While not strictly speaking, Folk songs, as we would term them, Itinerant Gypsy bands, often performing at Carnivals- had an improvisational music using zithers, marimba-llike instruments, even a form of Steel Guitar to whang out a fast-paced beat that was, independently of New Orleans, an early form of Jazz. They did not call it Jazz, but it was very similar. the subject is even alluded to in a biography of the Empress Elisabeth! ( l837-l898) The Empress was quite fond of the Gypsy Carnival type of music, and from the description it does sound like Progressive Jazz. ( perhaps a measurable ancestor of, say ( The Cream) with a screaming bowed steel guitar). I can imagine it was Hot!

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