Jazz

JAZZ

JAZZ as a term can act as an adjective, noun, or verb, and refers to a performance method or the music itself that is called jazz. The term was only applied to music around 1915 and was even then disliked by some musicians because it was a vulgar term for sexual intercourse. Jazz music encompasses many substyles that can be characterized by comparative time periods, geography, style, ensemble, function, venue, and audience. The importance of individuality and improvisatory interaction in jazz, requiring mastery of expression and technical skill, should not be underestimated.

Origins

Like the blues, jazz was at first an oral tradition founded by African Americans as a passionate expression of social condition, combining both African American and European American influences. New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, was a slave trade port, and its Congo Square was a gathering place on Sundays for the African Americans who danced, sang of their history and ritual with expressive African inflections, and played drums. In the late

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1800s, European American music, spirituals, Creole music, and the same African American field hollers and work songs that influenced blues infuenced this oral tradition.

Another early influence on New Orleans jazz was Ragtime, which began to be published around 1890 and became the first African American tradition to gain widespread popularity. Ragtime's primary musical model was the marching band, and most of its repertoire was for piano, such as the rags of St. Louis's Scott Joplin and Harlem's James P. Johnson. Larger ragtime ensembles called syncopated orchestras (syncopation was a prominent ragtime feature) were also popular in America and Europe; one of the most famous was James Reese Europe's Clef Club Orchestra. In addition, Europe founded what could possibly be the first modern association of African American musicians, also called Clef Club.

New Orleans was a melting pot of African, Caribbean, Creole, European, and local traditions. Its small bands played in parades, funerals, and other social gatherings and were typified by a celebratory spirit and rhythmic intensity. Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton began their careers in New Orleans and became some of the greatest soloists of the time. Most jazz in New Orleans was performed as dance music in the venues of Storyville (the red-light district between 1896 and 1917). When Storyville closed, many musicians migrated to Chicago, Kansas City, and New York to find employment.

The Jazz Age and Modernity (1920s)

The displaced Dixieland sounds characterized the Jazz Age. Some believe the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (founded 1916), set a standard that started the Jazz Age, while others point to King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (founded 1922) in Chicago. Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five (1925) are often credited with exemplifying the spirit of the era. New York became the center for jazz performance and recording after 1925. By 1930, successful artists included Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Benny Carter.

The Jazz Age characterized the sound of modernity because it emphasized the individual voice and had a great impact on genres and styles in the visual arts, including film, and modernist literature, in works by such authors as Langston Hughes and T. S. Eliot. Socially, musicians were successful in presenting jazz to the general public as well as making strides in overcoming racial boundaries.

The Big-Band Swing Era (1930–1940s)

As early as 1924, Louis Armstrong was in New York playing with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, and by the mid-1930s, swing style was already widely popular. The term "swing" was first used to describe the lively rhythmic style of Armstrong's playing and also refers to swing dance music.

Duke Ellington, best known for his colorful orchestration, led a group that played at Harlem's Cotton Club; Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie led other successful orchestras. While these big bands came to characterize the New York jazz scene during the Great Depression, they were contrasted with the small, impoverished jazz groups that played at rent parties and the like. During this time the performer was thoroughly identified by popular culture as an entertainer, the only regular venue was the nightclub, and African American music became synonymous with American dance music. The big-band era was also allied with another popular genre, the mainly female jazz vocalists who soloed with the orchestras. Singers such as Billie Holiday modernized popular-song lyrics, although some believe the idiom was more akin to white Tin Pan Alley than to jazz.

Some believe that the big band at its peak represented the golden era of jazz because it became part of the cultural mainstream. Others, however, consider it furthest from the ideal of jazz's artistic individuality.

Bebop, Post-Bop, Hard Bop, and Free Jazz (1940s–1960s)

Post–World War II jazz contrasted with the big bands and had parallels with abstract expressionist painters and Beat writers. It was not dance music and was primarily played by smaller ensembles and often called combo jazz. The new style was more harmonically challenging, maintained a high level of virtuosity, and pushed the established language to its extremes. Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie "Bird" Parker, and Stan Getz played in this new style. In the late 1940s and 1950s this style, described onomatopoeically as bebop, became even more complex.

A smoother, more relaxed "cool" sound, a reaction to the intensity of bebop, was developed by Miles Davis in his 1949 album Birth of the Cool; it is often called mainstream jazz and was successful into the 1970s. Cool performers in the 1950s, including Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Dave Brubeck, gained popularity for jazz as an art. There were many other post-bop styles, such as

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modal jazz (based on musical modes), funk (which reprised early jazz), and fusion, which blended jazz and rock and included electronic instruments. Miles Davis in his later career and Chick Corea were two influential fusion artists.

Hard bop was a continuation of bebop but in a more accessible style played by artists such as John Coltrane. Ornette Coleman (1960) developed avant-garde free jazz, a style based on the ideas of Thelonius Monk, in which free improvisation was central to the style.

Postmodern Jazz Since 1980

Hybridity, a greater degree of fusion, and traditional jazz revivals merely touch the surface of the variety of styles that make up contemporary jazz. Inclusive of many types of world music, it is accessible, socially conscious, and draws almost equally from its vast musical past. Performers such as David Grisman, B. B. King, Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr., Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Tito Puente attest to this variety. Since the 1980s, mainstream jazz education has developed, along with more serious concern for the study of jazz documentation and scholarship.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clark, Andrew, ed. Riffs and Choruses: A New Jazz Anthology. London and New York: Continuum, 2001.

Erlewine, Michael, et al., eds. All Music Guide to Jazz: The Experts' Guide to the Best Jazz Recordings. 3d ed. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1998.

Gridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles: History and Analysis. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Kirchner, Bill, ed. The Oxford Companion to Jazz. Oxford, U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Monson, Ingrid. Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Inter-action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Townsend, Peter. Jazz in American Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000; Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2000.

Christina Linsenmeyer-van Schalkwyk

See also Music: African American .