Encyclopedia
Jazz is an original American
musical art form originating around the start of the
20th century in
New Orleans, rooted in
African American musical styles blended with
Western music technique and theory. Jazz uses blue notes,
syncopation, swing, call and response,
polyrhythms, and improvisation.
Overview
Jazz has roots in the combination of Western and
African music traditions, including spirituals,
blues and
ragtime, stemming from
West Africa, western
Sahel, and
New England's religious hymns,
hillbilly music, and
European military band music. After originating in African American communities near the beginning of the
20th century, jazz styles spread in the
1920s, influencing other musical styles. The origins of word
jazz are uncertain. The word is rooted in American slang, and various derivations have been suggested.
Jazz is rooted in the blues, the folk music of former
enslaved Africans in the
U.S. South and their descendants, which is influenced by West African cultural and musical traditions that evolved as black musicians migrated to the cities. Jazz musician
Wynton Marsalis states that "Jazz is something Negroes invented...the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping.
The instruments used in marching bands and dance band music at the turn of century became the basic instruments of jazz: brass, reeds, and drums, using the Western 12-tone scale. A "...black musical spirit was bursting out of the confines of
European musical tradition [of the marching bands], even though the performers were using European styled instruments.
Small bands of Black musicians which led
funeral processions in
New Orleans played a seminal role in the articulation and dissemination of early jazz, traveling throughout black communities in the Deep South and to northern cities. This early proto-jazz music was done primarily by self-taught musicians.
The
postbellum network of black-established schools, as well as civic societies and widening mainstream opportunities for education, produced more formally trained African-American musicians. Lorenzo Tio and Scott Joplin were schooled in classical European musical forms. Joplin, the son of a former slave and a free-born woman of color, was largely self-taught until age 11, when he received lessons in the fundamentals of music theory. Black musicians with formal music skills helped to preserve and disseminate the essentially improvisational musical styles of jazz.
History
1800s
African American music traditions had already been a part of mainstream popular music in the United States for generations, going back to the 19th century
minstrel show tunes and the melodies of
Stephen Foster. Public dance halls, clubs, and tea rooms opened in the cities. Black dances inspired by African dance moves, like the shimmy, turkey trot, buzzard lope, chicken scratch, monkey glide, and the bunny hug eventually were adopted by a white public.
The
cake walk, developed by slaves as a send-up of formal dress balls, became popular. White audiences saw these dances in
vaudeville shows. The popular dance music of the time were blues-ragtime styles. Tin Pan Alley composers like
Irving Berlin incorporated ragtime influences into their compositions.
1910s
Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz
Main article: DixielandA number of regional styles contributed to the development of jazz. In
New Orleans, Louisiana area an early style of jazz called "
Dixieland" jazz developed. New Orleans had long been a regional music center. In addition to the slave population, New Orleans also had North America's largest community of free people of color. The New Orleans style used more intricate rhythmic improvisation than ragtime, and incorporated "blues" style elementes including "bent" and "blue" notes, and using the European instruments in novel ways.
Key figures in the development of the new style were trumpeter
Buddy Bolden and his band, who arranged blues tunes for brass instruments and improvised; Freddie Keppard, a Creole who was influenced by Bolden; Joe Oliver, whose style was more bluesier than Bolden's; Kid Ory, a trombonist who refined the style; and
Papa Jack Laine, who led a multi-ethnic band.
Other regional styles
Meanwhile, other regional styles were developing which would influence the development of jazz.
- In 1891 African-American minister Rev. Daniel J. Jenkins of Charleston, South Carolina established the Jenkins Orphanage. Orphanage bands were trained to perform popular and religious music; members such as William "Cat" Anderson, Gus Aitken, and Jabbo Smith went on to play with jazz bandleaders like Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie.
- In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime developed, characterized by rollicking rhythms, without the bluesy influence of the southern styles. The solo piano version of the northeast style was typified by Eubie Blake. James P. Johnson developed "stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline. Johnson influenced later pianists like Fats Waller and Willie Smith. James Reese Europe was a prominent orchestra leaded. Tim Brymn performed with a northeastern "hot" style.
- In Chicago in the early 1910s, saxophones vigorously "ragged" a melody over a dance band rhythm section, blending New Orleans styles and creating a new "Chicago Jazz" sound.
- Along the Mississippi from Memphis, Tennessee to St. Louis, Missouri, the "Father of the Blues," W.C. Handy
...
popularized a less improvisation-based approach, in which improvisation was limited to short "fills" between phrases.
1920s
With
Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages, speakeasies emerged as nightlife settings, and many early jazz artists played in them. The inventions of the
phonograph record and of
radio helped the proliferation of jazz as well. Radio stations helped to popularize Jazz, which became associated with sophistication and decadence that helped to earn the era the nickname of the "Jazz Age." In the early
1920s, popular music was still a mixture of things: current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes.
Key figures of the decade
Paul Whiteman was a popular bandleader of the 1920s who hired Bix Beiderbecke and other white jazz musicians and combined jazz with elaborate orchestrations. Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra. Ted Lewis was another popular bandleader. Some of the other bandleaders included: Harry Reser, Leo Reisman, Abe Lyman, Nat Shilkret, George Olsen, Ben Bernie, Bob Haring, Ben Selvin, Earl Burtnett, Gus Arnheim,
Rudy Vallee,
Jean Goldkette,
Isham Jones,
Roger Wolfe Kahn, Sam Lanin,
Vincent Lopez, Ben Pollack and Fred Waring.
Influential 1920s Performers
- King Oliver's band played in the New Orleans hot ensemble jazz style.
- King Oliver's protégé, Louis Armstrong, had a major influence on the development of jazz, with his extensive improvisations and scat singing.
- Sidney Bechet brought the saxophone to prominence.
- Bix Beiderbecke was a white, non-New Orleanian whose legato phrasing brought the influence of classical romanticism to jazz.
- Fletcher Henderson's arrangements influenced the Big Band style in the following decade.
- Pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington's band made many recordings and radio broadcasts. Today he is regarded as one of the most important composers in jazz history.
1930s
Big bands
While the solo became more important in jazz, popular bands became larger in size. The
Big bands such as
Benny Goodman's Orchestra were highly jazz oriented, while others left less space for improvisation. Key figures in developing the big jazz band were arrangers and bandleaders Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman and
Duke Ellington.
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, vibraharpist
Lionel Hampton, and guitarist
Charlie Christian to join small groups. During this period, swing and
big band music were very popular.
The influence of Louis Armstrong can be seen in bandleaders like
Cab Calloway, trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie, and vocalists like
Bing Crosby, who were influenced by Armstrong's style of improvising. The sytle further spread to vocalists such as
Ella Fitzgerald and
Billie Holiday; later,
Frank Sinatra and
Sarah Vaughan, among others, would jump on the scat bandwagon.
An early
1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump music used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the
1930s, with the rhythm section playing "eight to the bar," .
Big Joe Turner became a boogie-woogie star in the
1940s, and then in the
1950s was an early rock and roll musician. .
Kansas City Jazz
Main article: Kansas City JazzKansas City Jazz in the 1930's marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.
Tom Pendergast encouraged the development of night clubs featuring musical improvisation. In 1936, the Kansas city era waned when producer John H. Hammond began sending Kansas City acts to
New York City.
1940s
Bebop
In the
1940s with bebop performers such as saxophonist
Charlie Parker , pianist
Bud Powell and trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie helped to shift jazz from danceable
pop music to more challenging "musician's music." Other bop musicians included pianist
Thelonious Monk, drummer Kenny Clarke, saxophonist
Coleman Hawkins, trumpeters
Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, saxophonists Wardell Gray,
Sonny Stitt, bassist Ray Brown, drummer
Max RoachBop musicians valued complex improvisations based on chord progressions over a sophisticated harmonic vocabulary. Hard bop of the late
1950s used rootless voicings where the tonic or "root" is not included), and an increased use of extensions, non-diatonic notes such as the
tritone , and stacked chords — for instance, playing a E-flat major triad against a C7, making it a C7#9.
1950s
Free jazz and avant-garde jazz
Main articles: Free jazz, Avant-garde jazz
Free jazz and avant-garde jazz, are two partially overlapping subgenres that, while rooted in bebop, typically 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. Avant-garde jazz has more "rules" than free jazz, in that performances being partly composed, but the improvised parts are almost as free as in free jazz.
Early performers of these styles go back as early as the late 40s and early 50s with Lennie Tristano's Crosscurrents and Descent into the Maelstrom credited as being precursors to the movement. Free and avant-garde jazz started to gain popularity in the 1950s with
Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. In the
1960s, performers included
John Coltrane,
Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler,
Sun Ra, Makanda Ken McIntyre,
Pharoah Sanders, Sam Rivers, Leroy Jenkins, Don Pullen,
Dewey Redman and others. Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, William Parker,
Derek Bailey and Evan Parker are leading contemporary free jazz musicians, and musicians such as Coleman, Taylor and Sanders continue to play in this style.
Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from criticism by
traditionalists in recent years.
1960s
Latin jazz
Main article: Latin jazz
Latin jazz has two 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 and 1970s.
Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-'50s. Notable bebop musicians such as
Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands at that time. Gillespie's work was mostly with big bands of this genre. The music was influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as
Tito Puente, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo, and, much later,
Arturo Sandoval.
Brazilian jazz is synonymous with
bossa nova, a Brazilian popular style which is derived from samba with influences from jazz as well as other 20th-century classical and popular music. Bossa is generally slow, played around 80 beats per minute, straight eighths, rather than swing eighths, and difficult polyrhythms. The best-known bossa nova compositions have become jazz standards.
The related term jazz-samba essentially describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as
Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, and usually played at 120 beats per minute or faster. Samba itself is actually not jazz but, being derived from older Afro-Brazilian music, it shares some common characteristics.
Jazz fusion
Main article: Jazz fusion In the late
1960s, the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed. Notable artists of the late 1960s and
1970s jazz and fusion scene include:
Miles Davis, who recorded the fusion albums
In a Silent Way and
Bitches Brew is an album recorded by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis [i] in 1969.
...
in 1968 and 1969,
Chick Corea and his
Return to Forever band, ex- Miles Davis drummer prodigy Tony Williams's Lifetime with
Allan Holdsworth and Larry Young among others,
Herbie Hancock and his
Headhunters band, guitarist
Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House, John McLaughlin and the
Mahavishnu Orchestra,
Frank Zappa,
Al Di Meola,
Jean-Luc Ponty,
Sun Ra,
Soft Machine, Narada Michael Walden,
Wayne Shorter,
Jaco Pastorius, the Pat Metheny Group and
Weather Report. Some of artists have continued to develop the genre into the 2000s.
1970s
The stylistic diversity of jazz has shown no sign of diminishing, absorbing influences from such disparate sources as
world music, avant garde classical music, and a range of rock and pop musics.
Beginning in the
1970s with such artists as
Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, the
Pat Metheny Group,
Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, and Eberhard Weber, the ECM record label established a new chamber-music aesthetic, featuring mainly acoustic instruments, and incorporating elements of
world music and
folk music. This is sometimes referred to as "European" or "Nordic" jazz, despite some of the leading players being American.
1980s
The jazz community has shrunk dramatically and split, with a mainly older audience retaining an interest in traditional and "straight-ahead" jazz styles, a small core of practitioners and fans interested in highly experimental modern jazz, and a constantly changing group of musicians fusing jazz idioms with contemporary popular music genres.
There have been other developments in the
1980s and
1990s that were less commercially oriented. Many of these artists, notably
Wynton Marsalis, called what they were doing jazz and in fact strove to define what the term actually meant. They sought to create within what they felt was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as
Louis Armstrong and
Duke Ellington. In the case of Marsalis these efforts met with critical acclaim.
Others musicians in this time period - although clearly within the tradition of the great spontaneous composers such as
Charlie Parker,
John Coltrane, Fats Navarro and many others – choose to distance themselves from the term jazz and simply define what they were doing as music .
Acid Jazz and Nu Jazz
Styles as
acid jazz which contains elements of 1970s
disco, acid swing which combines 1940s style big-band sounds with faster, more aggressive rock-influenced drums and electric guitar, and nu jazz which combines elements of jazz and modern forms of electronic dance music.
Exponents of the "
acid jazz" style which was initially
UK-based included the
Brand New Heavies,
Jamiroquai,
James Taylor Quartet, Young Disciples, and Corduroy. In the
United States, acid jazz groups included the Groove Collective,
Soulive, and Solsonics. In a more pop or smooth jazz context, jazz enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s with such bands as Pigbag and
Curiosity Killed the Cat achieving chart hits in Britain.
Sade Adu became the definitive voice of smooth jazz.
Funk-based improvisation
Jean-Paul Bourelly and M-Base argue that rhythm is the key for further progress in the music; they believe that the rhythmic innovations of
James Brown and other
Funk pioneers can provide an effective rhythmic base for spontaneous composition.
These musicians playing over a
funk groove and extend the rhythmic ideas in a way analogous to what had been done with harmony in previous decades, an approach M-Base calls Rhythmic Harmony.
Wynton Marsalis has disagreed with the use of funk as a musical genre for jazz improvisation, preferring instead to retain the rhythmic base of swing.
Jazz rap
The late 80's saw a development of a fusion between jazz and hip-hop, called Jazz rap. Though some claim the proto-hip hop, jazzy poet
Gil Scott-Heron the beginning of jazz rap, the genre arose in 1988 with the release of the debut singles by
Gang Starr and
Stetsasonic . One year later, Gang Starr's debut LP,
No More Mr. Nice Guy and their work on the soundtrack to
Mo' Better Blues is a 1990 [i] drama film [i] starring Denzel Washington [i], Wesley Snipes [i], and...
, and
De La Soul's debut
3 Feet High and Rising have proven remarkably influential in the genre's development. De La Soul's cohorts in the Native Tongues Posse also released important jazzy albums, including the
Jungle Brothers' debut
Straight Out the Jungle and
A Tribe Called Quest's debut,
People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is the debut alternative hip hop [i] album by A Tribe Called Quest [i] ...
.
1990s
Electronica
With the rise in popularity of various forms of electronic music during the late
1980s and
1990s, some artists have attempted a fusion of jazz with more of the experimental leanings of electronica with various degrees of success. This has been variously dubbed "future jazz", "jazz-house" or "nu jazz".
The more experimental and improvisional end of the spectrum includes Scandinavia-based artists such as pianist
Bugge Wesseltoft, trumpeter
Nils Petter Molvær , and the trio Wibutee, all of whom have gained their chops as instrumentalists in their own right in more traditional jazz circles.
The Cinematic Orchestra from the UK or Julien Lourau from France have also gained praise in this area. Toward the more pop or pure dance music end of the spectrum of nu jazz are such proponents as St Germain and Jazzanova, who incorporate some live jazz playing with more metronomic house beats.
2000s
In the
2000s, "jazz" hit the pop charts and blended with contemporary Urban music through the work of artists like
Norah Jones, Jill Scott,
Jamie Cullum,
Erykah Badu,
Amy Winehouse and
Diana Krall and the jazz advocacy of performers who are also music educators . A debate has arisen as to whether the music of these performers can be called jazz or not .
Improvisation
Jazz is often difficult to define, but improvisation is a key element of the form. Improvisation has been since early times an essential element in African and African-American music and is closely related to the use of call and response in West African and African-American cultural expression.
The form of improvisation has changed over time. Early folk
blues music often was based around a call and response pattern, and improvisation would factor into the lyrics, the melody, or both.
In the Dixieland style, musicians taking turns playing the melody while the others improvise countermelodies. In contrast to the classical form, where performers tries to play the piece exactly as the author envisioned it, the goal in jazz is to create a new interpretation, changing the melody, harmonies, even the time signature. If classical music is the composer's medium, jazz belongs to the performer. On the other hand, rhythmic elements are strictly controlled. The leader sets the tempo, often by snapping fingers or counting off "one, two, three, four." Many jazz performances contain no variation in the basic tempo -- there is no room for rubato.
By the Swing era,
big bands played using arranged
sheet music, but individual soloists would perform improvised solos within these compositions. In bebop, however, the focus shifted from arranging to improvisation over the form; musicians paid less attention to the composed melody, or "head," which was played at the beginning and the end of the tune's performance.
As previously noted, later styles of jazz, such as modal jazz, abandoned the strict notion of a chord progression, allowing the individual musicians to improvise more freely within the context of a given scale or mode . The avant-garde and free jazz idioms permit, even call for, rhythmic variety as well.
When a pianist, guitarist or other chord-playing instrumentalist improvises an accompaniment while a soloist is playing, it is called
comping . "Vamping" is a mode of comping that is usually restricted to a few repeating chords or bars, as opposed to comping on the chord structure of the entire composition. Most often, vamping is used as a simple way to extend the very beginning or end of a piece, or to set up a segue.
In some modern jazz compositions where the underlying chords of the composition are particularly complex or fast moving, the composer or performer may create a set of "blowing changes," which is a simplfied set of chords better suited for comping and solo improvisation.
Debates over definition of "jazz"
There have long been debates in the jazz community over the boundaries or definition of “jazz”. In the mid-1930s, New Orleans jazz lovers criticized the "radical innovations" of the swing era. In the 1950s and 1960s, traditional jazz enthusiasts harshly criticized Hard Bop. Although alteration or transformation of jazz by new influences has been initially criticized as “radical” or 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 are have long been criticized. Traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed the 1970s jazz fusion era as a period of commercial debasement. 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 traditional 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 jazzway to get around the definitional problems is to define the term “jazz” more broadly. According to Krin Gabbard “jazz is a construct” or category that, while artificial, still is a useful to designate “a number of musics with enough in common part of a coherent tradition”. Travis Jackson also definites jazz in a broader way by stating that it is music that includes qualities such as “ 'swinging', improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being 'open' to different musical possibilities”e to draw the boundaries of "jazz" is the subject of debate among music critics, scholars, and fans.
For example:
- Music that is a mixture of jazz and pop music, such as the recent albums of Jamie Cullum, is sometimes called "jazz".
- James Blunt and Joss Stone have been called "jazz" performers by radio DJ's, and record label promoters.
- Jazz festivals are increasingly programming a wide range of genres, including world beat music, folk, electronica, and hip-hop. This trend may lead to the perception that all of the performers at a festival are jazz artists – including artists from non-jazz genres.
See also
Sources
- Burns, Ken & Geoffrey C. Ward. Jazz - A History of America's Music. Alfred A. Knopf, NY USA. 2000. or: The Jazz Film Project, Inc.
- Porter, Eric. What is this thing called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists. University of California Press, Ltd. London, England. 2002.
- Szwed, John F. Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz.
- The History of Jazz. Thomson-Gale Books.
- Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930. Oxford University Press, Inc.
References
External links
- Music History and Education
- Evolution of Jazz Styles
- - NVR's New Film & Discussion Educational Program
