Congo Square is arguably where jazz and blues music began. It was once an open space where Indians and Creoles would paly raquette, which was a ball game. Also, bullfights, cockfights, and dogfights were also held there. However, the most famous event that took place in Congo Square was the Sunday dance of the slaves. No one knows when black dances started in Congo Square, bu they lasted in to the 1880's. From 1800 to 1810 many West Indians moved to New Orleans and brought with them Voodoo, which inclueded secret ceremonies and dances. Due to these sacred ceremonies, whites were fearful of slave meetings as the belief in Voodoo spread among the slaves. The fear of whites led to the New Orleans City Council to designate Congo Square as the meeting place for slaves to dance on Sundays, in 1817. Now slaves could be kept under surveillance for any signs of rebellion against the whites.

The African drum, which was prohibited in most parts of the United States, reemerged in Congo Square. Other instruments included the calabash or gourd rattle, the triangle, an animal jawbone scraped by a stick or metal object, and a banjo.

The dances performed in Congo Square included large groups of slaves sometimes as large as 500 to 600 slaves. Many of the dances included circle type dancing, where people would enter and exit from the center of the ring. One of the more famous dances was the Bamboula. The smaller of the two drums was used for this dance and was called the banboula or baboula, maybe giving the dance its name. Along with the drums was clapping from the surrounding cirle and a call and response type of singing. This dance was one of savagery and wildness, with furious and frantic moves. The Bamboula was characterized by more group movement, as well.

Perhaps more famous than the Bamboula, was The Calenda. The Calenda was a favorite dance of all the West Indies. The dance is described as "a dance of multitude, a sort of vehement cotillion. The contortions of the encirling crowd were strange and terrible, the din was hideous." Onter dances connected with Congo Square were the Babouille, the Cata, the Counjaille, the Voudou, and the Congo.

In 1823 a visiting Protestant minister named Flint recorded this description of Congo Square: "The great Congo-dance is performed. Everything is license and revelry. Some hundreds of negroes, male and female, follow the king of the wake....All the characters that follow him, of leading estimation, have their peculiar dress, and their own contortions. They dance, and their streamers fly, and the bells that they have hung about them tinkle. Never will you see gayer countenances, demonstrations of more forgetfulness of the past and the future, and more entire abandonment to the joyous existence of the present moment."