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Jazz is the only indigenous American musical
form to have exerted an influence on musical development throughout
the Western world. Created by obscure black musicians in the
late 19th century, jazz was at first a synthesis of Western
harmonic language and forms with the rhythms and melodic inflections
of Africa. The African musical idiom present in black vocal
music--SPIRITUALS, the work song, the field holler, and blues--was
the structure through which popular tunes of the time were
transmuted into jazz. The music was characterized by improvisation,
the spontaneous creation of variations on a melodic line;
by syncopation, where rhythmic stress is placed on the normally
weak beats of the musical measure; and by a type of intonation
that would be considered out of tune in Western classical
music.
In its beginnings jazz was more an approach to performance
than a body of musical compositions. The black marching bands
of New Orleans, which often accompanied funeral processions,
played traditional slow hymns on the way to the cemetery;
for the procession back to town, they broke into jazzed-up
versions of the same hymns, RAGTIME tunes, or syncopated renditions
of popular marches. The instruments in the marching band--a
cornet or a trumpet to carry the melody, with a clarinet and
trombone to fill in, and a rhythm section of drums or a string
bass--formed the nucleus of the first jazz bands, which usually
added only a piano, guitar, or banjo.
DIXIELAND
The earliest recordings identified as jazz were made in 1917
in New York by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band under the
leadership of Nick La Rocca. The members were white musicians
from New Orleans, playing in a style that they learned from
blacks in that city. Although the early jazz artists occasionally
cut records, it was only when jazz bands traveled to Chicago
and New York City that the music became available nationwide
through recordings released by the major record companies.
The first important recordings by black musicians were made
in 1923, by King OLIVER's Creole Jazz Band, a group that included
some of the foremost New Orleans musicians then performing
in Chicago: Louis ARMSTRONG, Johnny and "Baby" Dodds,
and Honore Dutrey.
Many white groups in Chicago and elsewhere adopted the style,
among them the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the Wolverines,
led by Bix BEIDERBECKE. The characteristics of this early
style, known as Dixieland, included a relatively complex interweaving
of melodic lines among the cornet (or trumpet), clarinet,
and trombone and a steady chomp-chomp beat from the rhythm
instruments (piano, bass, drums). The texture was predominantly
polyphonic. Most bands used no written notation, preferring
"head" arrangements agreed upon verbally; improvisation
was an indispensable factor.
During the 1920s jazz gained in popularity. The two most important
recording centers were Chicago and New York, although all
sections of the country were caught up in the dances that
were closely associated with the music. The period itself
became known as the Jazz Age.
In Chicago the most influential artists were members of small
bands like the Wolverines. In New York, on the other hand,
the trend was toward larger groups with two or more trumpets,
one or two trombones, three or four reeds, plus a rhythm section.
The larger groups played in revues and vaudeville shows and
in large dance halls and theaters.
NEW YORK JAZZ
As the decade progressed, the performance styles in all groups
featured more written arrangements and placed increasing emphasis
on solo performance. Representative of the many players who
led the outburst of jazz virtuosity that marked the 1920s
were Sidney BECHET, Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" MORTON,
Coleman HAWKINS, Armstrong, and James P. Johnson. Among the
leaders in establishing the sound of the new big bands were
Fletcher HENDERSON (with Don Redman, his arranger) and Edward
Kennedy "Duke" ELLINGTON. It was Henderson who developed
the performance style that became known as SWING, featuring
call-and-response patterns between brass and reeds, extensive
use of the riff--the repetition of a motif--for ensemble work
and as accompaniment for soloists, elaborate written arrangements,
and the frequent insertion of improvised solos. Ellington
extended the role of bandleader beyond mere arranging and
into the area of composition, principally because of his need
to provide music for the Cotton Club revues in Harlem. Many
of his compositions were popular hits in their own time and
have become standards for jazz players.
Another important facet of the jazz scene in New York was
to production of vocal blues recordings marketed principally
to blacks. Because of the unique form of the blues, many of
the best jazz performers were used as back-up artists for
the insertion of instrumental "comments" between
the sung phrases. The most definitive singer of the period
was Bessie SMITH, whose 1920s recordings are considered landmarks
of vocal blues.
SWING
The dominant idiom of the 1930s and much of the 1940s was
swing. Utilized almost exclusively for dancing, the music
of the big bands borrowed heavily from the techniques introduced
by Henderson. Among the most popular bands were those led
by Benny GOODMAN, Glenn MILLER, Woody HERMAN, Tommy and Jimmy
DORSEY, and Artie Shaw. As a counterpart of the highly arranged
orchestrations of these New York-based bands, a Kansas City
swing style developed under the influence of Count BASIE and
Bennie Moten that emphasized a blues vocabulary and form as
well as tempos of breakneck speed and an overwhelming use
of riffs. Among the outstanding soloists associated with Kansas
City was Lester YOUNG of the Basie band.
THE JAZZ REVOLUTION: BEBOP
In the early 1940s a rejection of the restrictive arrangements
required by big-band style spread among jazz musicians. Under
the leadership of Charlie PARKER, Dizzy GILLESPIE, Thelonious
MONK, and others, a style known as bop, or BEBOP, emerged
on the New York scene.
It represented a return to the small group concept of Dixieland,
with one instrument of a kind rather than the sections used
by swing groups. Emphasizing solos rather than ensembles,
bop players developed an astounding degree of virtuosity.
Bop was extremely complex rhythmically; it used extensions
of the usual harmonic structures and featured speed and irregular
phrasing. It demanded great listening skill, and its erratic
rhythms made it unsuitable for dancing. Because of its sophistication,
bop resulted in the first breakaway of jazz from the popular
music mainstream. The style was adopted by many performers
during the 1940s and 1950s but was rejected by others who
preferred the more conservative techniques of swing.
Cool
One of the most important new jazz styles of the 1950s was
known as "cool." Inaugurated by a group of highly
trained academic performers under the leadership of Miles
DAVIS, cool was a return to the carefully organized and scored
principles of swing but without the latter's emphasis on call-and-response
and riffing. The ensembles played frequently as an entire
unit and included a number of new instruments in jazz: French
horn, flute, baritone sax, flugelhorn, and others. The players
rejected the emotional emphasis of bop as well as its exploitation
of range and virtuosity. They preferred to play in the middle
register, utilizing a smooth attack, little vibrato, and largely
on-beat phrasing.
Third Stream
Closely allied to cool jazz was the attempt to combine modern
classical forms with jazz techniques. The style, known as
"third stream," used improvisational segments interwoven
with compositions scored for symphony orchestras and chamber
groups, including string quartets. Musical forms identified
with classical tradition were utilized--fugue, rondo, symphonic
development. Polyphony became an important texture, best exemplified
by the jazz fugues played by the MODERN JAZZ QUARTET.
JAZZ EXTREMES: THE 1960s
The jazz of the 1960s was in many ways a mirroring of the
social ferment of that decade. Much of the performance was
characterized by a search for freedom from melodic, harmonic,
and rhythmic restraints. One of the leaders was Ornette Coleman,
whose 1960 album, Free Jazz, set the tone of the decade. It
featured eight musicians improvising individually and collectively
without predetermined thematic material of any kind. The ultimate
result was a breakdown in the traditional framework for improvisation,
which had relied for decades on melodic variations based normally
on a stated tune or harmonic progression. Cecil TAYLOR and
others moved even farther away from traditional jazz practice
and used atonality and other dissonances.
The leading figure of the decade was John COLTRANE. In many
of his performances he abandoned tonality completely and improvised
at length within a single scale structure or over a single
chord or mode. His many followers cultivated an almost totally
emotional style, extending the expressive range of their instruments
to screaming, moaning, and piercing outbursts of passionate
sound. As a result, the audience for jazz decreased dramatically
and many critics expressed the fear that the art was doomed.
THE 1970S JAZZ REVIVAL
The decade of the 1970s, however, brought renewed interest
in jazz, with a revival of many of the older, more traditional
concepts and the addition of several new ones. The popularity
of big bands, using many of the devices of swing, spread to
high school and college campuses. Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Woody
Herman, and Count Basie provided the leadership for this renaissance
of big-band style.
Many leading musicians, on the other hand, turned toward a
fusion of ROCK MUSIC and jazz, trading on the overwhelming
popularity of the 1960s rock innovations. Among the leaders
in the fusion movement were Miles DAVIS, Herbie Hancock, Chick
COREA, Wayne Shorter, and George Benson. Their music placed
great emphasis on the use of electronic instruments, enlarged
percussion sections, repeated melodic and rhythmic figures,
and relatively long segments performed without any significant
harmonic change.
Other leading players like McCoy Tyner experimented extensively
with modal themes and drone effects, reflecting the black
identification with Eastern religions and spiritualism. Large-scale
dissonant compositions for jazz groups gained in popularity
under the influence of men like Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra.
At the same time, more traditional performers like the New
Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band found enthusiastic audiences.
The 1980s were years of eclectic additions to jazz language.
African music began to penetrate and color the jazz picture,
just as in Africa the new "Afro-Pop" combined jazz
influences with African sounds and rhythms. Latin-American
music--Brazilian music, especially--added another new strain
to jazz.
More jazz musicians were classically trained, and many of
them, like the MARSALIS brothers, were technical perfectionists.
Yet, in contrast to a music that was becoming more difficult
and complex, interest was reviving in improvisation, the heart
of jazz before the electronic age.
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