What is "dixieland"

Dixieland \Dixieland\ n. the 11 southern states that seceded from the U. S. in 1861.

Syn: Confederacy, Confederate States of America, South, Dixie.

Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century.

The first use of the term "Dixieland" with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, whose 1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of the new style of music. At that time, there was no issue of subgenres of jazz, so "Dixieland" referred to the band and not the music. A revival movement for traditional jazz, formed in reaction to the orchestrated sounds of the swing era and the perceived chaos of the new bebop sounds of the 1940s (referred to as "Chinese music" by Louis Armstrong), pulled "Dixieland" out from the somewhat forgotten band's name for the music they championed. The revival movement included elements of the Chicago style that developed during the 1920s, such as the use of a string bass instead of a tuba, and chordal instruments, in addition to the original format of the New Orleans style. That reflected the fact that virtually all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was already evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format. "Dixieland" may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz revival movement of the 1940s and 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz. The essential elements that were accepted as within the style were the traditional front lines consisting of trumpets, trombones, and clarinets, and ensemble improvisation over a 2-beat rhythm.

The Dixieland revival renewed the audience for musicians who had continued to play in traditional jazz styles and revived the careers of New Orleans musicians who had become lost in the shuffle of musical styles that had occurred over the preceding 20 to 25 years. Younger black musicians largely shunned the revival, largely because of a distaste for tailoring their music to what they saw as nostalgia entertainment for white audiences with whom they did not share such nostalgia. The Jim Crow associations of the name "Dixieland" also did little to attract younger black musicians to the revival.

The Dixieland revival music during the 1940s and 1950s gained a broad audience that established traditional jazz as an enduring part of the American cultural landscape, and spawned revival movements in Europe. Well-known jazz standard tunes such as " Basin Street Blues" and " When the Saints Go Marching In" are known even to non-jazz fans thanks to the enduring popularity of traditional jazz. The Vietnam-era protest song "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" is based on tonal centers and the "B" refrain from the New Orleans standard " Muskrat Ramble". Traditional jazz is a major tourist attraction for New Orleans to the present day. It has been an influence on the styles of more modern players such as Charles Mingus and Steve Coleman.

New Orleans music combined earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. The "standard" band consists of a "front line" of trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet, with a " rhythm section" of at least two of the following instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano, and drums. The Dixieland sound is created when one instrument (usually the trumpet) plays the melody or a variation on it, and the other instruments improvise around that melody. This creates a more polyphonic sound than the heavily arranged big band sound of the 1930s or the straight melodies (with or without harmonizing) of bebop in the 1940s.

The "West Coast revival" began in the late 1930s in San Francisco which used banjo and tuba. The Dutch "old-style jazz" was played with trumpets, trombones and saxophones accompanied by a single clarinet, sousaphone and a section of Marching percussion usually including a washboard.

Dixieland is a 2015 American crime drama film, written and directed by Hank Bedford. The film stars Chris Zylka, Riley Keough, Spencer Lofranco, Steve Earle, and Faith Hill. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, 2015. The film was released in a limited release and through video on demand on December 11, 2015, by IFC Films.