Australian Jazz - Jazz Precursors in Australia

Jazz Precursors in Australia

White American and British 'black face' minstrels (musician/actors in make-up) brought imitations of slave plantation music (and dance) to Australia by the 1840s, featuring characteristics that later became associated with jazz, such as polyrhythmic 'breaks'. From the 1850s, full minstrel shows with minstrel 'orchestras', including locally formed troupes, toured the major capital cities and smaller, boom towns like Ballarat and Bendigo. Visits by American vaudeville troupes became much more common after the introduction of regular steamship services between America and Australia in the 1870s. Some genuine African-American minstrel troupes and jubilee singers (black chamber choirs) toured from the 1870s.

Ragtime reached Australia in the 1890s in the form of syncopated cakewalk march music and syncopated "coon-song" and many white and black ragtime artists of repute toured Australia, including the black ragtime vocalist, Ernest Hogan, and white artists Ben Harney (the self-proclaimed 'originator' of ragtime) and Gene Greene (the Emperor of Ragtime). Greene in particular taught many Australian artists how to 'rag' (improvise in ragtime style).