I can imag­ine no bet­ter guide through the his­to­ry and vari­ety of jazz than Langston Hugh­es, voice of the Harlem Renais­sance and poet­ic inter­preter of 20th cen­tu­ry black Amer­i­can cul­ture. Hugh­es’ 1955 First Book of Jazz is just that, a short primer with a sur­pris­ing­ly high degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion for a children’s book. I would, in fact, rec­om­mend it as an intro­duc­tion to jazz for any read­er.

Hugh­es thor­ough­ly cov­ers the musi­cal con­text of jazz in brief chap­ters like “African Drums,” “Old New Orleans,” “Work Songs,” “The Blues,” and “Rag­time.” He then “dis­cuss­es the mechan­ics of jazz,” writes author and blog­ger Ariel S. Win­ter, includ­ing “impro­vi­sa­tion, syn­co­pa­tion, per­cus­sion, rhythm, blue notes, tone col­or, har­mo­ny, break, riff….” Through it all runs the life and career of Louis Arm­strong, whose sto­ry, Hugh­es states “is almost the whole sto­ry of orches­tral jazz in Amer­i­ca.”

The book is very patri­ot­ic in tone, a fact dic­tat­ed by Hugh­es’ recent appear­ance before Sen­a­tor McCarthy’s Sub­com­mit­tee, which exon­er­at­ed him on the con­di­tion that he renounce his ear­li­er sym­pa­thies for the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and get with a patri­ot­ic pro­gram. Hav­ing fall­en out of favor with the pub­lic, Hugh­es began the non­fic­tion children’s series to win back read­ers, also writ­ing the quaint­ly named cul­tur­al his­to­ry First Book of Negroes and the Whit­manesque First Book of Rhythms. All of the books were illus­trat­ed by dif­fer­ent artists. The First Book of Jazz received spe­cial treat­ment from pop­u­lar illus­tra­tor Cliff Roberts, who made its pages close­ly resem­ble clas­sic album cov­ers by artists like Jim Flo­ra.

Although Hugh­es may have been some­what con­cil­ia­to­ry in his atti­tude toward inequal­i­ty, he nonethe­less makes the ori­gins and impor­tance of jazz clear:

A part of Amer­i­can music is jazz, born in the South. Woven into it in the Deep South were the rhythms of African drums that today make jazz music dif­fer­ent from any oth­er music in the world. Nobody else ever made jazz before we did. Jazz is Amer­i­can music.

“The par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­cans in ques­tion,” writes Win­ter, “are unde­ni­ably black,” and “when Hugh­es cov­ers the vast array of Amer­i­can styles that went into jazz, they tend to be (as they should be) black inter­pre­ta­tions of each musi­cal form.” But as he had always done, whether under pres­sure from McCarthy­ism or not, he proud­ly declares jazz yet anoth­er invalu­able con­tri­bu­tion African-Amer­i­cans, as well as Euro­pean immi­grants, made to the nation­al cul­ture. How­ev­er far left his polit­i­cal sym­pa­thies, Hugh­es was always a patri­ot, in the best sense, an admir­er of his country’s achieve­ments and gen­uine lover of its peo­ple.

Although it is a children’s book, Hugh­es’ First Book of Jazz is still a schol­ar­ly one, with a host of ref­er­ences in the Acknowl­edge­ments, and a list of famous jazz musi­cians, and their instru­ments, at the end. Also round­ing out the short course on jazz his­to­ry and musi­cian­ship is a two-part list of “Sug­gest­ed Records for Study” and one called “100 of My Favorite Record­ings.” Hugh­es even con­vinced Folk­ways records to release The Sto­ry of Jazz, an LP Hugh­es nar­rat­ed with exam­ples of each style of jazz he dis­cuss­es. You can read the full First Book of Jazz at Winter’s Flickr, where he has post­ed scans of every page. Vin­tage copies can be pur­chased online. See a gallery of Roberts’ full page illus­tra­tions here.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Watch Langston Hugh­es Read Poet­ry from His First Col­lec­tion, The Weary Blues (1958)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

They’re billed as “the youngest string quar­tet ever.” The kids began play­ing in The Joy­ous String Quar­tet when they were four years old. Now, fast for­ward four more years, and they find them­selves per­form­ing 20 con­certs a year around the globe — in places like South Korea and Chi­na, and on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Above you can watch them per­form Sum­mer “Presto” by Vival­di. Below, they give you a clas­si­cal ver­sion of Katy Per­ry’s “Fire­work:

And final­ly Michael Jack­son’s “Smooth Crim­i­nal.” In case you’re won­der­ing, the stu­dents come out of The Joy­ous Music School in Hicksville, NY.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

The Louisville Leop­ard Per­cus­sion­ists — they’re a per­form­ing ensem­ble made up of 60 stu­dents, all between the ages of 7 and 14, from schools around the Louisville, Ken­tucky area. Each musi­cian plays sev­er­al instru­ments, such as the marim­bas, xylo­phone, vibra­phone, drum set, tim­bales, con­gas, bon­gos and piano. And they can rock with the best of them. Per­haps you’ve seen a viral video of the young per­cus­sion­ists play­ing Led Zep­pelin’s “Kash­mir,” which Jim­my Page called “too good not to share” on his Face­book page.

If your inner 16-year-old is ask­ing “what about Ozzy?,” well then, we’ve got you cov­ered. Above you can watch The Fab­u­lous Leop­ard Per­cus­sion­ists rehears­ing a ver­sion of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” the heavy met­al clas­sic from 1980. Found­ed in 1993 by the ele­men­tary school teacher Diane Downs, the ensem­ble has cer­tain­ly explored oth­er musi­cal forms too. Here, you can see them per­form Chick Core­a’s “Spain” and Ben­ny Good­man’s “Sing Sing Sing” at the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Jazz Edu­ca­tors’ con­cert in New York City. And Latin-inspired ver­sions of Low Rider/Oye Como Va. Not a bad way to start your day, I must say.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)