Jenkins Orphanage Band

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Jenkins Orphanage Band was a music band made up of members of the Jenkins orphanage in Charleston , South Carolina , which existed from 1893 and made early jazz and ragtime music styles known in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Baptist pastor (minister) and former slave David Joseph Jenkins (1861–1937) came across four black orphans while transporting wood for a sawmill near a railway line in 1891 , whom he took in. That was the beginning of his orphanage "Jenkins Orphanage" for neglected African American children, which was initially housed in an old warehouse (next to the prison) and from 1895 to 1939 at 20 Franklin Street (former naval hospital designed by Robert Mills , today under monument protection), which the city left to him. Jenkins was very disciplined and kept an eye out for the children to be self-sufficient. The orphanage - the first of its kind in Charleston - was soon an institution and housed 360 children in its first year - at times there were over 500.

With donated musical instruments, he organized a brass band, which he sent north (initially to New York City) from 1893 to earn money by playing on street corners because they had no chance to perform. At first he had little success and was even arrested in London for disturbing the peace after a crossing in the first year. But they soon became very popular. In 1896 they toured regularly to the east coast in the summer and in Florida in the winter. They played at the 1904 World Exhibition in St. Louis , on the parade for the inauguration of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 and that of President Taft in 1909, in London (e.g. at the 1914 Anglo-American Exhibition), Rome, Berlin, and Vienna Paris (before 1905). Like other street bands , they played spirituals, popular hits, military marches, cakewalks , ragtimes and other "hot" (or "ragged") arrangements. In addition, there was the special influence of Afro-American music with a Caribbean touch ("Gullah" or "Geechie") from Charleston itself, in which dance and music were closely connected. The band's "Geechie" dances (performed by one of the boys) made a particular impression in Harlem , where they inspired James P. Johnson to create several compositions, one of which was " Charleston ", which soon became the fashion dance of the 1920s . The music was also immortalized in a then-successful novel by DuBose Heyward “Porgy” (from which George Gershwin's “ Porgy and Bess ” originated). One of the Jenkins Orphanage Bands played in the Broadway version of the piece in 1927/8, with which they also toured the East Coast and the Midwest in 1929.

The band also gave talented soloists room to play. The band helped to popularize the musical culture of the (Afro) American South in the north of the USA and in Europe. Similar orchestras followed the example of Jenkins in other parts of the country. The former orphanage musicians were known for their good training (in particular, they could play from grades). Some well-known jazz musicians like trumpeter Jabbo Smith (who came to the orphanage from Savannah in 1915), Cat Anderson , trumpeter Sylvester Briscoe (who later played with Bennie Moten ), Freddie Green , Rufus "Speedy" Jones , Freddy Jenkins , Tommy Benford , Arthur Briggs and many members of the Fletcher Henderson band (such as Peanuts Holland ) emerged from the band. Recordings of the band themselves are only known from the 1940s.

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Remarks

  1. ↑ Jenkins himself was orphaned early.
  2. ↑ Playing wind instruments should strengthen the lungs of adolescents at risk of tuberculosis. Brass bands were very popular back then and various colored bands toured the south, some of them emerging from military bands from the time of the civil war. In addition, such bands played in the minstrel shows.
  3. ↑ Jenkins sent several bands on tour at the same time from 1913 because of the crowds in his orphanage.
  4. ↑ Jenkins was not a musician himself, but employed two music teachers who also gave intensive theory lessons. One of the first music teacher of the orphanage was Francis Eugene Mikell, who in World War one of the bandleader of James Reese Europe was. The seventh son of Jenkins, Edmund Thornton Jenkins (1894-1926) was a composer ("Charlestoniana") who later lived in London (there is a biography of Jeffrey Green about him).
  5. ↑ who was not an orphan himself - the band attracted many young black musicians in the 1920s.
  6. ^ John Chilton "A Jazz Nursery- the story of Jenkins Orphanage Band", 1980. There are, however, sound film recordings from Fox Movietone News from 1928 (11 minutes long, IMDB ). Chilton came to the conclusion that the band themselves did not have any important influence on the stylistic development of jazz.