A spasm band is a musical group that plays a variety of Dixieland

Dixieland

Dixieland music, sometimes referred to as Hot jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s.Well-known jazz standard songs from the...

, trad jazz

Trad jazz

Trad jazz - short for "traditional jazz" - refers to the Dixieland and Ragtime jazz styles of the early 20th century in contrast to any more modern style....

, jug band

Jug band

A Jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of traditional and home-made instruments. These home-made instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making of sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, stovepipe and comb & tissue paper...

, or skiffle

Skiffle

Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...

 music.

The first spasm bands were formed on the streets of New Orleans in the late nineteenth century. The term "spasm" applied to any band (often made up of children) who made musical instruments out of found objects not usually employed for such.

The earliest band to play under the name "spasm band" in New Orleans was formed in 1895, known informally as "Stale Bread's Spasm Band" and billed as the "Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band

Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band (jazz)

The Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band was an early New Orleans band regarded by some as the first Jazz band. The band was a group of young street urchins led by Emile "Stalebread Charlie" Lacoume...

" at semi-professional engagements, such as outside the West End Opera House. They played, amongst other things, a length of gas pipe, a kettle and a fiddle made from a cigar box

Cigar box guitar

The cigar box guitar is a primitive chordophone that uses an empty cigar box for a resonator. "Guitar" refers to the traditional instrument and to a string bass. The earliest predecessors had one or two strings compared with the three or more used in today's models...

. The spasm band style was one ingredient in the development of instrumental New Orleans jazz. Contemporaries report that the style was imitated by adult orchestras such as the Right At 'Em Razz Band, which featured future Original Dixieland Jass Band

Original Dixieland Jass Band

The Original Dixieland Jass Band were a New Orleans, Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz single ever issued. The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being Tiger Rag...

 clarinetist Alcide Nunez

Alcide Nunez

Alcide Patrick Nunez was an early United States jazz clarinetist. Also known as Yellow Nunez and Al Nunez, he was born in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana of an Isleño family and moved to New Orleans in his childhood.He initially played guitar, then switched to clarinet about 1902...

.

The term "spasm band" has been revived by jazz groups the Barnstormers Spasm Band

Barnstormers Spasm Band

The Barnstormers Spasm Band, also known as the Original Barnstormers Spasm Band, were a jazz band active from 1956 to 1961. The band was almost unique in remaining a semi-professional group for the entire duration of their existence.- History :...

, The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band

The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band

The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band is a seven-piece jazz band based in Oxford, England. The band play original material influenced by 1920s and 1930s jazz and 1940s jump blues alongside classics and standards. The band has been cited for its "extraordinary enthusiasm" and "pulling in fans who...

, The End Times Spasm Band, and Anthony Joseph

Anthony Joseph

Anthony Joseph is a British poet, novelist, musician and lecturer.Joseph was born in Trinidad and was raised by his grandparents. He began writing as a young child and cites his main influences as the Calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the...

 and The Spasm Band

The Spasm Band

Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band is a band led by Trinidadian poet, novelist and lecturer Anthony Joseph. The band was formed in London in 2005 as an offshoot of his then novel-in-progress The African Origins of UFOs...

. The term was also adopted by noise

Noise music

Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...

 group The Nihilist Spasm Band as well as avant garde jazz group The VelvetSpasm Band.