Jazz

Jazz is a music genre that started in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its roots include blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythms, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville songs, and dance music. Since the 1920s, during the Jazz Age, it has been known as an important kind of music in both traditional and popular music. Jazz is known for its swing and blue notes, its complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, and improvisation.

As jazz spread around the world, it borrowed from the music of many countries, regions, and communities. This created many different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s. It mixed together earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues, with group polyphonic improvisation. Jazz did not start as one single musical tradition, either in New Orleans or anywhere else. In the 1930s, the most popular styles included dance-friendly swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a lively, bluesy, improvised style), and gypsy jazz (a style that featured musette waltzes). Bebop appeared in the 1940s. It moved jazz away from dance music and toward a harder "musician's music" that was played faster and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s. It had calmer, smoother sounds and long, flowing melodies.

In the mid-1950s, hard bop appeared. It brought influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups, especially those with saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s. It used the mode, or musical scale, as the basis for its structure and improvisation. Free jazz explored playing without a regular beat, rhythm, or set structure. Jazz fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It combined jazz improvisation with the rhythms, electric instruments, and loud sound of rock music. In the early 1980s, a popular style called smooth jazz became successful and was played often on the radio. In the 21st century, many other styles and genres exist, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz.

For other uses, see Jazz (disambiguation).

Etymology and definition

Historians have studied where the word jazz came from. It may be related to jasm, a slang word from 1860 that meant "pep" or "energy." The earliest written use of the word appeared in 1912 in the Los Angeles Times. In that article, a minor league baseball pitcher, Ben Henderson of the Portland Beavers, described a pitch he called a "jazz ball" because it wobbled and was hard to control. In 1915, the word was used in a music setting in the Chicago Daily Tribune. In 1916, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans wrote about "jas bands." Eubie Blake told National Public Radio that the word was once spelled in a rude way that people would not say in front of ladies. Later, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century.

Jazz is hard to define because it covers a wide range of music over more than 100 years, from ragtime to rock-influenced fusion. Critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt described jazz as a form of art music that began in the United States when African American traditions met European music. He said jazz has a special feeling of time called "swing," and that it involves spontaneous playing, where musicians create music on the spot. Travis Jackson suggested that jazz includes swing, improvisation, group playing, and each musician having their own voice. Duke Ellington, one of jazz's most famous musicians, said simply, "It's all music."

Elements

Jazz is hard to define, partly because it has many subgenres. But improvisation is one of its main features. This comes from earlier music such as blues, a folk music that grew partly from the work songs and field hollers sung by African-American people who were enslaved on plantations. Work songs were often built around a repeated call-and-response pattern, and early blues was also improvised. In classical music, performers are judged mostly by how closely they follow the musical score. In jazz, a performer shapes a tune in their own way, so the same piece is never played exactly the same way twice. A performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures depending on their mood, experience, and the musicians or audience around them.

Styles have changed over time. In early Dixieland, also called New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies. In the swing era of the 1920s to 1940s, big bands used arrangements that were written or learned by ear, and soloists improvised within them. In the bebop era of the 1940s, small groups with simple arrangements became popular, and most of each piece was improvised. Modal jazz dropped chord progressions to allow even more improvisation. In many jazz styles, a soloist is supported by a rhythm section that keeps the structure steady and works alongside the soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz, the difference between soloist and band becomes smaller, and chords, scales, and meters may be left aside. Some people have criticized commercial jazz, or jazz influenced by popular music, since the bebop era. Black musicians rejected the Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s as shallow nostalgia made for white audiences. Some traditional jazz fans, meanwhile, saw bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as a betrayal of the music. Others argue that jazz can absorb and transform many styles, and that by avoiding fixed rules, it lets new avant-garde styles grow.

Diversity in jazz

For some African Americans, jazz shows the important ways they have shaped culture and history. For others, it is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions." Amiri Baraka argues that there is a "white jazz" style that reflects whiteness. White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and other parts of the U.S. Papa Jack Laine, who led the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz." The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, whose members were white, was the first jazz group to make a recording. Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most well-known jazz soloists of the 1920s. Musicians such as Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, and Dave Tough developed the Chicago Style. Others from Chicago, such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa, became leading members of swing in the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians, and these musicians helped people think differently about race in the U.S.

Women have also contributed to jazz throughout its history. Singers Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Adelaide Hall, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Abbey Lincoln, Anita O'Day, Dinah Washington, and Ethel Waters were well known for their voices. Others, such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, trumpeter Valaida Snow, and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields, were bandleaders, composers, and players of instruments. They are less well known today. Women began playing instruments in jazz in the early 1920s and became especially known on piano. During World War II, many male musicians were called into military service, and all-female bands took their place. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, formed in 1937, became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. It was also the first to travel with the USO, touring Europe in 1945. Women also played in the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson. Trombonist Melba Liston is considered the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz. She was also a respected composer and arranger, especially through her work with Randy Weston from the late 1950s into the 1990s.

Main article: Women in jazz

Jewish Americans also played an important role in jazz. As jazz spread and grew to include many cultures, the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape its many sounds. Jewish Americans were able to succeed in jazz partly because of the position of whiteness given to them at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans and Jewish Americans understood each other's struggles, and Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies of African Americans. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans brought jazz, music that African Americans created, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was also a key figure in jazz's growth. He led a racially mixed band called the King of Swing. His 1938 jazz concert at Carnegie Hall was the first ever played there. Bruce Eder called it "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history." Shep Fields also helped make sweet jazz popular through performances and big band remote broadcasts from places such as Chicago's Palmer House, Broadway's Paramount Theater, and the Starlight Roof at the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His light, elegant style stayed popular with audiences from the 1930s until the late 1950s.

Main articles: Jews in jazz and Jewish women in jazz

Early development

Jazz began in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It grew out of many kinds of music, including blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythms and rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville songs, and dance music. It also drew on American and European classical music, African music, and folk songs from enslaved people. Its style has changed many times, because each performer adds their own feeling and improvises, which is one of the genre's greatest joys.

In the 1700s, enslaved people in New Orleans gathered at a market in an area that later became known as Congo Square. They were famous there for their African dances. Many Africans were taken from West Africa to North America through the Atlantic slave trade, and they brought strong musical traditions with them. The Black Codes were laws that banned drumming by enslaved people. Because of this, African rhythms lived on mostly through body sounds such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo became an important rhythm in many Caribbean and African-American musics. Over time, African-American music also took in Cuban styles such as the habanera. Musicians like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton helped shape the sound of early jazz in New Orleans.

Main article: Ragtime

Further information: Music of African heritage in Cuba

See also: Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony

Main article: Blues

Main articles: Dixieland jazz and Music of Louisiana

The Jazz Age

From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition in the United States made it illegal to sell alcoholic drinks. People built secret bars called speakeasies, and these became lively places for popular music, dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes during the Jazz Age. Many older people felt jazz went against old cultural values, and they linked it to the Roaring '20s. Henry van Dyke of Princeton University called jazz "not music at all." The New York Times reported that Siberian villagers used jazz to scare away bears, though they had really used pots and pans. The Original Dixieland Jass Band performed "Jazz Me Blues" in 1921.

In 1919, Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band from New Orleans began playing in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1922, it became the first black jazz band from New Orleans to make recordings. That same year, Bessie Smith made her first recordings. In Chicago, a style called "Hot Jazz" was developing, and King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. In 1924, Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines.

Jazz had started among Black musicians in the South, but jazzy dance music played by white orchestras sold more copies. In 1918, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra became popular in San Francisco. He signed with Victor and became the top bandleader of the 1920s. He hired white musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Frankie Trumbauer, and Joe Venuti. In 1924, Whiteman asked George Gershwin to write Rhapsody in Blue, and his orchestra performed it first. Olin Downes wrote in The New York Times that the piece showed great talent, and jazz began to be seen as a serious form of music.

After Whiteman's band toured Europe with success, other white bandleaders formed big hot jazz orchestras, including Fred Waring, Jean Goldkette, and Nathaniel Shilkret. Whiteman's success also inspired Black artists, including Earl Hines, Duke Ellington (who opened at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1927), Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins, and Don Redman.

In 1924, Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band for a year as a featured soloist. Around the same time, Guy Lombardo formed his Royal Canadians Orchestra in Canada. It was one of Armstrong's favorite "sweet jazz" big bands. Armstrong's solos went far beyond the original New Orleans style. According to Schuller, the solos of his bandmates, including a young Coleman Hawkins, sounded "stiff, stodgy" next to his. The example "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" shows his solo improvising. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed his Hot Five band, where he made scat singing popular.

Main articles: Swing music and 1930s in jazz

In the 1930s, popular swing big bands were the top sound, and some skilled soloists became as famous as their band leaders. Key figures included Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw. Over time, racial separation in music began to ease. White bandleaders hired Black musicians, and Black bandleaders hired white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and Charlie Christian for small groups. Kansas City jazz, led by Lester Young, led the way from big bands toward the bebop of the 1940s. An early 1940s style called jump blues used small groups and blues chords, building on boogie-woogie from the 1930s.

Duke Ellington spent the late 1920s and 1930s in Washington, D.C.'s jazz scene, creating a new sound for his orchestra. He tried new orchestral sounds, harmony, and musical form, and some of his tunes became hits. He called his music American Music instead of jazz. Many of his works were written for particular musicians in his band, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Concerto for Cootie" for Cootie Williams (later "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with lyrics by Bob Russell), and "The Mooche" for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded songs by his bandmates, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan" and "Perdido", which gave big-band jazz a "Spanish Tinge."

American jazz records were sold in only small numbers in Europe. Because of this, European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson. Their live visits during and after World War I inspired European audiences. British jazz began with a tour by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919. In 1926, Fred Elizalde and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC. In France, the style took off with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which began in 1934. Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt made gypsy jazz popular. It mixed American swing, French dance hall "musette", and Eastern European folk music. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti started the guitar-and-violin partnership of the genre after people heard them live or on Okeh Records in the late 1920s.

Post-war jazz

See also: 1940s in jazz, 1950s in jazz, 1960s in jazz, 1970s in jazz, and album era

When World War II began, jazz had new challenges. Big bands were very popular and traveled overseas with U.S. soldiers. At home, the war made it hard to keep them going. There were fewer musicians, less music was recorded, and rubber shortages made travel harder. Some young musicians joined bands early. A small group of players in New York, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell, created a new style called bebop. Bebop used more notes, more complicated patterns, and faster speeds than earlier jazz. It was meant to be listened to, not danced to.

After the war, jazz was no longer as popular. Famous big band singers, such as Frank Sinatra, began performing as solo singers. Some musicians moved on to rock and roll, because bebop was harder for audiences to enjoy. In the years that followed, jazz kept changing and new styles appeared, including Afro-Cuban jazz, hard bop, and free jazz. In the 1970s, jazz fusion mixed jazz with rock. In the 1980s, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis led a return to traditional jazz.