The O’Zone | Jazz is Born: The Music of Struggle

Feb 24, 2026

Andy O’ is a musician (his band Coyote Poets has 6 albums out) and an award-winning poet who came on board at KUVO JAZZ on Labor Day 1989.Since then he has worked nearly every air shift and from 1997 to 2003 he was the Music Director at KUVO

Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers 1926

Ragtime and the Blues

It was music without a name made by nameless unknown musicians who rarely outlived the sources of struggle that made them cry out through voices and pawnshop instruments from the Civil War.

The rules were vague, but if you played out of tune or in the wrong key, you found you had been replaced by someone who knew. The sound was raw, fiercely transitional, and bridged the gaps between Ragtime, Blues, and Cuban Danzon music.

There were discarded ideas and widely accepted ideas, the latter finding their way into the Jazz Age, and eventually into the music we know today.

The blend of European brass-band traditions and marches with African rhythmic rituals and folk spirituals was the musical roots. While this appeared unruly and undisciplined to the casual listener or academic

There was method to the madness, and all along, it is vastly important to remember this is the music of struggle born of catastrophe. SOUL.

The Sound of the Great Migration

Red clay clinging to the weary soles,

A heavy weight of sun-scorched days,

Where shadows of the cotton bolls

Still lingered in the dusty haze.

The Delta’s ache, the bayou’s cry,

Packed into trunks with Sunday best

To seek a piece of northern sky

And give the spirit room to rest.

We know this music was born where all these forms coalesced in a geographic center called New Orleans: Marching second lines and parlor pianos and street corner blues, as well as dance hall danzons swirling in the ears of the people who could hear it, like Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong.

Soon, jazz would leave New Orleans in a great migration North. The closure of Storyville, shuttered saloons, and dance halls directly affected musicians plying their trade.

Higher paying jobs in steel mills, factories, and stockyards created a new, economically secure African American middle class that could afford to patronize clubs and theaters. Musicians sought to escape restrictive segregation and racial violence. The Illinois Central Railroad provided a direct route from New Orleans to Chicago, making it a very accessible destination for so many migrants.

The Confluence

They brought the rhythm in their stride,

A syncopated, pulsing beat–

The spirituals they couldn’t hide,

Now humming on a city street.

The field holler met the ragtime strut,

In basement bars and dimly lit halls,

Where every door that once was shut

Dissolved within those brick lined walls.

The Birth of the Brass

Then came the silver, polished bright,

The trumpet’s flare, the trombone’s slide,

To pierce the velvet of the night

And let the pent-up magic glide.

It wasn’t just a song they played,

But freedom found in a blue-note bend

A brand new world, uniquely made,

Where sorrow finds a rhythmic end.

From Lenox Ave to Seventh’s glow

The saxophone began to wail;

A jagged, joyous, jarring, neon flow

An ancient heart, a modern tale.

Out of the soot and the Jim Crow night,

The Jazz was born–bold, wild, and free–

A golden spark of Harlem light

For all the searching world to see.

The “Jazz Age”: Rebellion and Renaissance

The establishment viewed jazz as a “moral threat.” It was labeled “jungle music” and “devil’s music” with claims that jazz caused heart disease, sensual passion, perversion, and insanity. This backlash was deeply rooted in racism, as the white establishment feared the influence of Black culture on white children, fearing danger to fetuses!

By the late 1920s, over 60 U.S. communities had enacted laws specifically prohibiting jazz in public dance halls. This systemic racism made Black jazz musicians particularly vulnerable, as they often performed for white audiences in segregated clubs where they were denied basic rights.

They faced frequent harassment and arrests by white police and were often financially exploited by club owners who often were involved in organized crime and would threaten them if they threatened to leave and work for a rival clubowner.

Jazz affected politics, literature, and the global perception of America. To many, this was not acceptable and something to be countered and stopped.

Perhaps the singular most significant social ramification is the concept of jazz as a metaphor for democracy. In a jazz ensemble, the individual has the freedom to improvise and express themselves, but they must listen and adapt to the rest of the group to create a cohesive whole. This philosophy continues to influence how we think about teamwork, leadership, and social harmony today. Jazz inspired the Harlem Renaissance and the Beat Generation.

In this circa 1905 photo, Charles “Buddy” Bolden is pictured standing second from left with his band. Also pictured are Willie Warner; Willie Cornish; Jimmie Johnson; Frank Lewis and Brock Mumford. This is the only known photo of Buddy Bolden. Image courtesy of Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.

BUDDY BOLDEN: The King Who Lost His Mind

Only one picture of Charles Joseph “Buddy” Bolden is said to exist.

His only recording was said to have been recorded on a cylinder, and has been lost to posterity so that no one living knows exactly what he sounded like. Most know for certain that he played loud. Some say, you could hear him across the Mississippi on Saturday nights.

His story is shrouded in mystery and mythology. Records and proof are as slim as all the evidence of his existence but we know King Bolden invented the music that would eventually become jazz. He blended Brass dance music with Ragtime and blues, adding a syncopation peculiar to jazz called “The Big Four”.

The wicked combination of alcoholism and schizophrenia led to his being institutionalized for over 20 years where he died of cerebral arteriosclerosis. Medical records of his condition exist combined with word of mouth, which helps tell the story.

His tragedy is not uncommon in jazz history and seems to have become part of the romantic suffering that so frequently laid jazz people in their graves. To be young, gifted and Black is to know skepticism and racism in large painful doses.