Jazz

Deea · Trimis: 28/06/2007 23:56 Titlul subiectului: Jazz

Informatii despre muzica jazz :-P

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Deea · Trimis: 12/07/2007 00:56 Titlul subiectului:

Jazz has roots in the combination of West African and Western music traditions, including spirituals, blues and ragtime, stemming from West Africa, western Sahel, and New England's religious hymns, hillbilly music, and European military band music. After originating near the beginning of the 20th century, jazz styles spread in the 1920s, influencing other musical styles. The origins of the word jazz are uncertain. The word is rooted in American slang, and various derivations have been suggested. For the origin and history of the word jazz, see Origin of the word jazz.

The instruments used in marching bands and dance band music at the turn of century became the basic instruments of jazz: brass, reeds, and drums, using the Western 12-tone scale. A "...black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of European musical tradition [of the marching bands], even though the performers were using European styled instruments."[1] Small bands of musicians, mostly self taught, who led funeral processions in New Orleans played a seminal role in the articulation and dissemination of early jazz, traveling throughout communities in the Deep South and to northern cities.

The postbellum network of public schools, as well as civic societies and widening mainstream opportunities for education, produced more formally trained musicians. For example, Lorenzo Tio and Scott Joplin were schooled in classical European musical forms. Tio was a Creole who was born in Mexico.[2] Joplin, the son of a former slave and a free-born woman of color, was largely self-taught until age 11, when he received lessons in the fundamentals of music theory. Jazz is not a pure folk music, in that it more often derives from artists with formal music training and skills.
Jazz as a genre is often difficult to define, but improvisation is a key element of the form. Improvisation has been an essential element in African-American music since early forms of the music developed, and is closely related to the use of call and response in African-American cultural expression.

The form of improvisation has changed over time. Early folk blues music often was based around a call and response pattern, and improvisation would factor in the lyrics, the melody, or both. In Dixieland jazz, musicians take turns playing the melody while the others improvise countermelodies. In contrast to the classical form, where performers try to play the piece exactly as the author envisioned it, the goal in jazz is often to create a new interpretation, changing the melody, harmonies, even the time signature. If classical music is the composer's medium, jazz is able to stand up for the rights of the performer too, to 'adroitly weigh the respective claims of the composer and the improviser'.[3]

By the Swing era, big bands played using arranged sheet music, but individual soloists would perform improvised solos within these compositions. In bebop, however, the focus shifted from arranging to improvisation over the form; musicians paid less attention to the composed melody, or "head," which was played at the beginning and the end of the tune's performance with improvised sections in between.

Later styles of jazz such as modal jazz abandoned the strict notion of a chord progression, allowing the individual musicians to improvise more freely within the context of a given scale or mode (e.g., So What on the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue). The avant-garde and free jazz idioms permit, even call for, abandoning chords, scales, and rhythmic meters.

When a pianist, guitarist or other chord-playing instrumentalist improvises an accompaniment while a soloist is playing, it is called comping (a contraction of the word "accompanying"). "Vamping" is a mode of comping that is usually restricted to a few repeating chords or bars, as opposed to comping on the chord structure of the entire composition. Most often, vamping is used as a simple way to extend the very beginning or end of a piece, or to set up a segue. In some modern jazz compositions where the underlying chords of the composition are particularly complex or fast moving, the composer or performer may create a set of "blowing changes," which is a simplified set of chords better suited for comping and solo improvisation.

[edit] History

[edit] 1890s-1910s
Main article: Ragtime
The interaction between various ethnic music traditions had already been a part of mainstream popular music in the United States for generations, going back to the 19th century minstrel show tunes and the melodies of Stephen Foster. Public dance halls, clubs, and tea rooms opened in the cities. Negru dances inspired by African dance moves, like the shimmy, turkey trot, buzzard lope, chicken scratch, monkey glide, and the bunny hug eventually were adopted by a white public. The cake walk, developed by slaves as a send-up of formal dress balls, became popular. White audiences saw these dances in vaudeville shows. The popular dance music of the time were blues-ragtime styles. Tin Pan Alley composers like Irving Berlin incorporated ragtime influences into their compositions. Bandleader Buddy Bolden's performances in New Orleans parades and dances are an early example of jazz-style improvisation. [4]

Cakewalks, Coon Songs and the music of "Jig Bands" eventually evolved into Ragtime, c.1895 (timeline). One of the early Ragtime compositions was published by Ben Harney. The music was vibrant, enthusiastic and often extemporaneous. Early Ragtime music was in the format of marches, waltzes and other traditional song forms but the consistent characteristic was syncopation. Syncopated notes and rhythms became so popular with the public that sheet music publishers included the word "syncopated" in advertising. In 1899, a classically trained young pianist from Missouri named Scott Joplin published the first of many Ragtime compositions that would come to shape the music of a nation.

[edit] Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz
Main article: Dixieland
A number of regional styles contributed to the development of jazz. In the New Orleans, Louisiana area an early style of jazz called "Dixieland" developed. New Orleans had long been a regional music center. In addition to the slave population, New Orleans also had North America's largest community of free people of color. The New Orleans style used more intricate rhythmic improvisation than ragtime, and incorporated "blues" style elements including "bent" and "blue" notes, and using the European instruments in novel ways. The band which was credited with starting the jazz revolution was the Original Dixieland Jass Band, who arguably made the first recordings of jazz in April of 1917[[1]]; in mid 1917, the band respelled "Jass" as "Jazz."

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; Freddie Keppard, a Creole 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 included a variety of orphanage bands. 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.

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. "Stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline, was developed by James P. Johnson. Johnson influenced later pianists like Fats Waller and Willie Smith. Recordings spread the "Hot" new sound across the country. James Reese Europe was a prominent orchestra leader. Tim Brymn performed with a northeastern "hot" style.

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, inovative 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 Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman and Eddie Condon along with the creative grooves of Gene Krupa, helped to pioneer Jazz music from its infancy and inspire those who followed. 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.
Swing
The 1930s belonged to Swing. While the solo became more important in jazz, popular bands became larger in size. During that classic era, most of the Jazz groups were Big Bands. The Big bands such as Benny Goodman's Orchestra were highly jazz oriented, while others (such as Glenn Miller's) left less space for improvisation. Key figures in developing the big jazz band were arrangers and bandleaders Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Kyle Kenchington, and Duke Ellington. Swing was also dance music, which served as its immediate connection to the people. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex.

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 1990's saw a revival of Swing music fueled by the retro trends in dance.
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