Creole music


The term Creole music is used to describe both the early folk or roots music traditions of rural Creoles of Louisiana.

Examples

One possible definition of Creole folk music is this: melodies, sometimes including dance-related instrumental accompaniments, sung in Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole by Louisiana Creole people of French, Spanish, Native, and/or African descent.
DateCodeCompilation
1867SSSlave Songs of the United States
1902CSCreole Songs from New Orleans in the Negro-Dialect
1915AAAfro-American Folksongs
1921CFSix Creole Folk-Songs
1921BBBayou Ballads: Twelve Folk-Songs from Louisiana
1939LFLouisiana French Folk Songs
1946DSCreole Songs of the Deep South

History

In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory, including New Orleans, from France. In 1809 and 1810, more than 10,000 refugees from the West Indies arrived in New Orleans, most originally from French-speaking Haiti. Of these, about 3,000 were freed slaves.
Creole folk songs originated on the plantations of the French and Spanish colonists of Louisiana. The music characteristics embody African-derived syncopated rhythms, the habanera accent of Spain, and the quadrille of France.
Central to Creole musical activities was Place Congo. The much quoted 1886 article by George Washington Cable offers this description:
The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering... The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other... The smaller drum was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo... and this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bamboula.

Cable then describes a variety of instruments used at Congo Square, including gourds, triangles, jaw harps, jawbones, and "the grand instrument at last", the four-stringed banjo. The bamboula, or "bamboo-drum", accompanied the bamboula dance and bamboula songs. Chase writes, "For Cable, the bamboula represented 'a frightful triumph of body over the mind,' and 'Only the music deserved to survive, and does survive... '"

Gottschalk

At the time of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's birth in 1829, 'Caribbean' was perhaps the best word to describe the musical atmosphere of New Orleans. Although the inspiration for Gottschalk's compositions, such as "Bamboula" and "The Banjo," has often been attributed to childhood visits to Congo Square, no documentation exists for any such visits, and it is more likely that he learned the Creole melodies and rhythms that inform these pieces from Sally, his family's enslaved nurse from Saint-Domingue, who Gottschalk referred to as "La Négresse Congo." Whether Gottschalk actually attended the Congo Square dances, his music is certainly emblematic of the crossroads that formed there.
Born in New Orleans and reared in the culture of Saint-Domingue, he toured throughout the Caribbean and was particularly acclaimed in Cuba. Gottschalk was closely associated with the Cuban pianist and composer, Manuel Saumell Robredo, a master of the contradanza, widely popular dance compositions based on the African-derived habanera rhythm. It is likely that contradanzas composed by both Gottschalk and Saumell were an antecedent to the ragtime compositions of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton.
Perone's bio-bibliography lists hundreds of Gottschalk's compositions. Among them are three solo piano works based on Creole melodies:
In America's Music, Chase writes:
Le Bananier was one of the three pieces based on Creole tunes that had a tremendous success in Europe and that I have called the "Louisiana Trilogy." All three were composed between 1844 and 1846, when Gottschalk was still a teenager... The piece that created the greatest sensation was Bamboula.

Chase apparently overlooked a fourth Creole melody used by Gottschalk on his Op. 11. In her 1902 compilation, Gottschalk's sister arranged "Po' Pitie Mamzé Zizi", and included a footnote: "L. M. Gottschalk used this melody for his piece entitled Le Mancenillier, sérénade, Op. 11."
Regarding "Misieu Bainjo", used in Gottschalk's Bamboula, the editors of Slave Songs write "...the attempt of some enterprising negro to write a French song; he is certainly to be congratulated on his success." The song has been published in more than a dozen collections prior to 1963, listed by the .

Good Hope Plantation, St. Charles Parish

Songs numbered 130-136 in Slave Songs of the United States, according to a note on page 113,
The words "obtained from a lady who heard them sung" suggest that the songs were written down by someone, perhaps the lady herself, but certainly someone adept at music notation who was able to understand and write down the patois. It seems likely that she or he was a guest or a member of the La Branche family, who resided at the plantation until 1859, shortly after which the plantation was devastated by flood. This family included United States chargé d'affaires to Texas and a Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Alcée Louis la Branche.
We may never know the identity of the person who wrote down the seven Creole folk songs as sung at Good Hope Plantation, but it is noteworthy that Good Hope, Good Hope Floodwall, Good Hope Oil and Gas Field, Bayou La Branche, and, especially, La Branche Wetlands are today well known names in St. Charles Parish, where the seven songs were once sung.

The Louisiana Lady

During the 1930s and 1940s, Camille Nickerson performed Creole folk music professionally as "The Louisiana Lady." During an interview with Doris E. McGinty, Professor Nickerson told of her first performance at a parish in New Iberia. "I was dressed in Creole costume and sang for about an hour and a half, and was very well received. Now this was a white audience; such a thing was unheard of in Louisiana, especially in the rural section such as this was. The enthusiasm of the audience showed me what an impact the Creole song could have."

Compilations and arrangements of Creole melodies

In any discussion of Creole folk songs, compilations of such songs play an essential role, not only for defining "Creole folk music", but also as a source of information, and, for performers, a possible source of arrangements. A brief summary of published compilations follows:
The most definite recollections of my childhood on the Labranche Plantation in St. Charles Parish where we lived, are of the singing and dancing of the negroes. This plantation had been in our family from the days of the early settlers and, by a trick of fortune years after the war, with its resulting shiftings and changes, my grandmother found herself mistress of a plantation on which she had lived as a child. Many of the negroes who had wandered away had by then returned to their birthplace to find themselves practically under the same masters...

Musique Créole etant identifié comme la musique des noirs venant d'afrique. Si les ésclaves importés d'Afrique ont été dépouillés de leur dignité et humanité, leur mémoire de la terre ancestrale demeura pourtant intouchable et intacte. Ainsi ont-ils s'accrocher à leur croyances et leurs traditions et y trouver, à l'occasion, un certain confort en se refugiant dderrère leurs souvenirs.
La musique leur offrit l’opportunité de non seulement exprimer ces croyances et traditions, mais aussi de vivre au jour le jour leur nouvelle réalité faite de durs labeurs, de misère, d’humiliations. Ils ont pu réinventer leurs instruments en utilisant les produits agricoles à leur portée. Quand l’occasion se présenta pour s’affirmer face aux maîtres despotes, leur musique se transforma en chant de ralliement. Ainsi prit naissance la musique haïtienne 'musique créole' qui puisa son inspiration dans les chants et dans la musique de l’Afrique ancestrale, de la dure réalité de l”esclavage, et quelquefois de l’héritage légué par les colons européens. Elle est et restera une musique dansante portée par la voix en prenant quelquefois le ton de révolte.
Après l’indépendance dans un souci de s’identifier avec la civilisation européenne, nos élites ont essayé de faire taire cette musique en la reléguant dans les hauteurs des montagnes et aux fins fonds des plaines. Cette musique qui devrait révéler notre identité de peuple libéré devint suspecte comme elle l’a été parmi les colons.
reference :
https://www.haiti-reference.com/pages/plan/sports-et-loisirs/musique/