The Invention of a Memory

Abstract

Was Congo Square—now Armstrong Park—in New Orleans, the birth place of jazz music? Very little reliable historical information is available about the place but what we know for certain is that three men, one musician and two journalists, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, George Washington Cable, and Lafcadio Hearn, did construct Congo Square as the starting point of Black music over the course of the nineteenth century. After 1885, Congo Square could be considered as an established part of New Orleans folklore. Gradually the music that started there came to be identified as a central part of American identity.