From Antiquity to Modernity: Jason Marsalis’ Ode to Congo Square

On Friday night, March 4 at Snug Harbor Jazz Club and Restaurant in NOLA Jason Marsalis celebrated his birthday by premiering a concept piece, Ode to Congo Square, that was commissioned by the Congo Square Preservation Society. Attending this show was a phenomenal experience.

Congo Square in New Orleans offered enslaved Africans a semblance of freedom with singing, dancing, and drumming on one day of the week – Sunday. Today this carries over into the Second Line tradition, in which the spectrum of African rhythms from grief to joy are expressed in Jazz funerals and Mardi Gras Indians Parades.

Jason Marsalis, an educator, composer, seasoned percussionist and vibist, is the youngest of the family known globally as jazz royalty, starting with their iconic patriarch, the esteemed pianist, educator, and composer Ellis Marsalis who made his transition in 2020. Each of Ellis Marsalis’s sons – Wynton, Branford, Delfeo, and Jason – has made his own unique indelible contribution in the world of Jazz, art, and culture.

Ode to Congo Square was a masterful performance of original compositions based upon Jazz classics, African Diasporian musical and rhythmic motifs, and various iterations of European musical structures contextualized within the broad sweep of Africa’s and African Americans’ impact upon modern music worldwide.

African percussive accents, syncopation, and rhythmic styles are evidenced in music from multiple nations where the trans-Atlantic slave trade transported kidnapped Africans – the Woluf, Bambara, Mandingo, Fulbe, Nard, Ganga, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and others – to build booming agribusinesses. Marsalis’ concept piece incorporates a traditional song of tribal Indigenous Americans, a Mexican folk song, and a European March used in stark-relief to the new world’s introduction to African rhythms.

The command Marsalis possesses over his music was clearly evident as he artfully explained each song in the tightly crafted sequence of historic poly- rhythmic new and traditional pieces to a rapt, culturally diverse, inter-generational audience, taking us into an exquisite journey of awareness of the drum’s import as a tool of expression and communication beginning from human origins in Africa into musical modernity.  Reggae, Trinidadian, Blues, R&B, Jazz, Afro-Cuban, Funk, Samba, and Hip Hop are each distinct within their rhythmic palates, but all share a common heritage.

The young band demonstrated incredible command of various rhythmic syncopations, offering perfect harmonic and improvisational voicings with trumpet and tenor and soprano saxophones gelling with piano and electric bass in a well-rehearsed cohesive rhythm section.

It was a musical experience I shall never forget. And it was made in the City of New Orleans in the great country of America.