DAN CASSIDY: How the Irish Invented American Slang Word origin AND Etymology of Jazz
Professor Dan Cassidy explains the etymology of the Irish word JAZZ
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2007 American Book Award Winner Dan Cassidy explains gig, juke, boogie woogie, Irish Slang and Irish American Vernacular English. Learn about Irish American Vernacular English and the hidden influence of Irish and Scots-Gaelic on what we call American English.
Jazz: What is the origin of the word Jazz? The Irish word Teas is pronounced jazz, jass, chas, or t'as.
LISTEN TO CASSIDY EXPLAIN JAZZ "Danny Cassidy knows This page contains a Flash video. To view it requires that the Flash plugin is installed and Javascript enabled. |
Professor Dan Cassidy The House of Fire - St. Bridgid's Teas (Jass) Heat |
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2007 American Book Award Winner Hear Speech |
Reclaiming the knowledge
READ the Book Reviews Irish Americans especially will be delighted to know, they have been speaking Irish all along in their slang and American English, while believing and bemoaning that they had lost their native tongue many years ago. With imagination and scholarship, Cassidy has restored this hidden treasure to us in a book that is filled with revelations, wit and humor. New York Times Review |
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CITATIONS - REFERENCES - RESOURCES
THE BEGINNINGS - What's the Origin of the word Jazz? The Irish Word Teas Means Heat.
In a series of lively essays, this pioneering book proves that US slang has its strongest wellsprings in nineteenth-century Irish America. "Jazz" and "poker," "sucker" and "scam" all derive from Irish. While demonstrating this, Daniel Cassidy simultaneously traces the hidden history of how Ireland fashioned America, not just linguistically, but through the Irish gambling underworld, urban street gangs, and the powerful political machines that grew out of them. Cassidy uncovers a secret national heritage, long discounted by our WASP-dominated culture.
Professor Dan Cassidy had already published "The Sanas of Jazz as Teas" ©2002 in the poet David Meltzer's Jazz Magazine Shuffle Boil.
Trace the etymology and sanas of the word JAZZ.
Ellis makes the research available to you in PDF files showing The Etymology of Jazz and many other words that originally come from Irish American Vernacular English p
GINIKER
Irish Guys Writing with Irish Words.
Irish American Sports Reporter "Scoop" Gleason of the San Francisco Bulletin in 1913 article uses the word "JAZZ".
Ellis locates Tamony's research papers, emails the "GINIKER" citation to Cassidy who searches the San Francisco Main Library ( which happens to be located only about mile away from where Tamony lived all those years ago) and now locates the newspaper microfiche finding those original sports page articles.
"GINIKER" - THE MISSING LINK that explains the new word "JAZZ" in the San Francisco Bulletin March 1913. ARTICLES AND PICTURES trace and explain what Jazz means.
These first Published Examples S.F. Bulletin, March 3, 1913 of the new word Jazz have nothing to do with music, but refer to an intangible quality possessed by baseball players; what another writer in the S.F. Bulletin, Ernest Hopkins, described in April 1923 as “life, vigor, energy, effervescence of spirit, joy, pep, magnetism, verve, virility, ebullience, courage, happiness oh, what’s the use? Jazz. Nothing else can express it”.
The San Francisco sports reporter Scoop Gleeson claimed he heard the word Jazz from fellow Irish American newspaperman, Spike Slattery, while they were at the training camp of the local baseball team, the San Francisco Seals. Slattery said he had heard it in a crap game.
Dan Cassidy Meets Spike Slattery's Grandson in Sonoma CA at the book reading 11/07.
Irish American Vernacular English Baseball Words used by Scoop Gleeson in the Sports pages. Jazz appears in print 25 times in the month of March 1913, 24 times in Scoop's articles.
© 2006 Boyes Hot Springs is 10 miles away from this hot spring that I visited at the last mission built in Sonoma, CA. ~ KE
Where was the game?
In Boyes Springs, CA
What do you find there?
HOT WATER.
Art Hickman an unemployed local San Francisco Irish Jazz musician had also been to Boyes Springs and to the baseball training camp looking for contacts. Dan Cassidy can elaborate on this story. The Boyes' Hot Springs' water was in a state of natural 135 degree natural JAZZ (teas, pron . Jass, Heat) Using the word as a Gaelic incantation to the gambling "gods of the odds."
Essays, References, Citations, Resources, Definitions
Find out what Scoop Gleeson meant - when he said: 'Its members have trained on ragtime and `jazz'.' AND more Irish American Vernacular English words used by Scoop Gleeson in the Sports pages to talk about baseball.
- Jasm & Gism as a Source for the Word "Jazz" - From the Work of Peter Tamony
- The Irish and Scots Gaelic Sanas of Fizz, Fizzle, and Sizzle and Teas. - Like a lexical star the Irish and Scots Gaelic fizz and fizzle are perpetually losing their Teas (pron. chass, jass, or jazz depending on your dialect) means heat, excitement, and high spirit.
- The Big "Butter an' Eggman" - The King of Teas (Jass, Heat)
- The Sacred Secret Tongue of the Saol Luim - (Slum, World of Poverty)
- Boogie Borrowing from Irish into English we used the words boogie and boogaloo to mean move fast or depart quickly with no reference to music. Also see Boogie Woogie Music. What Does Boogie Mean? 1941 Ball of Fire - Billy Wilder, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyk. Slang is words that takes off his coat, spits on it's hands and gets to work!
- Irish American Vernacular English gave us Gambling Slang. Learn The Sanas (Irish Etymology) of Faro, Poker and the Secret Flash Words for the Brotherhood of American Gamblers and more Irish American Vernacular English Origin of Hoodoo and Juke Joint
TRACING when words first get "BORROWED" from the vernacular into the standard. IRISH LANGUAGE WORDS GET BORROWED
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." ~James D. Nicoll 1990
No one can dispute that the Irish word 'teas' means "heat, warmth", and the notion of borrowing from Irish into English happened every day since the Irish came to America. Language contact covered the entire United States and Caribbean. [see Boogie] Ireland, boasts family ties with 15 U.S. presidents. Four have direct ties to Northern Ireland. And there are 34.3 million people in the United States who claimed some Irish heritage in the last census.
TRACING happens in many ways including songs. A word can exist for numerous years even centuries before it gets into print.
[". . .Rhymes that have been rubbed clean and hard against the bone of life, whose stories are rooted in an eternity of time."][ ". . . Jingles, riddles, silly ballads, wistful lullabies, jiggy tunes and game songs"] belong to the children of America and reflect a composite character of the common people residing in the United States. ~ Lomax
Words that were spoken and spelled by non Irish speakers, (like Lomax) who had no training in Irish as a Second Language spelled out what they thought they heard pronounced, and didn't bother to write the Irish words correctly, and couldn't pronounce the Irish words in the first place. This is how you end up with so called "nonsense syllables".
Paddy Works On The Railway Retranslated
At the hour of rising I return to work upon the railway...
Sla/n agus beannacht
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TRAVEL WEST
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Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies
Re-translatedThis page contains a Flash video. To view it requires that the Flash plugin is installed and Javascript enabled.
Why Does the Cowboy Sing - Starts off with Ramblin Jack Elliott 58 minutes
The cowboy's job has always been dangerous, lonely, dusty, gory and low-paying. So why do cowboys make music, and why do they need to tell their story? Why the Cowboy Sings is a journey across the open West to explore this unique genre of folk art.
Archie Green Helped to collect the information also see The Moonshiner Drinking song by Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makum The Dubliners.
** Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies
THE SECRET IRISH TRAVELLER Bain-Fhile (Woman-Poet) of "Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies" PDF explains the how the Irish language was borrowed and written down by english speakers to sound like something they could say. And the Doggy is not a dog but Irish for the poor misfortunate starving pathetic person who has only misery in their life.
In 1910 John Lomax concluded the first edition of his now canonical Cowboy Songs and Frontier Ballads, {introduction by President Theodore Roosevelt} with a song he called "the quintessential cowboy song, unlike others known to have been imported and adapted in the West," Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Doggies collected from black cowboy informants. The enigmatic phonetic lyrics of this world-famous, foundational American cowboy song have puzzled scholars and American folklorists for a century. were collected from . Cowboys were also called BUCKAROOS.
Jesse Chisholm, for whom the Chisholm trail was named, was a Scots-Cherokee, His father was a Scots Gaelic speaker. Chisholm is also reputed to have spoken a number of Indian languages.
Also see: Cowboy Poetry Explained by Hal Cannon.
Casey Jones Remembered
Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center tells the story of legendary train engineer Casey Jones. Many consider him a mythic figure, celebrated in verse and song. But Casey Jones was in fact, real; he died 100 years ago in 1900 when his train collided with a freight train near Vaughn, Mississippi.
A glance at the folk songs and ballads of The Wild Wild West.
Folksong & Storytelling makes Wyatt Earp a legendary figure of the Wild West.
Professor Daniel Cassidy Biography
Professor Daniel Cassidy Director of Irish Studies at New College, CA is a writer, film maker, and musician.
Cassidy has toured with his music all across North America, playing Carnegie Hall, The Tonight Show, and The Los Angeles Civic Auditorium, as well as dive bars and juke joints from Brooklyn to San Francisco. He has written for films and television and has worked with director Francis Ford Coppola and actor Danny Glover on feature film projects. He has also written and produced six films. His documentary Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs was nominated for an Emmy in 1997. Cassidy's prose and poetry have been published in The NY Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic Monthly, The NY Observer, Ireland's Hot Press magazine, and many other newspapers and scholarly journals in English and Irish. His book The Secret Language of Poker & The Pizzazz of Jazz was published by New College Press 2005. Daniel Cassidy was born in Brooklyn, NY, and lives with his wife Clare in San Francisco.
Daniel writes: "My Fathers family spoke Donegal (Irish dialect), which pronounces teas like Jass, or chass, or t'ass). My father was born in Brooklyn on March 2, 1913. The next day, March 3, 1913, teas spelled teas makes an appearance in print! Jazz appears in print 25 times in the month of March 1913, 24 times in Scoop's articles, and once in his fellow sports reporter Francis Mannix's column."
About Professor Cassidy's father, Daniel Patrick Cassidy PDF
JAZZ IS IRISH
21st Century Linguistic Rights
A people without a language of its own is only half a nation.
Western Historical Manuscript Collection |
CROSSROADS IRISH-AMERICAN FESTIVAL CELEBRATES PETER TAMONY
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ST. BRIDGID'S HOUSE OF FIRE |
PAGE 2 Crossroads Conference 3/8/06 Honoring the work of Scholar Peter Tamony and Linguistic Rights. |
