Jazz is a musical art form which originated at 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, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note.[1]
From its early development until the present, jazz has also incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music.[2] 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 late 1980s developments such as acid jazz, which blended jazz influences into funk and hip-hop. As the music has spread around the world it has drawn on local national and regional musical cultures, its aesthetics being adapted to its varied environments and giving rise to many distinctive styles.
Definition
Jazz can be hard to define because it spans from Ragtime waltzes to 2000s-era fusion. While many attempts have been made to define jazz from points of view outside jazz, such as using European music history or African music, jazz critic Joachim Berendt argues that all such attempts are unsatisfactory.[3] One way to get around the definitional problems is to define the term “jazz” more broadly. Berendt defines jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of blacks with European music"; he argues that jazz differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time, defined as 'swing'", "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role"; and "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician".[3]
Travis Jackson has also proposed a broader definition of jazz which is able to encompass all of the radically different eras: he states that it is music that includes qualities such as "swinging', improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being 'open' to different musical possibilities".[4] Krin Gabbard claims that “jazz is a construct” or category that, while artificial, still is useful to designate “a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition”.[5]
While jazz may be difficult to define, improvisation is clearly one of its key elements. Early blues was commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, a common element in the African American oral tradition. A form of folk music which rose in part from work songs and field hollers of rural Blacks, early blues was also highly improvisational. These features are fundamental to the nature of jazz. While in European classical music elements of interpretation, ornamentation and accompaniment are sometimes left to the performer's discretion, the performer's primary goal is to play a composition as it was written.
In jazz, however, the skilled performer will interpret a tune in very individual ways, never playing the same composition exactly the same way twice. Depending upon the performer's mood and personal experience, interactions with fellow musicians, or even members of the audience, a jazz musician/performer may alter melodies, harmonies or time signature at will. European classical music has been said to be a composer's medium. Jazz, however, is often characterized as the product of democratic creativity, interaction and collaboration, placing equal value on the contributions of composer and performer, 'adroitly weigh[ing] the respective claims of the composer and the improviser'.[6]
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 could not 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.[7] The avant-garde and free jazz idioms permit, even call for, abandoning chords, scales, and rhythmic meters.
Debates
There have long been debates in the jazz community over the definition and the boundaries of “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.[8] 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 was not jazz because it was arranged and orchestrated. On the other hand Ellington's friend Earl Hines's twenty 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."[9]
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 [and much else] as a period of commercial debasement of the music. According to Bruce Johnson, jazz music has always had a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form".[4] 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.[4] Controversy has also arisen over new forms of contemporary jazz created outside the United States and departing significantly from American styles. On one view they represent a vital part of jazz's current development; on another they are sometimes criticised as a rejection of vital jazz traditions.
Origins
In the late 18th-century painting
The Old Plantation, African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion.
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.[10] 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. The African tradition made use of a single-line melody and 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.[11]
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.[12] 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.[13]
Etymology of "Jazz"
Main article:
Jazz (word)The word jazz makes one of its earliest appearances in San Francisco baseball writing in 1913. [14]
Jazz was introduced to San Francisco in 1913 by William (Spike) Slattery, sports editor of the Call, and propagated by a band-leader named Art Hickman. It reached Chicago by 1915 but was not heard of in New York until a year later. [15]
One of the first known uses of the word jazz appears in a March 3, 1913, baseball article in the San Francisco Bulletin by E. T. “Scoop” Gleeson[16][17]
1890s–1910s
Ragtime
The abolition of slavery led to new opportunities for the education of freed African-Americans, though strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, however Blacks were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide "low-class" entertainment in dances, minstrel shows, and in vaudeville, by which many marching bands formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed.[18][19]
Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African American musicians such as the entertainer Ernest Hogan, whose hit songs appeared in 1895; two years later Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo "Rag Time Medley".[20][21] Also in 1897, the white composer William H. Krell published his "Mississippi Rag" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his Harlem Rag, that was the first rag published by an African-American. 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, including, "The Entertainer", 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.[13]
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."[22] 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.[23]
Morton published "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first jazz work in print.
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.[24] 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. [25][26] 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.[27]
The Original Dixieland Jass Band made the first Jazz recordings early in 1917, their "Livery Stable Blues" became the earliest Jazz recording. [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] 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".[35] In February 1918 James Reese Europe's "Hellfighters" infantry band took ragtime to Europe during World War I,[36] then on return recorded Dixieland standards including "Darktown Strutters' Ball".[26]
1920s and 1930s
Prohibition in the United States (from 1920 to 1933) banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit speakeasies becoming lively venues of the "Jazz Age", an era when popular music included current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes. Jazz started to get a reputation as being immoral and many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old values in culture and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring 20s. From 1919 Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San Francisco and Los Angeles where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings.[37][38] 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.[39]
The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921.
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 popularizing scat singing.[40] 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.[41]
Swing
Main article:
Swing musicThe 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, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw.
Swing was also dance music. It was broadcast on the radio 'live' nightly across America for many years especially by Hines and his Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra broadcasting coast-to-coast from Chicago, well placed for 'live' time-zones. 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. Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians and black bandleaders white ones. 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.
Beginnings of 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 [42], which was brought to France after they had been heard live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s. [43]
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 1930s. There were two populations of musicians involved in the revival. One group consisted of players who had begun their careers playing in the traditional style, and were either returning to it, or continuing what they had been playing all along, such as Bob Crosby's Bobcats, 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 such as the Lu Watters band. By the late 1940s, Louis Armstrong's Allstars band became a leading ensemble. 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 to it.[44]
Bebop
In the early 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. Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it used faster tempos. Beboppers introduced new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz; the dissonant tritone (or "flatted fifth") interval became the "most important interval of bebop"[45] and players 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, explosive accents.
These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and fellow musicians, especially established swing players, who bristled at the new harmonic sounds. To hostile critics, bebop seemed to be filled with "racing, nervous phrases"[46]Despite the initial friction, by the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary. The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, tenor sax player Lester Young, and drummer Max Roach. (See also List of bebop musicians).
Cool jazz
By the end of the 1940s, the nervous energy and tension of bebop was replaced with a tendency towards calm and smoothness, with the sounds of cool jazz, which favoured long, linear melodic lines. It emerged in New York City, as a result of the mixture of the styles of predominantly white jazz musicians and black bebop musicians, and it dominated jazz in the first half of the 1950s. 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 trumpeter Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool (tracks originally recorded in 1949 and 1950 and collected as an LP in 1957). Cool jazz styles had a particular resonance in Europe, especially Scandinavia, with emergence of such major figures as baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin and pianist Bengt Hallberg. Players such as pianist Bill Evans later began searching for new ways to structure their improvisations by exploring modal music. The theoretical underpinnings of cool jazz were set out by the blind Chicago pianist Lennie Tristano. 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)
Modal jazz
Modal jazz is a development beginning in the later 1950s which takes the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Previously, the goal of the soloist was to play a solo that fit into a given chord progression. However, with modal jazz, the soloist creates a melody using one or a small number of modes. The emphasis in this approach shifts from harmony to melody. Miles Davis recorded the best selling jazz album of all time in the modal framework: Kind of Blue, an exploration of the possibilities of modal jazz. Other innovators in this style include John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock.
Free jazz
A shot from a 2006 performance by
Peter Brötzmann, a key figure in European free jazz
Free jazz and the related form of avant-garde jazz broke through into an open space of "free tonality" in which meter, beat, and formal symmetry all disappeared, and a range of World music from India, Africa, and Arabia were melded into an intense, even religiously ecstatic or orgiastic style of playing[47]. While rooted in bebop, free jazz tunes gave players much more latitude; the loose harmony and tempo 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 from myriad 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 (A Love Supreme), Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and others. Free jazz quickly found a foothold in Europe – in part because musicians such as Ayler, Taylor, Steve Lacy and Eric Dolphy spent extended periods in Europe. A distinctive European contemporary jazz (often incorporating elements of free jazz but not limited to it) flourished also because of the emergence of musicians (such as John Surman, Zbigniew Namyslowski, Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler and Mike Westbrook) anxious to develop new approaches reflecting their national and regional musical cultures and contexts. Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from criticism by traditionalists in the 1990s and 2000s.
1960s and 1970s
Latin jazz
Latin jazz combines rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments (piano, double bass, etc.). There are two main varieties: Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the US 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 and Antônio Carlos Jobim. 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.
Post bop
see post-bop jazz.
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 partnered a Hammond organ player with a drummer and a tenor saxophonist. 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. It often had a steadier "funk" style groove, different from the swing rhythms typical of much hard bop. 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 by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments, and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix. Miles Davis made the breakthrough into fusion in 1970s with his album Bitches Brew. Musicians who worked with Davis formed the four most influential fusion groups: Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra emerged in 1971 and were soon followed by Return to Forever and The Headhunters. Although jazz purists protested the blend of jazz and rock, some of jazz's significant innovators crossed over from the contemporary hard bop scene into fusion. Jazz fusion music often uses mixed meters, odd time signatures, syncopation, and complex chords and harmonies. In addition to using the electric instruments of rock, such as the electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano, and synthesizer keyboards, fusion also used the powerful amplification, "fuzz" pedals, wah-wah pedals, and other effects used by 1970s-era rock bands. Notable performers of jazz fusion included Miles Davis, keyboardists Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, vibraphonist Gary Burton, drummer Tony Williams, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, guitarists Larry Coryell, Al Di Meola John McLaughlin and Frank Zappa, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and bassists Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke.
Other 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 African instruments such as kalimbas, cowbells, beaded gourds and other instruments not traditional to jazz. Musicians began improvising jazz tunes on unusual instruments, such as the jazz harp (Alice Coltrane), electrically-amplified and wah-wah pedaled jazz violin (Jean-Luc Ponty), and even bagpipes (Rufus Harley). 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 Germany in the 1970s with artists including Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, the Pat Metheny Group, Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, John Surman and Eberhard Weber, establishing a new chamber music aesthetic, featuring mainly acoustic instruments, and sometimes 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. In 1987, the US House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill proposed by Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr. to define jazz as a unique form of American music stating, among other things, "...that jazz is hereby designated as a rare and valuable national American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated." [48]
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, Najee and Michael Lington. 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.
'Straight-ahead' and Experimental performers
In the 2000s, straight-ahead jazz continues to appeal to a core of listeners. Well-established jazz musicians whose careers span decades, such as Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and Jessica Williams continue to perform and record. In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of young musicians emerged including US pianists Brad Mehldau, Jason Moran, and Vijay Iyer, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard, and saxophonists Chris Potter and Joshua Redman. The more experimental end of the spectrum has included US trumpeters Dave Douglas and Rob Mazurek, saxophonist Ken Vandermark, Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, the Swedish group E.S.T., and US bassist Christian McBride. Toward the more dance or pop music end of the spectrum are St Germain who incorporates some live jazz playing with house beats and Jamie Cullum who plays a particular mix of Jazz Standards with own more pop-oriented compositions.
See also
Notes
- ^ Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz, 2nd. ed., Continuum, 2007, pp. 4–5
- ^ Bill Kirchner, The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2005, Chapter Two.
- ^ a b Joachim E. Berendt. The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond. Translated by H. and B. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern. 1981. Lawrence Hill Books. Page 371
- ^ a b c In Review of The Cambridge Companion to Jazz by Peter Elsdon, FZMw (Frankfurt Journal of Musicology) No. 6, 2003
- ^ Cooke, Mervyn; Horn, David G. (2002). The Cambridge companion to jazz. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1, 6. ISBN 0521663881.
- ^ Giddins 1998 70.
- ^ (e.g., "So What" on the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue)
- ^ In "Jazz Inc." by Andrew Gilbert, Metro Times, December 23, 1998
- ^ Ratliff 2002, 19.
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 7–9
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 11–14
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 14–17, 27–28
- ^ a b Cooke 1999, p. 18
- ^ Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends, David Wilton, ISBN 0-19-517284-1 (2004)
- ^ H. L. Mencken, The American Language, Supplement II, Knopf, 1948, p. 709.
- ^ ‘McCarl has been heralded all along the line as a “busher,” but now it develops that this dope is very much to the “jazz.” Three days later, Gleeson writes: Everybody has come back to the old town full of the old “jazz” and [the San Francisco Seals] promise to knock the fans off their feet with their playing. What is the “jazz”? Why, it’s a little of that “old life,” the “gin-i-ker,” the “pep,” otherwise known as the enthusiasalum [sic]. A grain of “jazz” and you feel like going out and eating your way through Twin Peaks. [. . .] The team which speeded into town this morning comes pretty close to representing the pick of the army. Its members have trained on ragtime and “jazz” and manager Dell Howard says there’s no stopping them’. E. T. “Scoop” Gleeson, March 3, 1913, San Francisco Bulletin.
- ^ Decades later, in 1938, Gleeson recalls the origin of jazz: ‘Similarly the very word “jazz” itself, came into general usage at the same time. We were all seated around the dinner table at Boyes [Springs, Sonoma County, the Seals spring training site,] and William (“Spike”) Slattery, then sports editor of The Call, spoke about something being the “jazz,” or the old “gin-iker fizz.” “Spike” had picked up the expression in a crap game. Whenever one of the players rolled the dice he would shout, “Come on, the old jazz.” For the next week we gave “jazz” a great play in all our stories. And when Hickman’s orchestra swung into action for the evening’s dances, it was natural to find it included as “the jazziest tune tooters in all the Valley of the Moon.”’ in E. T. Gleeson, “I Remember the Birth of Jazz,” The Call-Bulletin, 3 Sep. 1938, p. 3, col. 1, reprinted in Cohen, “Jazz Revisited.”
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 28, 47
- ^ Catherine Schmidt-Jones (2006). "Ragtime". Connexions. http://cnx.org/content/m10878/latest/. Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 28–29
- ^ "The First Ragtime Records (1897-1903)". http://www.redhotjazz.com/firstragtimerecords.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 47, 50
- ^ "Original Creole Orchestra". The Red Hot Archive. http://www.redhotjazz.com/creole.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-23.
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 38, 56
- ^ Cooke 1999, p. 78
- ^ a b Floyd Levin. "Jim Europe's 369th Infantry "Hellfighters" Band". The Red Hot Archive. http://www.redhotjazz.com/hellfighters.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-24.
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 41–42
- ^ Schoenherr, Steven. "Recording Technology History". history.sandiego.edu. http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/recording/notes.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-24.
- ^ Thomas, Bob (1994). "The Origins of Big Band Music". redhotjazz.com. http://www.redhotjazz.com/bigband.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-24.
- ^ Alexander, Scott. "The First Jazz Records". redhotjazz.com. http://www.redhotjazz.com/jazz1917.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-24.
- ^ "Jazz Milestones". apassion4jazz.net. http://www.apassion4jazz.net/milestones.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-24.
- ^ "Original Dixieland Jazz Band Biography". pbs.org. http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_original_dixieland_jazz_band.htm. Retrieved on 2008-12-24.
- ^ Martin, Henry; Waters, Keith (2005). Jazz: The First 100 Years. Thomson Wadsworth. pp. 55. ISBN 0534628044. http://books.google.com/books?id=kuz4EHH05I4C&pg=PT84&lpg=PT84&dq=first+jazz+recording&source=web&ots=7pkcilEi8F&sig=5HFX7eraiDMUCDjVqabjVq8jRUo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPT84,M1.
- ^ "Tim Gracyk's Phonographs, Singers, and Old Records – Jass in 1916-1917 and Tin Pan Alley". http://www.gracyk.com/jasband.shtml. Retrieved on 2007-10-27.
- ^ "The First Jazz Records". The Red Hot Archive. http://www.redhotjazz.com/jazz1917.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-27.
- ^ Cooke 1999, p. 44
- ^ Cooke 1999, p. 54
- ^ "Kid Ory". The Red Hot Archive. http://www.redhotjazz.com/ory.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
- ^ "Bessie Smith". The Red Hot Archive. http://www.redhotjazz.com/bessie.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 56–59, 78–79, 66–70
- ^ Cooke 1999, pp. 82–83, 100–103
- ^ "Ed Lang and his Orchestra". www.redhotjazz.com. http://www.redhotjazz.com/edlango.html. Retrieved on 2008-03-28.
- ^ Crow, Bill (1990). Jazz Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Collier, 1978
- ^ Joachim Berendt. "The Jazz Book". 1981. Page 15.
- ^ Joachim Berendt. "The Jazz Book". 1981. Page 16.
- ^ Joachim Berendt. "The Jazz Book". 1981. Page 21.
- ^ It passed in the House of Representatives on September 23rd, 1987 and it passed the Senate on November 4th, 1987. The entire six point mandate can be found on the HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz and Blues website. HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz and Blues - http://www.hr57.org/hconres57.html
References
- Adorno, Theodor. "Prisms." The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 1967.
- Allen, William Francis, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McLim Garrison, eds. 1867. Slave Songs of the United States. New York: A Simpson & Co. Electronic edition, Chapel Hill, N. C.: Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000.
- Burns, Ken, and Geoffrey C. Ward. 2000. Jazz—A History of America's Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Also: The Jazz Film Project, Inc.
- Cooke, Mervyn (1999). Jazz. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-20318-0. .
- Carr, Ian. Music Outside: Contemporary Jazz in Britain. 2nd edition. London: Northway. ISBN 978-0-9550908-6-8
- Collier, James Lincoln. The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History (Dell Publishing Co., 1978)
- Davis, Miles. Boplicity. 2005. ISBN 4-006408-264637.
- Elsdon, Peter. 2003. "The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, Edited by Mervyn Cooke and David Horn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Review." Frankfürter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 6:159–75.
- Gang Starr. 2006. Mass Appeal: The Best of Gang Starr. CD recording 72435-96708-2-9. New York: Virgin Records.
- Giddins, Gary. 1998. Visions of Jazz: The First Century New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195076753
- Godbolt, Jim. 2005. A History of Jazz in Britain 1919-50 London: Northway. ISBN 0-9537040-5-X
- Gridley, Mark C. 2004. Concise Guide to Jazz, fourth edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131826573
- Hersch, Charles (2009). Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226328683.
- Kenney, William Howland. 1993. Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195064534 (cloth); paperback reprint 1994 ISBN 0195092600
- Oliver, Paul (1970). Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues. London: Studio Vista. ISBN 0-289-79827-2. .
- Mandel, Howard. 2007. Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz. Routledge. ISBN 0415967147.
- Porter, Eric. 2002. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists. University of California Press, Ltd. London, England.
- Ratliffe, Ben. 2002. Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings. The New York Times Essential Library. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0805070680
- Scaruffi, Piero: A History of Jazz Music 1900-2000. 2007. Omniware. ISBN 978-0-9765531-3-7
- Schuller, Gunther. 1968. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. Oxford University Press. New printing 1986.
- Schuller, Gunther. 1991. The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945. Oxford University Press.
- Searle, Chris. 2008. Forward Groove: Jazz and the Real World from Louis Armstrong to Gilad Atzmon. London: Northway. ISBN 978-0-9550908-7-5
- Szwed, John Francis. 2000. Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0786884967
- Vacher, Peter. 2004. Soloists and Sidemen: American Jazz Stories. London: Northway. ISBN 978-0-9537040-4-1
- Yanow, Scott. 2004. Jazz on Film: The Complete Story of the Musicians and Music Onscreen. (Backbeat Books) ISBN 0879307838
External links
|
Jazz |
|
| Genres |
|
 |
|
| Instruments |
|
|
| Topics |
|
|
| Lists |
|
|
Notable
discographies |
|
|
.png){kind=small}
