The History of Jazz

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On his tour of France, he was booed, but persevered, signing with the new Impulse! Records in and turning it into "the house that Trane built", while championing many younger free jazz musicians, notably Archie Shepp , who often played with trumpeter Bill Dixon , who organized the 4-day "October Revolution in Jazz" in Manhattan in , the first free jazz festival. A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of show Coltrane's playing becoming increasingly abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics , utilization of overtones, and playing in the altissimo register, as well as a mutated return to Coltrane's sheets of sound.

In the studio, he all but abandoned his soprano to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. In June , Coltrane and 10 other musicians recorded Ascension , a minute-long piece without breaks that included adventurous solos by young avante-garde musicians as well as Coltrane, and was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos.

Dave Liebman later called it "the torch that lit the free jazz thing. After recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September While Coltrane used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, Sanders would opt to overblow his entire solo, resulting in a constant screaming and screeching in the altissimo range of the instrument.

Since the s, various creative centers of jazz have developed in Europe, such as the creative jazz scene in Amsterdam. Following the work of veteran drummer Han Bennink and pianist Misha Mengelberg , musicians started to explore free music by collectively improvising until a certain form melody, rhythm, or even famous song is found by the band.

Since the s Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from criticism by traditionalists. British scholar Stuart Nicholson [] has been prominent in arguing that European contemporary jazz's identity is now substantially independent of American jazz and follows a different trajectory. Latin jazz is the term used to describe jazz which employs Latin American rhythms and is generally understood to have a more specific meaning than simply jazz from Latin America.

A more precise term might be Afro-Latin jazz, as the jazz subgenre typically employs rhythms that either have a direct analog in Africa or exhibit an African rhythmic influence beyond what is ordinarily heard in other jazz. The two main categories of Latin jazz are Afro-Cuban jazz and Brazilian jazz.

In the s and s, many jazz musicians had only a basic understanding of Cuban and Brazilian music, and jazz compositions which used Cuban or Brazilian elements were often referred to as "Latin tunes", with no distinction between a Cuban son montuno and a Brazilian bossa nova.

Even as late as , in Mark Gridley's Jazz Styles: History and Analysis , a bossa nova bass line is referred to as a "Latin bass figure. Typically, the band would only play an even-eighth "Latin" feel in the A section of the head and swing throughout all of the solos. Latin jazz specialists like Cal Tjader tended to be the exception. For example, on a live Tjader recording of "A Night in Tunisia", pianist Vince Guaraldi soloed through the entire form over an authentic mambo. Afro-Cuban jazz began with Machito's Afro-Cubans in the early s, but took off and entered the mainstream in the late s when bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor began experimenting with Cuban rhythms.

Mongo Santamaria and Cal Tjader further refined the genre in the late s. Although a great deal of Cuban-based Latin jazz is modal, Latin jazz is not always modal: A Latin jazz piece may momentarily contract harmonically, as in the case of a percussion solo over a one or two-chord piano guajeo. Guajeo is the name for the typical Afro-Cuban ostinato melodies which are commonly used motifs in Latin jazz compositions. They originated in the genre known as son.

Guajeos provide a rhythmic and melodic framework that may be varied within certain parameters, whilst still maintaining a repetitive - and thus "danceable" - structure. Most guajeos are rhythmically based on clave rhythm. Guajeos are one of the most important elements of the vocabulary of Afro-Cuban descarga jazz-inspired instrumental jams , providing a means of tension and resolution and a sense of forward momentum, within a relatively simple harmonic structure. The use of multiple, contrapuntal guajeos in Latin jazz facilitates simultaneous collective improvisation based on theme variation.

In a way, this polyphonic texture is reminiscent of the original New Orleans style of jazz. For most of its history, Afro-Cuban jazz had been a matter of superimposing jazz phrasing over Cuban rhythms. But by the end of the s, a new generation of New York City musicians had emerged who were fluent in both salsa dance music and jazz, leading to a new level of integration of jazz and Cuban rhythms.

This era of creativity and vitality is best represented by the Gonzalez brothers Jerry congas and trumpet and Andy bass. He incorporated parallel fourths, with McCoy Tyner-type vamps. This occurred in parallel with developments in Cuba [] The first Cuban band of this new wave was Irakere. It was based on Charlie Parker's composition "Billie's Bounce", jumbled together in a way that fused clave and bebop horn lines. Brazilian jazz such as bossa nova is derived from samba , with influences from jazz and other 20th-century classical and popular music styles.

Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English, whilst the related term jazz-samba describes an adaptation of street samba into jazz. Gilberto's initial releases, and the film Black Orpheus , achieved significant popularity in Latin America ; this spread to North America via visiting American jazz musicians. Post-bop jazz is a form of small-combo jazz derived from earlier bop styles. Generally, the term post-bop is taken to mean jazz from the mid-sixties onwards that assimilates influences from hard bop , modal jazz , the avant-garde and free jazz, without necessarily being immediately identifiable as any of the above.

Much post-bop was recorded for Blue Note Records. Most post-bop artists worked in other genres as well, with a particularly strong overlap with the earlier hard bop. Soul jazz was a development of hard bop which incorporated strong influences from blues , gospel and rhythm and blues to create music for small groups, often the organ trio of Hammond organ , drummer and tenor saxophonist.

Unlike hard bop , soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive grooves and melodic hooks, and improvisations were often less complex than in other jazz styles. It often had a steadier "funk" style groove, which was different from the swing rhythms typical of much hard bop. Horace Silver had a large influence on the soul jazz style, with songs that used funky and often gospel -based piano vamps. There was a resurgence of interest in jazz and other forms of African-American cultural expression during the Black Arts Movement and Black nationalist period of the s and s.

African themes became popular, and many new jazz compositions were given African-related titles: Pianist Randy Weston 's music incorporated African elements, such as in the large-scale suite "Uhuru Africa" with the participation of poet Langston Hughes and "Highlife: Music From the New African Nations.

The History of Jazz - Ted Gioia - Oxford University Press

Some musicians, including Pharoah Sanders , Hubert Laws , and Wayne Shorter , began using African instruments such as kalimbas , bells, beaded gourds and other instruments which were not traditional to jazz. African rhythmic structures are accessed directly by Ron Carter bass and Tony Williams drums via the rhythmic sensibilities of swing. Throughout the piece, the four beats, whether sounded or not, are maintained as the temporal referent.

In the example below, the main beats are indicated by slashed noteheads, which do not indicate bass notes. The use of pentatonic scales was another trend associated with Africa. The use of pentatonic scales in Africa probably goes back thousands of years. McCoy Tyner perfected the use of the pentatonic scale in his solos, [] and also used parallel fifths and fourths, which are common harmonies in West Africa.

The minor pentatonic scale is often used in blues improvisation, and like a blues scale, a minor pentatonic scale can be played over all of the chords in a blues. The following pentatonic lick was played over blues changes by Joe Henderson on Horace Silver 's "African Queen" Jazz pianist, theorist, and educator Mark Levine refers to the scale generated by beginning on the fifth step of a pentatonic scale as the V pentatonic scale. Levine points out that the V pentatonic scale works for all three chords of the standard II-V-I jazz progression.

Accordingly, John Coltrane's " Giant Steps " , with its 26 chords per 16 bars, can be played using only three pentatonic scales. Coltrane studied Nicolas Slonimsky 's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns , which contains material that is virtually identical to portions of "Giant Steps". Superimposing the pentatonic scale over "Giant Steps" is not merely a matter of harmonic simplification, but also a sort of "Africanizing" of the piece, which provides an alternate approach for soloing.

Mark Levine observes that when mixed in with more conventional "playing the changes", pentatonic scales provide "structure and a feeling of increased space. In the late s and early s, the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. Jazz fusion often uses mixed meters, odd time signatures, syncopation, complex chords, and harmonies. In , Davis fully embraced the electric instrument approach to jazz with In a Silent Way , which can be considered his first fusion album.

Composed of two side-long suites edited heavily by producer Teo Macero , this quiet, static album would be equally influential to the development of ambient music. The music I was really listening to in was James Brown , the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix , and a new group who had just come out with a hit record, " Dance to the Music ", Sly and the Family Stone I wanted to make it more like rock.

When we recorded In a Silent Way I just threw out all the chord sheets and told everyone to play off of that. Two contributors to In a Silent Way also joined organist Larry Young to create one of the early acclaimed fusion albums: Davis' Bitches Brew album was his most successful of this era. Although inspired by rock and funk, Davis' fusion creations were original and brought about a new type of avant-garde, electronic, psychedelic-jazz, as far from pop music as any other Davis work.

Pianist Herbie Hancock a Davis alumnus released four albums in the short-lived — psychedelic-jazz subgenre: Mwandishi , Crossings , and Sextant The rhythmic background was a mix of rock, funk, and African-type textures. Musicians who had previously worked with Davis formed the four most influential fusion groups: Weather Report 's self-titled electronic and psychedelic Weather Report debut album caused a sensation in the jazz world on its arrival in , thanks to the pedigree of the group's members including percussionist Airto Moreira , and their unorthodox approach to music.

The album featured a softer sound than would be the case in later years predominantly using acoustic bass with Shorter exclusively playing soprano saxophone , and with no synthesizers involved , but is still considered a classic of early fusion. It built on the avant-garde experiments which Joe Zawinul and Shorter had pioneered with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew , including an avoidance of head-and-chorus composition in favour of continuous rhythm and movement — but took the music further.

To emphasise the group's rejection of standard methodology, the album opened with the inscrutable avant-garde atmospheric piece "Milky Way", which featured by Shorter's extremely muted saxophone inducing vibrations in Zawinul's piano strings while the latter pedalled the instrument. Down Beat described the album as "music beyond category", and awarded it Album of the Year in the magazine's polls that year.

Weather Report 's subsequent releases were creative funk-jazz works. Although some jazz purists protested against the blend of jazz and rock, many jazz innovators crossed over from the contemporary hard bop scene into fusion. As well as the electric instruments of rock such as electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano and synthesizer keyboards , fusion also used the powerful amplification, "fuzz" pedals , wah-wah pedals and other effects that were used by s-era rock bands.

Jazz fusion was also popular in Japan, where the band Casiopea released over thirty fusion albums. According to jazz writer Stuart Nicholson, "just as free jazz appeared on the verge of creating a whole new musical language in the s By the mids, the sound known as jazz-funk had developed, characterized by a strong back beat groove , electrified sounds [] and, often, the presence of electronic analog synthesizers. Jazz-funk also draws influences from traditional African music, Afro-Cuban rhythms and Jamaican reggae , notably Kingston bandleader Sonny Bradshaw.

Another feature is the shift of emphasis from improvisation to composition: Early examples are Herbie Hancock's Headhunters band and Miles Davis' On the Corner album, which, in , began Davis' foray into jazz-funk and was, he claimed, an attempt at reconnecting with the young black audience which had largely forsaken jazz for rock and funk. While there is a discernible rock and funk influence in the timbres of the instruments employed, other tonal and rhythmic textures, such as the Indian tambora and tablas and Cuban congas and bongos, create a multi-layered soundscape.

Jazz continued to expand and change, influenced by other types of music such as world music , avant garde classical music and rock and pop. Jazz musicians began to improvise on unusual instruments, such as the jazz harp Alice Coltrane , the electrically amplified and wah-wah pedaled jazz violin Jean-Luc Ponty and the bagpipes Rufus Harley. It passed in the House of Representatives on September 23, , and in the Senate on November 4, The s saw something of a reaction against the fusion and free jazz that had dominated the s.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis emerged early in the decade, and strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, rejecting both fusion and free jazz and creating extensions of the small and large forms initially pioneered by artists such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington , as well as the hard bop of the s. It is debatable whether Marsalis' critical and commercial success was a cause or a symptom of the reaction against Fusion and Free Jazz and the resurgence of interest in the kind of jazz pioneered in the s particularly modal jazz and post-bop ; nonetheless there were many other manifestations of a resurgence of traditionalism, even if fusion and free jazz were by no means abandoned and continued to develop and evolve.

For example, several musicians who had been prominent in the fusion genre during the s began to record acoustic jazz once more, including Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Other musicians who had experimented with electronic instruments in the previous decade had abandoned them by the s; for example, Bill Evans , Joe Henderson , and Stan Getz. Even the s music of Miles Davis , although certainly still fusion, adopted a far more accessible and recognisably jazz-oriented approach than his abstract work of the mids, such as a return to a theme-and-solos approach.

The emergence of young jazz talent beginning to perform in older, established musicians' groups further impacted the resurgence of traditionalism in the jazz community. In the s, the groups of Betty Carter and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers retained their conservative jazz approaches in the midst of fusion and jazz-rock, and in addition to difficulty booking their acts, struggled to find younger generations of personnel to authentically play traditional styles such as hard bop and bebop. In the late s, however, a resurgence of younger jazz players in Blakey's band began to occur.

In the s, in addition to Wynton and Branford Marsalis , the emergence of pianists in the Jazz Messengers such as Donald Brown , Mulgrew Miller , and later, Benny Green , bassists such as Charles Fambrough , Lonnie Plaxico and later, Peter Washington and Essiet Essiet horn players such as Bill Pierce , Donald Harrison and later Javon Jackson and Terence Blanchard emerged as talented jazz musicians, all of whom made significant contributions in later s and s jazz music.

These younger rising stars rejected avant-garde approaches and instead championed the acoustic jazz sound of Charlie Parker , Thelonious Monk and early recordings of the first Miles Davis quintet. This group of "Young Lions" sought to reaffirm jazz as a high art tradition comparable to the discipline of classical music. In addition, Betty Carter 's rotation of young musicians in her group foreshadowed many of New York's preeminent traditional jazz players later in their careers.

Blue Note Records 's O. A similar reaction [ vague ] took place against free jazz. According to Ted Gioia:. Anthony Braxton began recording standards over familiar chord changes. Cecil Taylor played duets in concert with Mary Lou Williams , and let her set out structured harmonies and familiar jazz vocabulary under his blistering keyboard attack. And the next generation of progressive players would be even more accommodating, moving inside and outside the changes without thinking twice.

Musicians such as David Murray or Don Pullen may have felt the call of free-form jazz, but they never forgot all the other ways one could play African-American music for fun and profit. Pianist Keith Jarrett —whose bands of the s had played only original compositions with prominent free jazz elements—established his so-called 'Standards Trio' in , which, although also occasionally exploring collective improvisation, has primarily performed and recorded jazz standards. Chick Corea similarly began exploring jazz standards in the s, having neglected them for the s. In the early s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called "pop fusion" or "smooth jazz" became successful, garnering significant radio airplay in " quiet storm " time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.

In general, smooth jazz is downtempo the most widely played tracks are of 90— beats per minute , and has a lead melody-playing instrument saxophone, especially soprano and tenor, and legato electric guitar are popular. West has countered the often negative perceptions of smooth jazz, stating:. I challenge the prevalent marginalization and malignment of smooth jazz in the standard jazz narrative. Furthermore, I question the assumption that smooth jazz is an unfortunate and unwelcomed evolutionary outcome of the jazz-fusion era.

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Instead, I argue that smooth jazz is a long-lived musical style that merits multi-disciplinary analyses of its origins, critical dialogues, performance practice, and reception. Acid jazz developed in the UK in the s and s, influenced by jazz-funk and electronic dance music. Acid jazz often contains various types of electronic composition sometimes including Sampling music or a live DJ cutting and scratching , but it is just as likely to be played live by musicians, who often showcase jazz interpretation as part of their performance.

Ginell of AllMusic considers Roy Ayers "one of the prophets of acid jazz. Nu jazz is influenced by jazz harmony and melodies, and there are usually no improvisational aspects. It can be very experimental in nature and can vary widely in sound and concept. Jazz rap developed in the late s and early s and incorporates jazz influences into hip hop. The groups which made up the Native Tongues Posse tended toward jazzy releases: Rapper Guru 's Jazzmatazz series began in using jazz musicians during the studio recordings.

Alhough jazz rap had achieved little mainstream success, Miles Davis' final album Doo-Bop released posthumously in was based on hip hop beats and collaborations with producer Easy Mo Bee. Davis' ex-bandmate Herbie Hancock also absorbed hip-hop influences in the mids, releasing the album Dis Is Da Drum in The relaxation of orthodoxy which was concurrent with post-punk in London and New York City led to a new appreciation of jazz. In London, the Pop Group began to mix free jazz and dub reggae into their brand of punk rock. Examples of this style include Lydia Lunch 's Queen of Siam , [] Gray, the work of James Chance and the Contortions who mixed Soul with free jazz and punk [] and the Lounge Lizards [] the first group to call themselves " punk jazz ".

John Zorn took note of the emphasis on speed and dissonance that was becoming prevalent in punk rock, and incorporated this into free jazz with the release of the Spy vs. Spy album in , a collection of Ornette Coleman tunes done in the contemporary thrashcore style. The M-Base movement started in the s, when a loose collective of young African-American musicians in New York which included Steve Coleman , Greg Osby , and Gary Thomas developed a complex but grooving [] sound.

In the s, most M-Base participants turned to more conventional music, but Coleman, the most active participant, continued developing his music in accordance with the M-Base concept. Coleman's audience decreased, but his music and concepts influenced many musicians, according to pianist Vijay Iver and critic Ben Ratlifff of The New York Times. M-Base changed from a movement of a loose collective of young musicians to a kind of informal Coleman "school", [] with a much advanced but already originally implied concept.

Since the s, jazz has been characterized by a pluralism in which no one style dominates, but rather a wide range of styles and genres are popular. Individual performers often play in a variety of styles, sometimes in the same performance. Pianist Brad Mehldau and The Bad Plus have explored contemporary rock music within the context of the traditional jazz acoustic piano trio, recording instrumental jazz versions of songs by rock musicians.

The Bad Plus have also incorporated elements of free jazz into their music. A firm avant-garde or free jazz stance has been maintained by some players, such as saxophonists Greg Osby and Charles Gayle , while others, such as James Carter , have incorporated free jazz elements into a more traditional framework.

Although jazz-rock fusion reached the height of its popularity in the s, the use of electronic instruments and rock-derived musical elements in jazz continued in the s and s. It received some criticism, however, for its failure to reflect the many distinctive non-American traditions and styles in jazz that had developed, and its limited representation of US developments in the last quarter of the 20th century. The album heavily featured prominent contemporary jazz artists such as Thundercat [] and redefined jazz rap with a larger focus on improvisation and live soloing rather than simply sampling.

In that same year, saxophonist Kamasi Washington released his nearly three-hour long debut, The Epic. Another internet-aided trend of 's jazz is that of extreme reharmonization , inspired by both virtuosic players known for their speed and rhythm such as Art Tatum , as well as players known for their ambitious voicings and chords such as Bill Evans.

Supergroup Snarky Puppy has adopted this trend and has allowed for players like Cory Henry [] to shape the grooves and harmonies of modern jazz soloing. YouTube phenomenon Jacob Collier also gained recognition for his ability to play an incredibly large number of instruments and his ability to use microtones , advanced polyrhythms, and blend a spectrum of genres in his largely homemade production process. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This is the latest accepted revision , reviewed on 17 September For other uses, see Jazz disambiguation. Blues ragtime spirituals folk marches classical music of West Africa. Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. September Learn how and when to remove this template message. Swing music and s in jazz. List of bebop musicians. This sample of Duke Ellington's signature tune is an example of the swing style.

Excerpt from a saxophone solo by Charlie Parker.

The fast, complex rhythms and substitute chords of bebop were important to the formation of jazz. 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. This piece by the Mahavishnu Orchestra merges jazz improvisation and rock instrumentation into jazz fusion. This track by Courtney Pine shows how electronica and hip hop influences can be incorporated into modern jazz. African American portal Jazz portal Music portal.

A Map of Jazz Styles". Retrieved — via University of Salzburg. From Jazz to Swing: America's Original Art Form. Oxford University Press, 26 July Retrieved 20 June Archived from the original PDF on January 30, Retrieved November 4, — via Paris-Sorbonne University. A Tale of Three Cities". Retrieved June 8, From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern. Lawrence Hill Books, p. The New Jazz Book. Retrieved 4 August Retrieved September 10, The Cambridge companion to jazz.

The bottom line threatens the creative line in corporate America's approach to music". Archived from the original on Retrieved December 6, Continuum International Publishing Group.

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Cayton; Richard Sisson; Chris Zacher, eds. Women In Jazz, Part 1". Retrieved 27 July Archived from the original on 28 July Retrieved 25 July Many Rivers to Cross. Archived from the original on September 21, Black American Literature Forum. It came in various sized from three to eight feet long and had previously been banned in the South by whites. Other instruments used were the triangle, a jawbone, and early ancestors to the banjo. Many types of dances were performed in Congo Square, including the 'flat-footed-shuffle' and the 'Bamboula. Archived at the Wayback Machine.

Jazz and the Creole Tradition. The World that made New Orleans: Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century , p. From the First Drums to the Mambo , p. CBS News June 26, Africa and the Blues. University Press of Mississippi. Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean. Retrieved October 18, Megill, and Maurice Gerow. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, , pp. How To Play Blues Guitar. Handy, Father of the Blues: An Autobiography , edited by Arna Bontemps: Macmillan Company, New York; , pp.

The Red Hot Archive. Retrieved October 23, National Park Service ". Archived from the original on May 6, Rhythmic Innovations ", PBS. The Wikipedia example shown in half time compared to the source. The impact of Latin American music on the United States. History and Analysis , 7th edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Archived from the original on March 12, Retrieved December 24, The First Years.

Retrieved October 27, Negro Music That Stirred France". Retrieved 19 June Retrieved October 24, A History of America's Music 1st ed. Retrieved October 29, The New York Times. Cross the Water Blues: African American music in Europe 1 ed. The Reception of Jazz Music in Paris, ". Retrieved March 28, He claimed there were only two types of music, 'good' and 'bad' And he embraced a phrase coined by his colleague Billy Strayhorn — 'beyond category' — as a liberating principle. Archived from the original on September 3, Retrieved July 14, The Power of Black Music: Interpreting its history from Africa to the United States.

The Jazz Book , , p. A Case in Point. Mario Bauza and his Afro-Cuban Orchestra. To Be or Not to Bop: Memoirs of Dizzy Gillespie. A New Revolution in Sound". History and Analysis , 7th ed. Cubano Be, Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba , p.

What is Jazz?

Studies in African Music. The Jazz Piano Book. An Analysis of Selected Improvisations. University of North Texas. The Jazz Theory Book. Retrieved November 7, Down Beat May The Essential Jazz Records: Album, Track and Artist Charts". The Young Lions' Roar". Retrieved 14 January Part Three — Jazz. The Problem With Jazz Criticism".

Retrieved April 9, Retrieved 21 July Musician Magazine , Archived from the original on October 19, Archived from the original on June 7, It's hard to overstate [Coleman's] influence. He's affected more than one generation, as much as anyone since John Coltrane It's not just that you can connect the dots by playing seven or 11 beats. What sits behind his influence is this global perspective on music and life.

He has a point of view of what he does and why he does it. His recombinant ideas about rhythm and form and his eagerness to mentor musicians and build a new vernacular have had a profound effect on American jazz. West June 2, Retrieved June 5, He has contributed an equal amount to the history of the music. He deserves to be placed in the pantheon of pioneering artists. Retrieved October 12, Retrieved May 16, Youtuber gets Gen Y into jazz". In effect these highly expressive—and in African terms very meaningful—pitch deviations were superimposed on the diatonic scale common to almost all European classical and vernacular music.

That jazz developed uniquely in the United States, not in the Caribbean or in South America or any other realm to which thousands of African blacks were also transported is historically fascinating. Many blacks in those other regions were very often emancipated by the early s and thus were free individuals who actively participated in the cultural development of their own countries.

In the case of Brazil, blacks were so geographically and socially isolated from the white establishment that they simply were able to retain their own African musical traditions in a virtually pure form. It is thus ironic that jazz would probably never have evolved had it not been for the slave trade as it was practiced specifically in the United States. Jazz grew from the African American slaves who were prevented from maintaining their native musical traditions and felt the need to substitute some homegrown form of musical expression.

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American slaves, by contrast, were restricted not only in their work conditions and religious observances but in leisure activities, including music making. Although slaves who played such instruments as the violin , horn , and oboe were exploited for their musical talents in such cities as Charleston, South Carolina , these were exceptional situations.

By and large the slaves were relegated to picking up whatever little scraps of music were allowed them. Ragtime differs substantially from jazz in that it was 1 a through-composed, fully notated music intended to be played in more or less the same manner each time, much like classical music, and 2 a music written initially and essentially for the piano. Jazz, by contrast, became a primarily instrumental music, often not notated, and partially or wholly improvised. Ragtime had its own march -derived, four-part form, divided into successive bar sections, whereas jazz, once weaned away from ragtime form, turned to either the bar or occasionally 8-bar blues or the bar song forms.

The years from to were a time of tremendous upheaval for black musicians. Even the many musicians who had been trained in classical music but had found—as blacks—no employment in that field were now forced to turn to ragtime, which they could at least play in honky-tonks, bordellos, and clubs; many of these musicians eventually drifted into jazz. Hundreds of other musicians, unable to read and write music, nonetheless had great ability to learn it by ear, as well as superior musical talent. Picking up ragtime and dance music by ear perhaps not precisely , they began almost out of necessity to embellish these syncopated tunes—loosening them up, as it were—until ornamentation spilled over quite naturally into simple improvisation.

This process took on a significantly increased momentum once the piano rags of such master composers as Scott Joplin , Joseph Lamb, and James Scott appeared in arrangements performed regularly by bands and orchestras. Later he began working as an itinerant musician, crisscrossing the South several times and eventually working his way to Los Angeles , where he was based for several years. As the first major composer of jazz, Morton seems to have assimilated like a master chef making a great New Orleans bouillabaisse most of the above-mentioned matrix, particularly blues and ragtime, into a single new, distinct, coherent musical style.

Others, such as soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet , trombonist Kid Ory , and cornetists Bunk Johnson and Freddie Keppard—four of the most gifted early jazz musicians—arrived at similar conclusions before Johnson and others regarded themselves as ragtime musicians. In truth, in the cases of many musicians of that generation—both black and white—who grew up with ragtime, the listener would be hard put to determine when their playing turned from embellished rags to improvisatory jazz.

Musicians confirmed the tenuousness and variety of these early developments in statements such as that of reedman Buster Bailey speaking of the years before But embellishment was a phrase I understood. In spite of the wide dissemination and geographic distribution of these diverse musical traditions, New Orleans was where a distinctive, coherent jazz style evolved. Between and a systematization of instrumental functions within an essentially collective ensemble took shape, as did a regularization of the repertory. Despite the fact that a limited set of instruments was available to black musicians at that time, typically, cornet , clarinet , trombone , tuba or bass , piano , banjo , and drums —the saxophone did not become common in jazz for about another decade , they arrived at a brilliant solution emphasizing independent but harmonically linked and simultaneous lines.

Each of the seven instruments was assigned a clearly defined individual role in the established polyphonic collective ensemble. Thus, the cornet was responsible for stating and occasionally embellishing the thematic material—the tune—in the middle range, the clarinet performed obbligato or descant functions in a high register, the trombone offered contrapuntal asides in the tenor or baritone range, and the four rhythm instruments provided a unified harmonic foundation.

That this formation, which emphasized independent but harmonically linked simultaneous lines, was not only a brilliant solution but a necessity is confirmed by the inability in those early years of most players to read music. It was not long before musicians began to expand upon these materials and to improvise fresh new melodies and obbligatos of their own making. However, these explorations remained within the collective ensemble concept of New Orleans jazz. Few musicians before could have created independent, extended, improvised solos.

And when the solo as an integral element of a jazz performance arrived, the New Orleans format of a tightly integrated ensemble improvisation went out of fashion. By approximately New Orleans had produced a host of remarkable musicians, mostly cornet and clarinet players, such as the legendary Buddy Bolden legendary in part because he never recorded , Buddy Petit, Keppard, Johnson, and Bechet. It is ironic that the first jazz recordings were made in New York City on January 30, , by a second-rate group of white musicians from New Orleans called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Those recordings, with their entertaining but substanceless barnyard sound effects, present a misleading picture of true New Orleans jazz. New Orleans was not the only place where jazz was being developed. Depending on how narrowly jazz is defined, some early form of it was practiced in places as far-flung as Los Angeles, Kansas City, Missouri, Denver, Colorado, and the Colorado mining towns—not to mention Baltimore , Maryland, and New York City.

The two last-mentioned cities were major centres of ragtime, early pre-stride piano, vaudeville entertainment, large-sized dance orchestras, and musical theatre, including theatre created exclusively by black performers. Others headed directly north to Chicago , which rapidly became the jazz capital of the United States. King Oliver , the much-heralded cornet champion of New Orleans, migrated to Chicago in , and in he sent for his most talented disciple , Armstrong , to join his Creole Jazz Band as second cornetist.

In his year there Armstrong matured into a major soloist and at the same time developed—indeed, single-handedly invented—a compelling, propulsive, rhythmic inflection in his playing that came to be called swing. More than that, Armstrong taught the whole world about swing and had a profound effect on the development of jazz that continues to be felt and heard. In that sense alone he can be considered the most influential jazz musician of all time.

And beyond his artistic and technical prowess, Armstrong should be remembered as the first superstar of jazz. By the late s, famous on recordings and in theatres, he more than anyone else carried the message of jazz to America; eventually, as entertainer supreme and jazz ambassador at large, he introduced jazz to the whole world. By often singing without words or texts, he popularized what came to be called scat , a universally comprehensible art form that needed no translation.

Although by then well past his prime, Armstrong, through his physical vitality and uncompromisingly high musical standards, was able to preserve his art almost to the end of his life in He exerted a wide-ranging influence on all manner of players—not only trumpeters but trombonists, saxophonists, singers such as Billie Holiday , and even pianists such as Earl Hines and Teddy Wilson. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind.

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