JAZZ

=//__It started in old New Orleans__//= =//__The land of white rice and red beans__//= =//__When those cats played their horns__//= =//__A new music was born__//= =//__Jazz had now entered the scene.__//=

Today's Journey into Jazz takes us to [|New Orleans, Louisiana].

The time is the early 1900s. We are traveling by [|horse-drawn carriage] because the automobile has not yet been invented.

Our first stop is in a [|cotton field] where we hear a plantation worker singing a work song as he picks cotton (click [|here] to hear the work song). These workers are probably descendants of people who were slaves before the [|Emancipation Proclamation] in 1863 granted them freedom.

Although by this time free, few employment opportunities other than labor were available to African Americans. Singing as they worked was a way to ease the boredom of this difficult, exhausting, boring work. These songs would eventually become part of **jazz.**
 * ASSIGNMENT: As you listen to the music, list at least five adjectives you would use to describe it.**