Congo Square
The Congo Square is a historic place in New Orleans north of Rampart Street in what is now Louis Armstrong Park (in Faubourg Tremé ). It has historical significance in New Orleans as a former meeting place for slaves in Spanish colonial times and afterwards, who danced to music there on the Sunday rest day.
Beginning in the French and Spanish colonial times
Originally, in French and Spanish times (from 1769), the square was outside the Vieux Carré of the city center (bounded by Rampart Street). Back then it was also the site of bullfights on Sundays. It was surrounded by shady oaks and mulberry figs . Because of the slaves that gathered there, it was called Place des Negres or Place Congo in Spanish and French times in the 18th century (the name Congo only speaks for the name Congo in Spanish times, because only then were slaves from the Congo in New Orleans to a greater extent) - however, he never officially had that name. According to other sources, the name comes from later times, from circus-like performances that were held there from 1816 by a Signore Gaetano from Havana (Congo Circus). It also served young people the raquette game, but the Sunday gatherings of the colored people continued to take place.
Starting in the middle of the 18th century, the slaves, some of whom were still born in Africa, were able to sell goods there on non-working Sundays and practice their music and dances. At the beginning of the 19th century, many former slaves were added after the Haitian Revolution and also the released colored population, who mostly lived in the area of the Tremé district, joined them. In large parts of the United States at that time, however, blacks were forbidden from cultivating their musical culture on the plantations, and larger gatherings, for example to dance in public, were mostly forbidden. New Orleans, which was once Spanish and then French, had a more tolerant attitude. There is evidence of the mention of dancing slaves on a Place Congo in a letter from the Spanish Auxiliary Bishop Cyrillo Sieni, who complained about these disturbances on Sunday near the cathedral (he calls the dances Bamboula), which is why some historians assume that this is not today's Congo Square, but the then main market Place d´Armes (Plaza de Armas, today Jackson Square) was meant. The governor Estevan Miró issued an edict in June 1786, in which the dances ( tangos ) of the blacks should wait until after Vespers . A year later, reports were made about a tax levied by the city treasurer on black traders at Congo Market . Gatherings of slaves on non-working Sundays were common across Louisiana and there was no evidence yet that they were restricted to one place in Spanish times.
American time
The meetings continued after the US takeover of New Orleans in 1804. There is an American law of 1817 that expressly allowed the meetings, but with a single place determined by the city (Congo Square), and where the dancers could be watched by the police.
In 1819 the architect Benjamin Latrobe made drawings of the scenes in Congo Square and reports them in his diaries, which are the most accurate surviving records of the meetings in Congo Square. He describes assemblies of around 500 to 600, each forming circles around the groups with dancers and musicians, drums (bamboulas, conga-like drums, held between the legs or in such a way that the drummer sat on them and other forms) and a kind of banjo. Other observers described violins, tambourines, jew's harps, and Schwegel- like flutes early on . The dances are known as Bamboula or Calinda. As early as the time of Latrobe around 1820 (who, according to his own statements, seemed dull and barbaric), other eyewitnesses reported a much broader musical spectrum, including Virginia breakdowns , minstrel songs and fandangos. The meetings at Congo Square were already a tourist attraction back then.
End of Meetings and Later History
As the gatherings disturbed the Sunday rest of the residents, bans were issued as early as 1829, and the police increasingly intervened in dances and gatherings of the slaves. In 1835 the dances stopped in Congo Square, but then ran again for a while, but ended definitely in 1851 when the square was called Place d'Armes (previously it was called Place Publique). A city guide from 1845 described Congo Square as the place where slaves would have gathered in olden times . In addition, the larger Tremé market had opened in 1840, which rivaled the market on Congo Square. After the Civil War , the square was officially renamed Place Beauregard (after the Southern General PGT Beauregard ), but popularly it was still called Congo Square and was officially called that again in 2011. Brass bands and other orchestras played in Congo Square towards the end of the 19th century .
In the north, the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium (an event hall) opened in 1930. The houses in the area were torn down many times as part of a controversial urban redevelopment project in the 1960s, and later it became a park that is a listed building, the Louis Armstrong Park. The first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival took place here from 1970 until it became too big for the space.
Aftermath
George Washington Cable wrote an essay on Congo Square and the dances and music performed there in Century Magazine in 1886, with notes of music believed to have been played there. He obtained his information second-hand, however, and Sandke keeps the accounts of Cable and other authors from the late 19th century such as Lafcadio Hearn , to which early jazz authors such as Robert Goffin , Marshall Stearns , Rudi Blesh or Jazzmen from 1939 (edited by Frederic Ramsey and Charles Edward Smith ) support, for extensive fiction, compiled by Cable from various sources such as a book about dances in the Caribbean (Haiti) at the end of the 18th century or an article in New Orleans magazine The Picayune about Congo Square from 1879. In early jazz literature this became the legend that these gatherings in Congo Square were still relevant until the 1880s and even influenced early jazz ( Buddy Bolden ). According to Sandke, the Congo Square as a missing link in jazz history is just as illusory as the Piltdown man , which is also based on the fact that the instruments used (such as congas) were completely different.
Also for the pieces by the Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who grew up in New Orleans, such as the piano piece Bamboula (Opus 2, composed between 1844 and 1846, when Gottschalk was studying in Paris, published in 1848), to which Cable also refers in his essay Congo Square as a source out of the question (according to his biographer Starr, he had the melody from his governess from Santo Domingo). However, the myth of Congo Square continued to inspire authors and musicians in the 20th century. Henry F. Gilbert (1868–1929) composed the symphonic poem The Dance in Place Congo (1908). Congo Square is the title of a composition by Wynton Marsalis and Yacub Addy , which combines African music from Ghana with swing arrangements for big band, and by blues musician Sonny Landreth (on his album Down in Louisiana 1985). Donald Harrison is Big Chief of the Congo Nation at Mardi Gras and sees himself as the steward of the Congo Square musical heritage.
literature
- Jerah Johnson Congo Square, New Orleans , Louisiana Landmarks Society 2011, ISBN 187971406X
- Ned Sublette The World That Made New Orleans: from Spanish Silver to Congo Square , Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008
- Henry Kmen Music in New Orleans. The formative years 1791-1841 , Louisiana State University Press 1966
- Henry Kmen The roots of Jazz and the dance in Place Congo. A Re-Appraisal , Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical, 8, 1972, 5
- Randall Sandke Where the dark and the light folks meet. Race and the mythology, politics and business of Jazz , The Scarecrow Press 2010, p. 44ff (Congo Square)
- Freddi Williams Evans Congo Square. African Roots in New Orleans , University of Louisiana Press 2011
Web links
- Edward Branley Congo Square and the Roots of New Orleans Music , 2012
- Cable The dance in place Congo , pdf
- Michael Matsumaru Congo Square, New Orleans
Individual evidence
- ↑ From the article The Dance in Place Congo by George Washington Cable, Century Magazine, February 1886. Kemble made the illustrations according to Cable's instructions.
- ^ Cable The dance in Place Congo
- ^ Sandke Where the dark and the light folks meet , 2010, p. 48
- ^ Ned Sublette The world that made New Orleans , p. 121
- ↑ Sublette, p. 122. This is also one of the first known mentions of the word tango. In a Cuban dictionary by Esteban Pichardo from 1835, it is defined as a meeting of African-born slaves to dance with the accompaniment of drums.
- ↑ The Journal of Latrobe, New York 1905, pp. 179-182
- ↑ Similar to what Lafcadio Hearn observed during his visit to Martinique in the 1880s
- ↑ After Henry Kmen early as 1799. Quoted in Sublette, p 287
- ↑ Sandke, p. 48
- ↑ Sublette, p. 286. The old Place d'Armes was then renamed Jackson Square.
- ↑ Sandke, p. 48, he quotes Jerah Johnson
- ^ Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry
- ↑ Sandke, p. 48
- ↑ Frederick S. Starr Louis Moreau Gottschalk , University of Illinois Press 2000
Coordinates: 29 ° 57 ′ 40.5 ″ N , 90 ° 4 ′ 6.6 ″ W.