Congo Square

The Congo Square is a historical place in New Orleans north of Rampart Street in what is now Louis Armstrong Park ( in the Faubourg Tremé ). It has historical significance as a former meeting place of slaves in Spanish colonial times and then dancing out there on Sunday a day of rest for Music in New Orleans.

Beginning of the French and Spanish colonial

Originally, the space was to the French and Spanish periods ( from 1769) outside the Vieux Carré of the city center ( limited by the Rampart Street). It was then also place sonntäglicher bullfights He was surrounded by shady oaks and mulberry - figs. Because of there gathering slaves he was called to the Spanish and French times in the 18th century Place des Negres or Place Congo ( Congo for naming only in Spanish times is the fact that only slaves in the Congo were to a greater extent in New Orleans) - however, he had never officially this name. According to other sources the name dates from a later period, of circus -like performances that were held there from 1816 by a Signor Gaetano from Havana ( Congo Circus). He also served young people the Raquette game, but in addition the Sunday meetings of the colored people found further instead.

The still partly native of Africa slaves were there, starting from the mid-18th century, the work-free Sunday sell goods and exert their music and dances. Beginning of the 19th century, many former slaves were added after the Haitian Revolution and the freed black population, who lived mostly in the area of the Tremé district, joined them. Blacks, however, was forbidden on the plantations the care of their musical culture in large parts of the former United States, and larger accumulations about to dance in public were mostly prohibited. In the former Spanish and then the New Orleans French had a more tolerant attitude. Evidence can be the mention of dancing slaves on a Place Congo in a letter of the Spanish auxiliary bishop Cyrillo Sieni who was bothered about the interference of Sunday near the cathedral ( he calls the dances Bamboula ), so take some historians, that this does not today's Congo Square, but the then main market Place d'Armes (Plaza des Armas, now Jackson Square ) was meant .. the Governor Estevan Miró adopted it in June 1786 an edict in which the dances ( tango ) of blacks until after the Vesper should wait. A year later, reports a tax that raised the municipal treasurer of acting black market Congo. Meetings of slaves to the work-free Sundays were common throughout Louisiana and there was no clue that they were limited in Spanish times to a place.

U.S. Time

The meetings were also after the takeover of New Orleans by the United States 1804. There is an American law of 1817, which expressly permitted the meetings, but a single course was set, as determined by the City of ( Congo Square), and where the dancers could be observed by the police.

1819 prepared by the architect Benjamin Latrobe to drawings of scenes on the Congo Square and tells it in his diaries, which are the most accurate obtained records of the meetings of Congo Square. He describes meetings of about 500 to 600, respectively circles around groups of dancers and musicians forming, drums ( Bamboulas, conga -like drums, held between the legs, or so that the drummer that sat on him and other forms ) and a kind of banjo. Other observers signposted early violins, tambourines, foot drums, fife -like flutes. The dances are referred to as Bamboula or Calinda. Even in the days of Latrobe in 1820 ( which occurred the ideas in their own words blunt and barbaric ) reported other witnesses, however, of a much broader musical spectrum including Virginia breakdowns, minstrel songs and Fandango. The meeting at the Congo Square at that time were already a tourist attraction.

End of the meetings and later history

Since the meetings disrupted the Sunday rest of the residents in 1829 bans have been enacted, the police intervened increasingly in dances and gatherings of slaves a. 1835 stopped the dances at Congo Square, then ran again but for a while, but definitely ended in 1851 when the place was called Place d' Armes (before it was called Place Publique ). A City Guide of 1845 described the Congo Square even as a place where the slaves had gathered in ancient times Added to this was that the greater Tremé market was opened in 1840, which rivaled the market on the Congo Square. After the Civil War, the square was officially renamed in Place Beauregard ( Confederate General PGT Beauregard after ), but in the vernacular, he was called on Congo Square and in 2011 was again officially called that. At Congo Square played towards the end of the 19th century, brass bands and other orchestras.

In the north, the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium was opened in 1930 (venue ). The houses of the area was demolished as part of a controversial urban renewal project in the 1960s, often later then it was a park that is a listed building, the Louis Armstrong Park. Here is the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 1970 was held until it was too large for the space.

Aftermath

George Washington Cable wrote in 1886 an essay on the Congo Square and there presented dances and music in Century Magazine with notes of music that should have been played there. He got his information second hand, however, and Sandke holds the representations of Cable and other authors end of the 19th century such as Lafcadio Hearn, to which early jazz writers such as Robert Goffin, Marshall Stearns, Rudi Blesh or Jazzmen from 1939 (edited by Frederic Ramsey and Charles Edward Smith) support for far-reaching fiction of Cable compiled from various sources, such as a book about dance in the Caribbean ( Haiti) end of the 18th century. or an article from the Journal of New Orleans The Picayune on the Congo Square of 1879th in the early jazz literature it became the legend that these meetings on the Congo Square to the 1880s would have been to date and even the early jazz (Buddy Bolden ) had influenced. After Sandke the Congo Square as a missing link in jazz history just as illusory as the Piltdown Man. , Which can also be ascertained make sure the instruments used (such as congas ) were entirely different.

Also for the pieces of the Creole, who grew up in New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk as the piano piece Bamboula ( Opus 2, from 1844 to 1846 arose when Gottschalk was studying in Paris, in 1848 published ), refers to the Cable in his essay, is of Congo Square as the source of the question ( according to his biographer Starr he had the melody of his governess from Santo Domingo ). The myth of the Congo Square inspired but more 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, African music from Ghana combined with swing arrangements for big band and blues musician Sonny Landreth ( on his album Down in Louisiana 1985). Donald Harrison, Big Chief of the Congo Nation Mardi Gras and considered themselves as stewards of the Congo -Square musical heritage.