Chicago, Jazz, Baha'i And 1912.

[RonPrice]

THE EPI-CENTRE OF CHICAGO

 

The story of jazz in Chicago goes back to the year 1911-2, to men like Jelly Roll Morton, Tony Jackson and a number of early bluesmen. Many of the early blues singers and guitar strummers came by the dozens in the period 1912 to 1924 from some part of the south. They came to Chicago to better their living.1 This jazz was largely derived from the music of New Orleans and it had one special characteristic, at least the part of jazz identified with the blues, and that was its personal, autobiographical, nature.1 -Ron Price with thanks to 1John Steiner, “Chicago,” in Jazz, Albert J. McCarthy, et al., Cassell, London, 1959, pp. 140-143.

 

I wonder if ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s laying the foundations of that world-embracing Administrative system in Chicago in 1912, a system designed to evolve into a World Order which posterity would acclaim as the promise and crowning glory of all the Dispensations of the past, played some serendipitous role in the early history of jazz in Chicago.- Ron Price with appreciation to Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, Wilmette, 1957(1944), p.329.

 

All those career and itinerant bluesmen

who composed and sang songs on street

corners and all those Baha’is who by their

acts enlarged the limits and swelled the ranks

of the avowed supporters of this new Faith;

all those boogie-woogie players who

brought that form of jazz to fruition

in Chicago not far from the north shore

of Lake Michigan where He had dug

the first hole and brought to fruition

the strongest building in the world,

the most beautiful structure on the planet,

made of Chicago one of jazz’s epi-centres

and for the newest of the world’s religions.

 

Ron Price

August 21st 2005