Dixieland

Dixieland or Dixie is a name for the south-eastern portion of the USA; see: U.S. Southern States, Dixie. This article is about the musical genre.

Etymology

While the term Dixieland is still in wide use, the term's appropriateness is a hotly debated topic in some circles. For some it is the preferred label (especially bands on the USA's West coast and those influenced by the 1940s revival bands), while others (especially New Orleans musicians, and those influenced by the African-American bands of the 1920s) would rather use terms like Classic Jazz or Traditional Jazz. Some of the latter consider Dixieland a derogatory term implying superficial hokum played without passion or deep understanding of the music.

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According to jazz writer Gary Giddins, the term Dixieland was widely understood in the early 20th century as a code for "black music." Frequent references to Dixieland were made in the lyrics of popular songs of this era, often written by songwriters of both races who had never been south of New Jersey. Other composers of the "Dixieland" standards, such as Clarence Williams and Jelly Roll Morton, were native New Orleanians.

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Dixieland is often today applied to white bands playing in a traditional style. Some critics regard this labeling as incorrect. From the late 1930s on, black and mixed-race bands playing in a more traditional group-improvising style were referred to in the jazz press as playing "small-band Swing," while white and mixed-race bands such as those of Eddie Condon and Muggsy Spanier were tagged with the Dixieland label.

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This brings us back to the fundamentally problematic character of the term Dixieland as a musical category. There are black musicians today, young as well as old, who play New Orleans jazz, traditonal jazz or small band swing, that musically could also be called Dixieland, although black musicians would not usually accept that term. Thus it makes sense to say only white musicians play Dixieland. In the early 20th century, Dixieland may have been understood as a code for black music in the northern US. However, in New Orleans the distinction was as clear then as now. It is sometimes said that only white bands were called Dixieland bands, like the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. While there is some evidence for this generalization, there are numerous counter examples of African American New Orleans musicans calling their music "Dixieland" or including the word "Dixieland" in the name of their band from the 1920s through the 1960s. Younger generations of African American New Orleans musicians generally strongly reject the "Dixieland" label. A number of early black bands used the term Creole (as with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band), including some that were not actually of Creole ancestry.

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Younger generations of primarily white players continued to find inspiration in the spirited, highly rhythmic traditional style of playing, with the result that the ranks of African-Americans today playing in the Dixieland style of jazz are very few. However, this has to be understood with the recognition that Dixieland jazz is as much a social/racial category as it is a musical one, unlike the more specifically musical New Orleans jazz or Traditional jazz. In these latter categories there are plenty of active young black musicians. The upshot of this is that although Dixieland is a term used to mean "traditional jazz" outside of jazz, within jazz it is a white subset of traditional jazz.

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