“The Fiddler” by E. W. Kemble, from 1885, depicts a typical musician of New Orleans’s Congo Square in the pre-Civil War period. Credit: Historic New Orleans Collection, 1974.25.23.55

In 1998, Congress recognized Bristol, Tenn., as the birthplace of country music.

“Their resolution cites the historic recording sessions that took place in the city in 1927,” Vitrola states, “even if they weren’t technically the first country music recordings to occur.”

Based on research from the Historic New Orleans Collection, country music could be heard emanating from New Orleans’ Congo Square during the colonial era.  

Creole composer Louis Morreau Gottschalk often incorporated in his works the music he heard “from enslaved and free Black people’s weekly Sunday gatherings, where drumming and dancing went on for hours,” Terri Simon wrote in a 2022 Historic New Orleans Collection article. 

Gottschalk’s “The Banjo: Grotesque Fantasie, an American Sketch” was “a piece for the piano that premiered in New Orleans in 1855,” the HNOC story states. “‘The Banjo’ contains early evidence of African banjo techniques found nowhere else.”

The fiddle – or violin – also was adopted by enslaved Africans “by at least the 1690s,” the HNOC story states. “New Orleans emerged as a center for training enslaved Africans in the art of European dance music. There are reports of Black musicians … playing for audiences of both Black and white dancers from colonial times straight through the 19th century.”

When studios began to use “white stand-ins” in promotions to hide integrated recording sessions, Black country artists “were largely forgotten by the public,” the HNOC story states. Still, Black artists, such as Charley Pride and New Orleans Jazz Fest favorite Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, broke through.

Today, numerous Black artists, such as Mickey Guyton, Kane Brown and Beyoncé, have stepped into the country limelight. “Black musicians proved much more than a footnote in the history of country music,” the HNOC story states. “Modern innovators … continue to show that they will remain so for a long time.”

For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.

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Tammy C. Barney is an award-winning columnist who spent most of her career at two major newspapers, The Times-Picayune and The Orlando Sentinel. She served as a bureau chief, assistant city editor, TV...