JazzBytes

  Jazz Iz

"No America, no jazz"

Jazz is the music genre that originated early in the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note.

However, Art Blakey has been quoted as saying, "No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with Africa"

Jazz has 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, and free jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, jazz fusion from the 1970s and late 1980s developments such as acid jazz, which blended funk and hip-hop influences into jazz. 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.

"No America, no euro jazz"

European style of jazz began 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 were 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. Contemporary euro jazz incorporates many styles from pop to acid jazz.

  The Jazz Age

Louie "Satchmo" Armstrong

"The exuberant Jazz Age"

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.

"Jazz was Swing was Dance!"

In the 1930s Jazz was on the radio 'live' nightly across America especially by Hines and his Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra broadcasting coast-to-coast from Chicago, well placed for 'live' time-zones. 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 as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.

 
 

What are the definition and the boundaries of "jazz?" 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.

  Traditions- Old and New

The Elusive Jazz Spirit

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."

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". Gilbert notes that as the notion of a canon of jazz is developing, the “achievements of the past” may become "…privileged over the idiosyncratic creativity...” and innovation of current artists. The creation of “norms” in jazz and the establishment of a “jazz tradition” may exclude or sideline other newer, avant-garde forms of jazz. 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.

"Improvisation"

The undefinable ever-changing refusal to draw inside the established lines embodies the Jazz spirit.

JazzBytes soundology "Livery Stable Blues" The Original Dixieland Jass Band's 1917 recording of "Livery Stable Blues" was the first released jazz recording. "Song From A Cotton Field" This 1920s classic jazz song by Bessie Brown has a clear blues influence. "Take The 'A' Train" This 1941 sample of Duke Ellington's signature tune is an example of the swing style. "Yardbird Suite" Excerpt from a saxophone solo by Charlie Parker. The fast, complex rhythms and substitute chords of bebop exhibited were of pivotal importance to the formation of Jazz music. "Mr. P.C." This hard blues by John Coltrane is an example of hard bop, a post-bebop style which is informed by gospel music, blues and work songs. "Birds of Fire" This 1973 piece by the Mahavishnu Orchestra merges jazz improvisation and rock instrumentation into jazz fusion "The Jazzstep" This 2000 track by Courtney Pine shows how electronica and hip hop influences can be incorporated into modern jazz.

Tracks courtesy of Wikipedia