Jazz

For other uses, see Jazz (disambiguation).

Template:Jazzbox Jazz is an original American musical art form, traditionally considered to have originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.

Overview

Trumpeter, bandleader and singer Louis Armstrong, known internationally as the "Ambassador of Jazz," was a much-imitated innovator of early jazz.

Jazz has been called "America's only original art form." It developed in the Southern American States out of a confluence of African and European music traditions. Blue notes and call and response, also characteristic of spirituals and the blues, with the latter present throughout African and African American culture; improvisation; polyrhythms; syncopation; and the swung note of "ragged time" (or ragtime) are all evidence of jazz's West African pedigree. New England's religious hymns and American 'popular' music sprang from European music traditions and were contributory elements in the development of jazz.

stupid 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, Black and Creole African American musicians playing vaudeville shows took jazz to western and northern USA cities. A "...black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of European [marching band] musical tradition, even though the performers were using European styled instruments."

The origins of the word jazz are uncertain. The word is rooted in American slang, and various derivations have been suggested. Jazz was not applied to music until about 1915. Earl Hines, born in 1903 and later to become a celebrated "jazz" musician, used to claim that he was "playing piano before the word 'jazz' was even invented". For the origin and history of the word jazz, see Jazz (word).

Improvisation

Reggie Workman, Pharoah Sanders, and Idris Muhammad, c. 1978

While jazz may be difficult to define, improvisation is clearly one of its key elements.

Early blues was commonly suctstupidured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, a common element in folk musics. A form of folk music which rose in part from work songs and field hollers, 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 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'.

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. The avant-garde and free jazz idioms permit, even call for, abandoning chords, scales, and rhythmic meters.

History

Origins

See also: origins of the blues

African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion, around the 1780s.

By 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million Africans to the United States, mostly to the Southern States. The slaves largely came from West Africa and brought strong tribal musical traditions with them. In 1774 a visitor described them dancing to the four-stringed banjo and singing "droll music" satirising the way they were treated. A decade later, Thomas Jefferson similarly noted "the banjar, which they brought thither from Africa". It was made from a gourd, like the Senegalese bania or the West African akonting. 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. Slaves from the same tribe were separated to prevent co-operation in organizing revolt, and in Georgia and Mississippi they were denied drums or loud wind instruments that could be used to send coded messages. However, many made their own instruments from available materials, and most plantation owners encouraged singing to keep up morale. African music was largely functional, for work or ritual. Work songs and field hollers developed a style which could still be found in penitentiaries of the 1960s, and in at least one case was similar to a native song still performed in Senegal. In the port of New Orleans black stevedores were renowned for their work chants and songs. These songs showed rhythmic complexity with the characteristic polyrythms of jazz. In the African tradition, they had a single-line melody and a call-and-response pattern, but without the Western concept of harmony. Rhythms reflected African speech patterns, and the African use of pentatonic scales led to blue notes in blues and jazz

The blackface Virginia Minstrels in 1843, featuring tambourine, fiddle, banjo and bones.

In the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play Western instruments, particularly the violin, providing entertainment for plantation owners and increasing the resale value of those who were still slaves. Having learnt European dance music, they parodied the tunes 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 was one of the first formally trained composers to transpose and adapt African-American music, much of it cakewalk music performed in Congo Square in his native New Orleans. He also adapted South American, Caribbean and other slave melodies as piano salon music, with titles such as Bamboula, danse de nègres of 1849 and Le Banjo, Fantaisie grotesque of 1855. Gottschalk's polka Pasquinade is said by some to have anticipated ragtime and was orchestrated as part of the repertoire of John Philip Sousa's concert band founded in 1892. Another influence came from black slaves who had learned the harmonic style of hymns and incorporated it into their own music, with spirituals being the result. This musical form increased in importance when breakaway church groups were formed after the American Civil War led to the abolition of slavery in 1865.

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 under Islamic influence. He noted studies showing that the complex rhythmic drum orchestra music of the coastal rain forest survived relatively intact in Haiti and other parts of the West Indies but was largely absent in the United States. He suggested that string music from the Sudanese interior fitted better with the folk music and narrative ballads of the English and Scots-Irish slave-holders, and had influenced both jazz and blues.

1890s-1910s

File:Shoe-Tickler-Rag-.jpg

Shoe Tickler Rag, cover of the music sheet for a song from 1911 by Wilbur Campbell

Main article: Ragtime

Emancipation of slaves led to new opportunities for education of freed African-Americans, but strict segregation meant limited employment opportunities other than menial labor, the exceptions being teacher, preacher, and musician, and many took musical education. European Americans were used to seeing black musicians providing "low-class" entertainment at dances and minstrel shows, and later vaudeville. Numerous marching bands formed, helped by the availability of second hand instruments from army bands. A black pianist was not acceptable in the concert hall, but could be found playing in a church or had good opportunities to make money playing in the bars, clubs and brothels of red-light districts, with those able to read music being called "professor" while the others were "ticklers" who tickled the ivories. Antonín Dvořák wrote a controversial statement published in February 1895 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, advising American composers to base their music on Negro melodies.

Scott Joplin.

Ragtime gradually developed as improvised music with sources including the cakewalk, Sousa's marches and salon piano pieces like Gottschalk's variations on Latin American and slave melodies. It appeared as sheet music with the African American entertainer Ernest Hogan's dubiously titled 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 rag. The classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in the following year, then in 1899 had an enormous international hit with "Maple Leaf Rag". He wrote numerous popular rags combining syncopation, banjo figurations and sometimes call-and-response, but his attempts at ragtime ballet and opera were unsuccessful. However, the Sousa band played ragtime on their tours of Europe from 1900 to 1905, and the ragtime idiom was taken up by classical composers including Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky. Irving Berlin's mildly syncopated Tin Pan Alley march "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was a hit in 1911. Dances often inspired by African dance moves, like the the turkey trot, the bunny hug and the shimmy were adopted by a white public who saw these dances in vaudeville shows.

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

The Bolden Band around 1905.

Morton published "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first jazz work in print.

Main article: Music of New Orleans

The New Orleans area had been unusual in that a mixed-race Creole caste enjoyed many of the opportunities of whites, and black ensembles took part in the classical music and operas of the city. However, a segregation law ruling of 1894 classified the Afro-Creole population as "black", throwing the two communities together. Since 1857, there had been legalized prostitution in the area known as "The Tenderloin", and in 1897 this red-light district around Basin Street became known as "Storyville", legendarily providing employment for early jazz talent.

Numerous marching bands, such as the Onward Brass Band founded in the 1880s, found work at functions, particularly at the lavish funerals arranged by the African American community where they played solemn music on the way to the cemetery, then on the way back celebrated with spirited, syncopated ragtime style versions of tunes such as Chopin's Funeral March. From the 1890s, the cornet player Buddy Bolden led a band which performed in Storyville, integrating Afro-Creole dance music with blues elements and reportedly adding a rhythmic swing, inspiring many future jazz musicians. His career ended abruptly in 1907, before he made any records so there is uncertainty about his style. His performances in New Orleans parades and dances appear to have been early examples of jazz-style improvisation.

The innovative Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville, and later claimed to have begun using the term jazz in 1902 when demonstrating the difference between ragtime as a kind of syncopation, suitable only for certain tunes, and jazz as "a style that can be applied to any type of tune", including popular classics such as Verdi's arias. From 1904, he toured with vaudeville shows around southern cities, also playing in Chicago and New York. His "Jelly Roll Blues", which he claimed to have composed around 1905, was published in 1915 as the first jazz arrangement in print, introducing more musicians to the New Orleans style.

Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz

Main article: Dixieland

The band most often credited with starting the "jazz revolution" was the Original Dixieland Jass Band who, arguably, made the first recordings of jass/jazz in April of 1917: in mid 1917 the band re-spelled "Jass" as "Jazz."

File:Dixie-was-Born-.jpg

That's How Dixie Was born, music sheet cover for a 1936 song

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. Also Freddie Keppard, who was influenced by Bolden, Joe Oliver whose style was bluesier than Bolden's, Kid Ory, a trombonist who refined the style and Papa Jack Laine who led a multi-ethnic band. In 1891 in Charleston, South Carolina, Reverend Daniel J. Jenkins, an African-American minister, established the Jenkins Orphanage which produced a variety of orphanage bands and Louis Armstrong came out of The New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. The orphanage bands were trained to perform popular and religious music and members such as William "Cat" Anderson, Gus Aiken and Jabbo Smith went on to play with jazz bandleaders like Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. 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.

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 music had collective improvised solos, around a melodic structure, that ideally built to a climax, supported by a rhythm section of drums, bass, banjo or guitar. The solo piano version of the northeast style was typified by Eubie Blake's "Stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline. 'Stride' was developed further by James P. Johnson who was then to influence later pianists like Fats Waller and Willie "The Lion" Smith. The new inventions of recordings and radio spread the "Hot" new sound across the country.

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. Chicago was the breeding ground for many young, inventive players. Characterized by harmonic, innovative arrangements and a high technical ability of the players, Chicago Style Jazz significantly furthered the improvised music of its day. Contributions from dynamic players like Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Eddie Condon, Bix Beiderbecke and Bud Freeman helped to pioneer jazz from its infancy and inspire those who followed.

1920s

The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921.

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 invention of the phonograph record and the rise of popularity in radio helped the proliferation of jazz as well. Radio stations helped 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. It was during ths era that some of the early virtuosos of jazz gained even greater prominence, band leaders such as Kid Ory, Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Some, like Armstrong and Morton, broke new ground for African Americans in the film industry and performed in Hollywood movies.

It was also during this time that a number of jazz bands developed that catered to more mainstream musical tastes. While the innovative music of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington's bands straddled both the more traditional and mainstream camps, the music of such orchestra leaders as Paul Whiteman and Ted Lewis was solidly mainstream in its appeal.

File:PaulWhiteman.jpg

Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in 1929. Paul Whiteman was a popular orchestra leader

Paul Whiteman, the controversially self-proclaimed "King of Jazz," was a popular band leader of the 1920s who hired Bix Beiderbecke and other white jazz musicians. Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premièred by Whiteman's Orchestra, and specialized in more symphonic, highly orchestrated, jazz-influenced works in an effort to, in his words, "make a lady out of jazz." With the advent of the swing era, however, Whiteman's music, geared primarily to white audiences, was considered "old hat" and largely had fallen out of favor. Ted Lewis was another popular bandleader. Other, more mainstream bandleaders of the day 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.

Jazz in its indigenous and more orchestral forms reached the height of its popularity in the U.S. during this era. During the Black Arts Movement and Black nationalist period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, there was a resurgence in interest in "straight-ahead" jazz on black college campuses and in African American artistic and intellectual circles. In 1971, radio station WHUR premiered on the campus of Howard University, billing itself as a jazz station. In the time since, jazz has maintained a loyal following worldwide, most notably in the African American community and in major urban centers. Over the years, jazz has been more commonly present in various attenuated and hybrid forms, often referred to as "jazz extensions", including rhythm 'n' blues, funk, neo-soul, quiet storm, smooth jazz and hip hop.

1930s

Swing

The 1930s belonged to Swing - and to the radio and dancing. During what many regard as jazz's classic era the popular bands became larger in size - Big Bands – and the solo became more important in jazz, with the soloists sometimes as famous as their leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band were bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford, Jay McShann, Walter Page, Don Redman and Chick Webb. Other Big Bands, such as Artie Shaw's, Tommy Dorsey's and Benny Goodman's "Orchestra", were highly jazz oriented while others, such as, later, Glenn Miller's, left less space for improvisation. Swing was also dance music - hence its immediate connection to the people - and it was broadcast 'live' coast-to-coast nightly across America for many years, most famously by The Earl Hines Band from Al Capone's Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago, well-positioned for the 'live coast-to-coast' time-zone broadcasting problem. 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, 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. During this period, swing and big band music were 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 style 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," (eight beats per measure instead of four). Big Joe Turner became a boogie-woogie star in the 1940s, and then in the 1950s was an early rock and roll musician. (Also see saxophonist Louis Jordan). The mid 1990s saw a revival of Swing music fueled by the retro trends in dance.

Kansas City Jazz

File:Charlie-parker1.jpg

Memorial to Charlie Parker at the American Jazz Museum at 18th and Vine in Kansas City

Main article: Kansas City Jazz

Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. During the Depression and Prohibition eras, the Kansas City Jazz scene thrived as a mecca for the modern sounds of late 1920s and 30s. Characterized by soulful and bluesy stylings of Big Band [in particular Jay McShann's] and small ensemble Swing, arrangements often showcased highly energetic solos played to "speakeasy" audiences. Alto sax pioneer Charlie Parker hailed from Kansas City via Jay McShann's Big Band. 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.

European Jazz

See Also: Continental jazz

Outside of the United States the beginnings of a distinctly European jazz started emerging. At first this came mostly in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France being among the first non-US bands of significance to jazz history. The playing of Django Reinhardt in particular would be important to the rise of gypsy jazz, which is one of the earliest genres to start outside the US.

Originated by Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt, Gypsy Jazz is an unlikely mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall "musette" and the folk strains of Eastern Europe. Also known as Jazz Manouche, it has a languid, seductive feel characterized by quirky cadences and driving rhythms. The main instruments are steel stringed guitar (particularly those of the Selmer Maccaferri line), violin, and upright bass. Solos pass from one player to another as the other guitars assume the rhythm. While primarily a nostalgic style set in European bars and small venues, Gypsy Jazz is appreciated world wide, and continues to thrive and grow in the music of artists such as Biréli Lagrène.

1940s

Bebop

Main article: Bebop

See also List of bebop musicians

In the mid-1940s bebop performers such as saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Bud Powell and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie 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. Other bebop musicians included pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Kenny Clarke, trumpeters Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro, saxophonists Wardell Gray and Sonny Stitt, bassist Ray Brown, drummer Max Roach, guitarist Charlie Christian and vocalist Betty Carter.

Beboppers borrowed from the innovations of key earlier musicians – in particular Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, Art Tatum and Lester Young – and carried their ideas several steps further, introducing new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz. Where many earlier styles of jazz improvisation kept close to the basic key and melodic line of the piece, bebop soloists engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation. This often involved the use of "passing" (i.e. additional) chords, substitute chords, and altered chords which stepped outside of the basic key of the piece. Notes usually thought of as temporary dissonances in earlier jazz were used by the boppers as key melody notes – for instance, the flatted fifth (or augmented fourth) of the scale. The style of drumming shifted too, from the earlier four-to-the-bar bass-drum pulse to a more elusive and explosive style where 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. (Louis Armstrong, for instance, condemned bebop as "Chinese music.") But it was not long before bebop's influence was felt throughout jazz: older big-band leaders like Woody Herman (extensively) and Benny Goodman (briefly) experimented with the style. By the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary, and it has come to form the bedrock of modern jazz practice.

1950s

Hard Bop

Main article: Hard bop

See also List of Hard bop musicians
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 that became popular in the early 1950s. It is in part intended to be more accessible to audiences unfamiliar with or not fond of bop. Hard bop brought the church and gospel music back into jazz.

The hard bop style coalesced in 1953 and 1954, paralleling the rise of rhythm and blues. The performance by Miles Davis of his composition "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 by Art Blakey featured pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Clifford Brown, all of whom would be leaders in the hard bop movement along with Davis.

The hard bop style enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz. According to Nat Hentoff in his 1957 liner notes for the Blakey Columbia LP of the same name, the phrase "hard bop" was originated by critic-pianist John Mehegan, jazz reviewer of the New York Herald Tribune at that time. Soul jazz developed from hard bop.

Free jazz and avant-garde jazz

Main articles: Free jazz, Avant-garde jazz, and European free jazz

Peter Brötzmann 2006

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.

Early performances of these styles go back as early as the late 40s and early 50s: Lennie Tristano's Intuition and Digression (1949) and Descent into the Maelstrom (1953) are often credited as anticipations of the later free jazz movement, though they seem not to have had a direct influence on it. 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 of what free jazz came in the 1950s, with the early work of 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, 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.

Vocalese

Main articles: Vocalese and Scat singing

Cool Jazz

Main article: Cool jazz

See also: List of Cool jazz and West Coast jazz musicians

1960s

Latin jazz

Main article: 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 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 Chico O'Farrill, Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo, and much later, Charlie Palmieri, Eddie Palmieri, and 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 moderately paced, played around 120 beats per minute with straight, rather than swing, eighth notes, and difficult polyrhythms. A blend of West Coast Cool, European classical harmonies and Brazilian samba rhythms, Bossa Nova or more correctly "Brazilian Jazz," reached the United States in 1962. Subtle acoustic guitar rhythms accent simple melodies sung in Portuguese and/or English. The style was pioneered by Brazilians João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Jobim's female vocalist Astrud Gilberto, percussionist Airto Moriera, and his wife, vocalist Flora Purim. This alternative to the 60's Hard Bop and Free Jazz styles, gained popular exposure by West Coast players like guitarist Charlie Byrd & saxophonist Stan Getz.

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. (There's also the authentic drumming "samba schools" which influenced many, if not all, of the Brazilian drummers as well.

Modal

Main article: Modal jazz

As smaller ensemble soloists became increasingly hungry for new improvisational directives, some players sought to venture beyond Western adaptation of major and minor scales. Drawing from medieval church modes and other modes, which used altered intervals between common tones, players found new inspiration. Soloists could now free themselves from the restrictions of dominant keys and shift the tonal centers to form new harmonics within their playing. This became especially useful with pianists and guitarists, as well as trumpet and sax players. Pianist Bill Evans is noted for his Modal approach.

Soul Jazz

Main article: Soul jazz

See also List of soul-jazz musicians
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. Important soul jazz organists included Bill Doggett, Charles Earland, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Les McCann, "Brother" Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Lonnie Smith, Don Patterson, Jimmy Smith and Johnny Hammond Smith.

Tenor saxophone was also important in soul jazz; important soul jazz tenors include Gene Ammons, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Eddie Harris, Houston Person, and Stanley Turrentine. Alto player Lou Donaldson was also an important figure, as was Hank Crawford. Unlike hard bop, soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive grooves and melodic hooks, and improvisations were often less complex than in other jazz styles.

A well-known soul jazz recording is Ramsey Lewis's "The In Crowd," a major hit from 1965. Soul jazz was developed in the late 1950s, and was perhaps most popular in the early 1970s, though many soul jazz performers, and elements of the music, remain popular. Although the term "soul jazz" contains the word "soul," soul jazz is only a distant cousin to Soul music, in that soul developed from gospel and blues rather than from jazz.

Soul jazz performers improvise over chord progressions as with Bop. However, the ensemble of musicians concentrate on a rhythmic "groove" centered around a strong bassline, and the song often quickly "shifts gears" to new "timefeels." Horace Silver had a large influence on the soul jazz style, with his songs that used funky and often Gospel-based piano vamps. Soul jazz ensembles usually gave a prominent role to the Hammond organ, and some groups, such as 1960s organ trios, were centered around the Hammond's sound.

1970s

Jazz became influenced by many other types of music, such as world music, avant garde classical music, and rock and pop musics. 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.

Jazz fusion

Main article: Jazz fusion

Bitches Brew is an influential record in the history of 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' 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 (and his drummers Terry Bozzio, and Vinnie Colaiuta), Al Di Meola, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, Sun Ra, Narada Michael Walden, Wayne Shorter, and bassist-composer Jaco Pastorius.

Miles Davis recorded the fusion albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1968 and 1969. Chick Corea performed and recorded with his Return to Forever band. Ex- Miles Davis drummer Tony Williams had a band called Lifetime with Larry Young and John McLaughlin which later featured Jack Bruce. A second version of the group featured Allan Holdsworth on guitar. Herbie Hancock lead a funk-infused band called the Headhunters. Guitarist Larry Coryell had a band called "The Eleventh House," which featured drummer Alphonse Mouzon. John McLaughlin founded "The Mahavishnu Orchestra," which featured fusion drumming pioneer Billy Cobham. Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter joined forces to launch the long-lived and very successful Weather Report. Soft Machine influenced the development of fusion in the UK.

1980s

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. Marsalis's work has influenced a wide range of musicians who have been dubbed the "Young Lions"; but it also attracted much criticism from musicians, critics and fans who found his definition of jazz too narrow, or who found his own recreations of earlier styles unconvincing.

Smooth jazz

Main article: Smooth jazz

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, jazz fusion gradually turned into a lighter commercial form called pop fusion or "smooth jazz" (see paragraph below). Although pop fusion and smooth jazz were commercially successful and garnered significant radio airplay, this lighter form of fusion moved away from the style's original innovations. But into the 1990s and 2000s, some fusion bands and performers such as Tribal Tech have continued to develop and innovate within the genre.

Smooth jazz solos were actually very stylized. For instance, the saxophone improvisations by Kenny G were considered "light fusion." His music became popular. Musicians gave this music the name "fuzak" (cf. muzak) because it was a soft, pleasant fusion of jazz and rock. By the late 1990s smooth jazz became very popular and was receiving a lot of radio exposure. Some of the most famous saxophonists of this style were Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny G and Najee and many imitators. Kenny G’s music and smooth jazz in general defined a large segment of jazz during the 1980s and 1990s. Not only is smooth jazz played on the radio and in jazz clubs, it is also played in airports, banks, offices, auditoriums and arenas.

Acid Jazz and Nu Jazz

Some additional styles are 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, Incognito and Corduroy. This was a natural outgrowth of the Rare Groove scene in the UK that had begun as an alternative to the prevalent Acid House parties of the 1980s. Halfway between the driving beat of house music and the Soul Jazz and Funk related sounds of Rare Groove was Acid Jazz. 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, Matt Bianco and Curiosity Killed the Cat achieving chart hits in Britain. Improvisation is also largely absent, giving argument whether the term "Jazz" can truly apply.

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.

Jazz rap

Main article: Jazz rap

The late 80s 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 ("Words I Manifest," which samples Miles Davis) and Stetsasonic ("Talkin' All That Jazz," which samples Lonnie Liston Smith). One year later, Gang Starr's debut LP, No More Mr. Nice Guy and their work on the soundtrack to Mo' Better Blues, 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 (1988) and A Tribe Called Quest's debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990). Guru continued the jazz rap trend with the critically acclaimed Jazzmatazz series beginning in 1993, in which modern day jazz musicians were brought into the studio.

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 (particularly IDM and Drum and bass) with various degrees of success. This has been variously dubbed "future jazz," "jazz-house," "nu jazz," or "Junglebop." It is sometimes not considered to be jazz because although the harmony and instrumentation are influenced by jazz, improvisational aspects are often absent.

The more experimental and improvisational end of the spectrum includes Scandinavian artists such as pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær (both of whom began their careers on the ECM record label), the trio Wibutee, and Django Bates, all of whom have gained respect as instrumentalists in more traditional jazz circles.

The Cinematic Orchestra from the UK and Julien Lourau from France have also received 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. Matthew Herbert, Aphex Twin, Björk, Amon Tobin, Squarepusher and Portishead are also notable as avant-garde electronica artists who have incorporated jazz influences into their music.

2000s

In the 2000s, "jazz" hit the pop charts and blended with contemporary Urban music through the work of neo-soul artists like Norah Jones and Amy Winehouse and the jazz advocacy of performer-music educators such as Jools Holland, Courtney Pine and Peter Cincotti. As with pop fusion or "smooth jazz", a debate has arisen as to whether the music of these performers can be called jazz or not (see below). Pop singer Christina Aguilera recorded a jazz-based album titled Back to Basics in 2006.

Commercial prospects of jazz in recent years

National Public Radio's Jazz Profiles reported on isses of jazz success and challenges as a commercially viable genre. Jazz record sales increased both in real numbers and as a percentage of all CD sales, in 2003.

Definitional concerns

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 was not in fact jazz, as by its very definition, according to them, jazz cannot 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 boundaries or definition 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. From the 1940s and 1960s, traditional jazz enthusiasts and Hard Bop criticized each other, often arguing that the other style was somehow not "real" jazz. 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 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 jazz.

One way 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 useful to designate “a number of musics with enough in common part of a coherent tradition”. Travis Jackson also defines 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”.

Where to draw the boundaries of "jazz" is the subject of debate among music critics, scholars, and fans. Music that is a mixture of jazz and pop music, such as the recent albums of Jamie Cullum, James Blunt and Joss Stone have been called "jazz" performers. 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

• Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
• American Jazz Museum
• Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
• Cape Jazz
• Cool (aesthetic)
• European free jazz
• International Association for Jazz Education
• Jazz albums, list of
• Jazz at Lincoln Center
• Jazz clubs, list of
• Jazz festivals, list of
• Jazz institutions and organizations, list of
• Jazz musicians, list of
• Jazz pieces, list of
• Jazz poetry
• Jazz standard
• Jazzpar Prize
• Music of the United States
• Swing (genre)
• Thirty-two-bar form

Sources

• 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.
• Davis, Miles. 2005. Miles Davis (2005). Boplicity. ISBN 4-006408-264637. {{cite AV media}}: Unknown parameter |Label= ignored (help)
• 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
• Gridley, Mark C. 2004. Concise Guide to Jazz, fourth edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131826573
• 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.
• Porter, Eric. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists. University of California Press, Ltd. London, England. 2002.
• 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 (Omniware, 2007)
• Szwed, John Francis. 2000. Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0786884967

External links

• Online jazz radio stations
• Great Jazz Musician Biographies
• Jazz History Timeline
• Jazz - A Film by Ken Burns, PBS
• Jazz @ the Smithsonian
• Smooth Jazz Radio Links
• Piero Scaruffi's history of jazz music 1900-2000
• Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame website
• Jazz at Lincoln Center website
• American Jazz Museum website
• Europe Jazz Network