Dixieland
An early jazz style from New Orleans built on collective improvisation by trumpet, clarinet, and trombone.
What it means
Dixieland denotes an early jazz style that emerged around 1900 in New Orleans and became popular in the 1910s and 1920s. It is marked by a front line of melody instruments – usually trumpet or cornet, clarinet, and trombone – over a rhythm section of banjo or guitar, double bass or tuba, and drums. The name derives from "Dixie," a colloquial term for the southern United States.
In a narrower sense, Dixieland refers especially to the continuation and commercial spread of this New Orleans style by white musicians and bands from the 1910s onward, while "New Orleans jazz" often denotes the original style, more strongly shaped by African American musicians. In everyday usage, however, the two terms are frequently used interchangeably.
Musical use
Central to the Dixieland style is collective improvisation: trumpet, clarinet, and trombone weave around the melody simultaneously, each instrument taking on its own role, typically the trumpet carrying the main line, the clarinet weaving fast figures above it, and the trombone supplying a supporting countermelody below. This polyphonic texture distinguishes the style from later forms of jazz, in which musicians more often improvise solos one after another.
Dixieland should be distinguished from the later swing style, dominated by larger big bands with written arrangements and featured vocal solos, and from ragtime, primarily a composed, syncopated piano music without collective improvisation, though regarded as one of Dixieland's musical roots. From the 1940s onward the style saw a deliberate revival known as the Dixieland revival, often as a traditionalist counter-movement to modern bebop.
Performance practice
When improvising collectively in the Dixieland style, listen closely to the other melody instruments: let the trumpet lead the main melody and find a line for clarinet or trombone that complements it rather than overlapping it. Keep the underlying pulse in the rhythm section steady and danceable, since the horns' collective improvisation only works over a reliable rhythmic foundation.