Southern Influences on Harlem Music

Southern Influences in Harlem

Another significant factor in the rise of big bands in Harlem, was the migration of talented southern musicians. While they may not have changed the face of northern music, southern musicians most definitely affected northern music.
See the influences that affected Charleston music....

John Chilton entitles his book about the Jenkins Orphanage A Jazz Nursery; in it, he details how many of the Jenkins players made it to New York and played with some of the most famous musicians of the day.

Phil Schaap, professor of jazz history at Princeton University, sees the Jenkins Orphanage Bands as a feeder into the New York jazz scene:

there's this feeder principle that isn't conceptualized in understanding jazz by the people, but it seems to exist nevertheless, which is that you have these pockets or communities of musicians that then get into the big mix in New York. Like Detroit in the fifties or Memphis in the mid-fifties and earlier. And the Jenkins Orphanage is an illustration of that.

These Charleston musicians had something that New Orleans players (who would mainly migrate to Chicago) did not. They were trained to read and write music: they were great technical players and this would show itself in the New York style .

Phil Schaap:
	and they clearly relate to another separate line of thinking, which is Fisk, and indeed a whole separate approach to music education in the black colleges, which similar to the point I was making about the Harlem renaissance. . . they don't really want to encourage jazz and blues playing. They want to encourage musicianship, which in itself therefore encourages any music making.


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