In Congo Square, New Orleans circa 1810

"All that New Orleans is - is a result of Congo Square" -- Tommye Myrick, Assistant Director of the Center for African and African American Studies at Southern University at New Orleans

In 1804, Fort St. Ferdinand, one of the forts that protected the city, was demolished. This left open space and most of the land was incorporated into the City Commons. In this area, there was also a square of land referred to as Circus Place, also known as Congo Square. It was popular even before 1800 as a place where slaves gathered on Sunday. There was a law stating that "slaves must be free to enjoy Sundays, or they were to be paid fifty cents a day if they worked." By 1817, a city ordinance allowed slaves to assemble only for the purpose of games and dances, funerals, or worship. This was only tolerated on Sundays and only in open public places appointed by the mayor. The use of the area declined in the 1840s. (from http://www.bestofneworleans.com/article))

Below from a historical article and engraving published in 1886:

"The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering.....and brought their owners, male and female, trooping from all quarters. The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other. One was large, the other much smaller. The tight skin heads were not held up to be struck; the drums were laid along on the turf and the drummers bestrode them, and beat them on the head madly with fingers, fists, and feet, with slow vehemence on the great drum, and fiercely and rapidly on the small one......

One important instrument was a gourd partly filled with pebbles or grains of corn, flourished violently at the end of a stout staff with one hand and beaten upon the palm of the other. Other performers rang triangles, and others twanged from jews-harps an astonishing amount of sound. Another instrument was the jawbone of some ox, horse, or mule, and a key rattled rhythmically along....But the grand instrument at last, the first violin, as one might say, was the banjo. It had but four strings, not six ....It is not the favorite musical instrument of the negroes of the Southern States of America. ... that is the fiddle; but for the true African dance, a dance not so much of legs and feet as of the upper half of the body, a sensual, devilish thing tolerated only by Latin-American masters, there was wanted the dark inspiration of African drums and the banjos thrump and strum...

And yet there was entertaining variety. Where? In the dance! There was constant, exhilarating novelty endless invention in the turning, bowing, arm-swinging, posturing and leaping of the dancers. Moreover, the music of Congo Plains was not tamed to mere monotone. Monotone became subordinate to many striking qualities. The strain was wild. Its contact with French taste gave it often great tenderness of sentiment. It grew in fervor, and rose and sank, and rose again, with the play of emotion in the singers and dancers...

Among these bossals that is, native Africans there was, of course, an ever-growing number of negroes who proudly called themselves Creole negro, that is, born in America ..."

Photos of Congo Square in 1900 and recent (pre-Katrina ):
http://www.nps.gov/jazz/article