky.com”