Everything about Jazz totally explained
Jazz is an
American musical art form which originated around the beginning of the 20th century in
African American communities in the
Southern United States from a confluence of
African and
European music traditions. The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of
blue notes,
call-and-response,
improvisation,
polyrhythms,
syncopation, and the
swung note of
ragtime.
From its early development until the present, jazz has also incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music, which is based on European music traditions. The word
jazz began as a West Coast slang term of uncertain derivation and was first used to refer to music in
Chicago in about 1915; for the origin and history, see
Jazz (word).
Jazz has, from its early 20th century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, from
New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s,
big band-style
swing from the 1930s and 1940s,
bebop from the mid-1940s, a variety of Latin-jazz fusions such as
Afro-Cuban and
Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s,
jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and later developments such as
acid jazz.
Origins
By 1808 the
Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million
Africans to the
United States. The slaves largely came from
West Africa and brought strong tribal musical traditions with them. Lavish festivals featuring African dances to drums were organized on Sundays at
Place Congo, or
Congo Square, in
New Orleans until 1843, as were similar gatherings in
New England and
New York. African music was largely functional, for work or ritual, and included
work songs and
field hollers. In the African tradition, they'd a single-line melody and a call-and-response pattern, but without the European concept of harmony. Rhythms reflected African speech patterns, and the African use of pentatonic scales led to
blue notes in blues and jazz.
In the early
19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the
violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own
cakewalk dances. In turn, European-American
minstrel show performers in
blackface popularized such music internationally, combining
syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted African-American cakewalk music, South American, Caribbean and other slave melodies as piano salon music. Another influence came from black slaves who had learned the harmonic style of
hymns and incorporated it into their own music as
spirituals. The
origins of the blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals.
Paul Oliver has drawn attention to similarities in instruments, music and social function to the
griots of the West African
savannah.
1890s–1910s
Ragtime
Emancipation of slaves led to new opportunities for education of freed African-Americans, but strict segregation meant limited employment opportunities. Black musicians provided "low-class" entertainment at dances,
minstrel shows, and in
vaudeville, and many marching bands formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs and brothels, and
ragtime developed.
Ragtime appeared as sheet music with the African American entertainer
Ernest Hogan's hit songs in 1895, and two years later
Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a
banjo solo "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer
William H. Krell published his "Mississippi Rag" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece. The classically-trained pianist
Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in the following year, then in 1899 had an international hit with "
Maple Leaf Rag." He wrote numerous popular rags combining syncopation, banjo figurations and sometimes call-and-response, which led to the ragtime idiom being taken up by classical composers including
Claude Debussy and
Igor Stravinsky.
Blues music was published and popularized by
W. C. Handy, whose "Memphis Blues" of 1912 and "
St. Louis Blues" of 1914 both became jazz standards.
New Orleans music
The
music of New Orleans had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. Many early jazz performers played in the brothels and bars of
red-light district around
Basin Street called "
Storyville." In addition, numerous marching bands played at lavish funerals arranged by the African American community. The instruments used in
marching bands and dance bands became the basic instruments of jazz: brass and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale and drums. Small bands of primarily self-taught African American musicians, many of whom came from the funeral-procession tradition of
New Orleans, played a seminal role in the development and dissemination of early jazz, traveling throughout Black communities in the Deep South and, from around 1914 on,
Afro-Creole and African American musicians playing in
vaudeville shows took jazz to western and northern US cities.
Afro-Creole pianist
Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville. From 1904, he toured with
vaudeville shows around southern cities, also playing in
Chicago and
New York. His "
Jelly Roll Blues," which he composed around 1905, was published in 1915 as the first jazz arrangement in print, introducing more musicians to the New Orleans style.
In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably
James Reese Europe's symphonic
Clef Club orchestra in
New York which played a benefit concert at
Carnegie Hall in 1912, and his "Society Orchestra" which in 1913 became the first black group to make recordings. The
Baltimore rag style of
Eubie Blake influenced
James P. Johnson's development of "
Stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline.
The
Original Dixieland Jass Band's "Livery Stable Blues" released early in 1917 is one of the early jazz records. That year numerous other bands made recordings featuring "jazz" in the title or band name, mostly ragtime or novelty records rather than jazz. In September 1917
W.C. Handy's Orchestra of Memphis recorded a cover version of "Livery Stable Blues". In February 1918
James Reese Europe's "Hellfighters" infantry band took ragtime to Europe during
World War I, then on return recorded Dixieland standards including "The Darktown Strutter's Ball". However, the main centre developing the new "Hot Jazz" was
Chicago, where
King Oliver joined
Bill Johnson. That year also saw the first recording by
Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers.
Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924. Also in 1924
Louis Armstrong joined the
Fletcher Henderson dance band as featured soloist for a year, then formed his virtuosic
Hot Five band, also popularising
scat singing.
Jelly Roll Morton recorded with the
New Orleans Rhythm Kings in an early mixed-race collaboration, then in 1926 formed his Red Hot Peppers.
There was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras, such as
Jean Goldkette's orchestra and
Paul Whiteman's orchestra. In 1924 Whiteman commissioned
Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue, which was premièred by Whiteman's Orchestra. Other influential large ensembles included
Fletcher Henderson's band,
Duke Ellington's band (which opened an influential residency at the
Cotton Club in 1927) in New York, and
Earl Hines's Band in Chicago (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe there in 1928). All significantly influenced the development of big band-style swing jazz.
Swing
The 1930s belonged to popular
swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers
Count Basie,
Cab Calloway,
Fletcher Henderson,
Earl Hines,
Duke Ellington,
Artie Shaw,
Tommy Dorsey,
Benny Goodman, and
Glenn Miller.
Swing was also dance music and it was broadcast on the radio 'live' coast-to-coast nightly across America for many years. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to 'solo' and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex and 'important' music. Included among the critically acclaimed leaders who specialized in live radio broadcasts of swing music as well as "Sweet Band" compositions during this era was
Shep Fields.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s,
Benny Goodman hired pianist
Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist
Lionel Hampton, and guitarist
Charlie Christian to join small groups. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or
jump blues used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on
boogie-woogie from the 1930s.
Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.
European jazz
Outside of the
United States the beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz emerged in
France with the
Quintette du Hot Club de France which began in 1934. Belgian guitar virtuoso
Django Reinhardt popularized
gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American
swing, French dance hall "
musette" and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel. The main instruments are steel stringed guitar,
violin, and
double bass. Solos pass from one player to another as the guitar and bass play the role of the
rhythm section. Some music researchers hold that it was Philadelphia's
Eddie Lang (guitar) and
Joe Venuti (violin) who pioneered the
gypsy jazz form, which was brought to France after they'd been heard live or on
Okeh Records in the late 1920s.
1940s and 1950s
Dixieland revival
In the late 1930s there was a revival of "
Dixieland" music, harkening back to the original contrapuntal New Orleans style. This was driven in large part by record company reissues of early jazz classics by the Oliver, Morton, and Armstrong bands of the 20s. There were two populations of musicians involved in the revival. One group consisted of men who had begun their careers playing in the traditional style, and were either returning to it, or continuing what they'd been playing all along. In the late 1930s,
Bob Crosby's Bobcats led this revival. Other prominent Dixieland revivalists included
Max Kaminsky,
Eddie Condon, and
Wild Bill Davison. Most of this group were originally midwesterners, although there were a small number of New Orleans musicians involved as well.
The second population of revivalists consisted of young musicians too young to have been involved in early jazz, but who now rejected the contemporary swing style of jazz. The
Lu Watters band was perhaps the most prominent of this second group. By the late 1940s, the revival was in full swing.
Louis Armstrong formed his Allstars band, which became a leading ensemble in the Dixieland revival. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz styles in the US, Europe, and Japan, although critics paid little attention.
Bebop
In the mid-1940s
bebop performers helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value. Influential bebop musicians included saxophonist
Charlie Parker, pianists
Bud Powell and
Thelonious Monk, trumpeters
Dizzy Gillespie and
Clifford Brown, bassist
Ray Brown, and drummer
Max Roach. (See also
List of bebop musicians).
Beboppers introduced new forms of
chromaticism and
dissonance into jazz and engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation which used "passing" chords,
substitute chords, and altered chords. The style of drumming shifted as well to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the
ride cymbal was used to keep time, while the snare and bass drum were used for unpredictable accents. These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and fellow musicians. By the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary.
Cool jazz
Cool jazz emerged in the late 1940s in
New York City, as a result of the mixture of the styles of predominantly white jazz musicians and black
bebop musicians. Cool jazz recordings by
Chet Baker,
Dave Brubeck,
Bill Evans,
Gil Evans,
Stan Getz and the
Modern Jazz Quartet usually have a "lighter" sound which avoided the aggressive tempos and harmonic abstraction of bebop. An important recording was
Miles Davis's
Birth of the Cool (tracks originally recorded in 1949 and 1950 and collected as an LP in 1957). Players such as pianist
Bill Evans began searching for new ways to structure their improvisations by exploring
modal music. Cool jazz later became strongly identified with the
West Coast jazz scene. Its influence stretches into such later developments as
Bossa Nova, modal jazz (especially in the form of Davis's
Kind of Blue 1959), and even free jazz (see also the
List of Cool jazz and West Coast jazz musicians).
Hard bop
Hard bop is an extension of
bebop (or "bop") music that incorporates influences from
rhythm and blues,
gospel music, and
blues, especially in the
saxophone and
piano playing. Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, partly in response to the vogue for
cool jazz in the early 1950s. The hard bop style coalesced in 1953 and 1954, paralleling the rise of rhythm and blues.
Miles Davis' performance of "
Walkin'," the title track of his
album of the same year, at the very first
Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, announced the style to the jazz world. The quintet
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, fronted by
Blakey and featuring pianist
Horace Silver and trumpeter
Clifford Brown, were leaders in the hard bop movement along with Davis. (See also
List of Hard bop musicians)
Free jazz
Free jazz and the related form of
avant-garde jazz, are subgenres rooted in
bebop, that use less compositional material and allow performers more latitude. Free jazz uses implied or loose
harmony and
tempo, which was deemed controversial when this approach was first developed. The bassist
Charles Mingus is also frequently associated with the avant-garde in jazz, although his compositions draw off a myriad of styles and genres. The first major stirrings came in the 1950s, with the early work of
Ornette Coleman and
Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, performers included
John Coltrane,
Archie Shepp,
Sun Ra,
Albert Ayler,
Pharoah Sanders, and others. Free jazz quickly found a foothold in Europe, also in part because musicians such as Ayler, Taylor,
Steve Lacy and
Eric Dolphy spent extended periods in Europe.
Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from
criticism by
traditionalists in recent years.
1960s and 1970s
Latin jazz
Latin jazz has two main varieties:
Afro-Cuban and
Brazilian jazz.
Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the U.S. directly after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s. Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-1950s as
bebop musicians such as
Dizzy Gillespie and
Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as
Xavier Cugat,
Tito Puente, and
Arturo Sandoval.
Brazilian jazz such as
bossa nova is derived from
samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English. The style was pioneered by Brazilians
João Gilberto,
Antônio Carlos Jobim,
Vinícius de Moraes, among others. The related term jazz-samba describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as
Stan Getz and
Charlie Byrd.
Soul jazz
Soul jazz was a development of
hard bop which incorporated strong influences from
blues,
gospel and
rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often the
organ trio which featured the
Hammond organ. Unlike
hard bop, soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive grooves and melodic hooks, and
improvisations were often less complex than in other jazz styles.
Horace Silver had a large influence on the soul jazz style, with his songs that used funky and often
gospel-based piano vamps. Important soul jazz organists included
Jimmy McGriff and
Jimmy Smith and
Johnny Hammond Smith, and influential tenor
saxophone players included
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and
Stanley Turrentine. (See also
List of soul-jazz musicians.)
Jazz fusion
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the hybrid form of jazz-rock
fusion was developed. Although jazz purists protested the blend of jazz and rock, some of jazz's significant innovators crossed over from the contemporary hardbop scene into fusion. Jazz fusion music often uses mixed meters, odd time signatures, syncopation, and complex chords and harmonies, and fusion includes a number of electric instruments, such as the electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano, and synthesizer keyboards. Notable performers of jazz fusion included
Miles Davis, keyboardists
Chick Corea and
Herbie Hancock, drummer
Tony Williams, guitarists
Larry Coryell and
John McLaughlin,
Frank Zappa, saxophonist
Wayne Shorter, and bassist-composer
Jaco Pastorius.
1970s trends
There was a resurgence of interest in jazz and other forms of African American cultural expression during the
Black Arts Movement and
Black nationalist period of the early 1970s. Musicians such as
Pharoah Sanders,
Hubert Laws and
Wayne Shorter began using
kalimbas, cowbells, beaded gourds and other instruments not traditional to jazz.
Alice Coltrane drew notice as a jazz
harpist,
Jean-Luc Ponty as a jazz violinist, and
Rufus Harley as a bagpipe player. Jazz continued to expand and change, influenced by other types of music, such as
world music,
avant garde classical music, and rock and pop music. Guitarist
John McLaughlin's
Mahavishnu Orchestra played a mix of rock and jazz infused with
East Indian influences. The
ECM record label began in the 1970s with artists including
Keith Jarrett,
Paul Bley, the
Pat Metheny Group,
Jan Garbarek,
Ralph Towner, and
Eberhard Weber, establishing a new chamber-music aesthetic, featuring mainly acoustic instruments, and incorporating elements of
world music and
folk music.
1980s–2000s
In the 1980s, the jazz community shrank dramatically and split. A mainly older audience retained an interest in traditional and "straight-ahead" jazz styles.
Wynton Marsalis strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as
Louis Armstrong and
Duke Ellington.
Pop fusion and other subgenres
In the early 1980s, a lighter commercial form of jazz fusion called pop fusion or "
smooth jazz" became successful and garnered significant radio airplay. Smooth jazz saxophonists include
Grover Washington, Jr.,
Kenny G and
Najee. Smooth jazz received frequent airplay with more straight-ahead jazz in
quiet storm time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.S., helping to establish or bolster the careers of vocalists including
Al Jarreau,
Anita Baker,
Chaka Khan, and
Sade.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, several subgenres fused jazz with popular music, such as
Acid jazz,
nu jazz, and
jazz rap. Acid jazz and nu jazz combined elements of jazz and modern forms of
electronic dance music. While
nu jazz is influenced by jazz harmony and melodies, there are usually no improvisational aspects.
Jazz rap fused jazz and hip-hop.
Gang Starr recorded "Words I Manifest," "Jazz Music," and "Jazz Thing", sampling
Charlie Parker and
Ramsey Lewis, and collaborating with
Branford Marsalis and
Terence Blanchard. Beginning in 1993, rapper
Guru's
Jazzmatazz series used jazz musicians during the studio recordings.
Experimental and straight-ahead performers
The more experimental and improvisational end of the spectrum includes Norwegian pianist
Bugge Wesseltoft and American bassist
Christian McBride. Toward the more pop or dance music end of the spectrum are
St Germain who incorporates some live jazz playing with
house beats.
Radiohead,
Björk, and
Portishead have also incorporated jazz influences into their music.
In the 2000s, straight-ahead jazz continues to appeal to a core of listeners. Well-established jazz musicians whose careers span decades, such as
Chick Corea,
Jack DeJohnette,
Bill Frisell,
Charlie Haden,
Herbie Hancock,
Roy Haynes,
Keith Jarrett,
Wynton Marsalis,
John McLaughlin,
Pat Metheny,
Paquito D'Rivera,
Sonny Rollins,
John Scofield,
Wayne Shorter,
John Surman,
Stan Tracey and
Jessica Williams continue to perform and record.
In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of young, emerging performers gained national and international notability by winning major awards or by recording albums on major labels. Emerging pianists include a US pianist
Brad Mehldau (born
1970), who records for
Nonesuch Records, and US pianist
Jason Moran (born
1975), who won several
Down Beat magazine critics polls in 2003 and 2004. Other emerging artists include US guitarist
Kurt Rosenwinkel (born
1970), who won the
1995 Composer's Award from the
National Endowment for the Arts and was signed by
Verve Records; US vibraphonist
Stefon Harris, who is written up in the
Penguin Guide to Jazz and who has been reviewed by
The New York Times; US trumpeter
Roy Hargrove (born
1969);
Vijay Iyer,
Chris Potter,
Joshua Redman, and
Terence Blanchard.
Definition
As the term "jazz" has long been used for a wide variety of styles, a comprehensive definition including all varieties is elusive. While some enthusiasts of certain types of jazz have argued for narrower definitions which exclude many other types of music also commonly known as "jazz", jazz musicians themselves are often reluctant to define the music they play.
Duke Ellington summed it up by saying, "It's all music." Some critics have even stated that Ellington's music wasn't in fact jazz, as by its very definition, according to them, jazz can't be orchestrated. On the other hand Ellington's friend
Earl Hines' s 20 solo "transformative versions" of Ellington compositions (on
Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington recorded in the 1970s) were described by Ben Ratliff, the
New York Times jazz critic, as "as good an example of the jazz process as anything out there."
There have long been debates in the jazz community over the definition and the boundaries of “jazz.” In the mid-1930s, New Orleans jazz lovers criticized the "innovations" of the swing era as being contrary to the collective improvisation they saw as essential to "true" jazz. Through the 1940s, '50s and '60s, traditional jazz enthusiasts and Bop enthusiasts criticized each other, often arguing that the other style was somehow not "real" jazz. Although alteration or transformation of jazz by new influences has often been initially criticized as a “debasement,” Andrew Gilbert argues that jazz has the “ability to absorb and transform influences” from diverse musical styles.
Commercially-oriented or 'popular' music-influenced forms of jazz have both long been criticized, at least since the emergence of Bop. Traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed Bop, the 1970s jazz fusion era [andmuch else] as a period of commercial debasement of the music. However, according to Bruce Johnson, jazz music has always had a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form" .
Gilbert notes that as the notion of a canon of jazz is developing, the “achievements of the past” may be become "…privileged over the idiosyncratic creativity...” and innovation of current artists. Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins argues that as the creation and dissemination of jazz is becoming increasingly institutionalized and dominated by major entertainment firms, jazz is facing a "...perilous future of respectability and disinterested acceptance." David Ake warns that the creation of “norms” in jazz and the establishment of a “jazz tradition” may exclude or sideline other newer, avant-garde forms of jazz
In New Orleans and
Dixieland jazz, performers took turns playing the melody, while others improvised countermelodies. By the
swing era,
big bands were coming to rely more on arranged music:
arrangements were either
written or learned by ear and memorized - many early jazz performers couldn't read music. Individual soloists would improvise within these arrangements. Later, in
bebop the focus shifted back towards small groups and minimal arrangements; the melody (known as the "head") would be stated briefly at the start and end of a piece but the core of the performance would be the series of improvisations in the middle.
Later styles of jazz such as
modal jazz abandoned the strict notion of a chord progression, allowing the individual musicians to improvise even more freely within the context of a given scale or mode. The
avant-garde and
free jazz idioms permit, even call for, abandoning chords, scales, and rhythmic meters.
Samples
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