Jazz

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville songs, and dance music. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in both traditional and popular music. Jazz is known for its swing and blue notes, 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 local communities, which created many different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s. It combined earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with group polyphonic improvisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition, either in New Orleans or anywhere else. In the 1930s, the most popular styles were arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvised style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes). Bebop emerged in the 1940s. It moved jazz away from danceable popular music and toward a more challenging "musician's music" that was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, bringing calmer, smoother sounds and long, flowing melodic lines.

The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which brought influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups, especially to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s. It used the mode, or musical scale, as the basis for musical structure and improvisation. Free jazz also explored playing without regular meter, beat, and formal structures. Jazz fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with the rhythms, electric instruments, and loud amplified sound of rock music. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful and received a great deal of radio airplay. 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 is believed to be related to jasm, a slang word from 1860 that meant "pep" or "energy." The earliest written use of the word appeared in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times. In it, 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. The word was used in a music setting in 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune, and in New Orleans in a 1916 article in the Times-Picayune about "jas bands." Musician Eubie Blake, speaking to National Public Radio, said the word was once spelled in a rude way that people would not say in front of ladies. The American Dialect Society later 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 defining elements. This comes from earlier music such as blues, a folk music that grew partly from the work songs and field hollers of African-American enslaved people 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 interprets a tune in their own way, so the same piece is never played exactly the same twice. Depending on mood, experience, and interaction with other musicians or the audience, a performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures.

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–1940s, big bands relied more on arrangements that were written or learned by ear, with soloists improvising within them. In the bebop era of the 1940s, small groups with minimal arrangements took over, 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 outlines the structure and complements the soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz, the separation between soloist and band is reduced, and chords, scales, and meters may be abandoned. Since bebop, some commercial jazz or jazz influenced by popular music has been criticized. Black musicians rejected the Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s as shallow nostalgia for white audiences, while traditional jazz fans dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as a betrayal. Others argue that jazz can absorb and transform many styles, and by avoiding fixed norms, it allows avant-garde styles to emerge.

Diversity in jazz

For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to 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" genre that expresses whiteness. White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and other parts of the U.S. Papa Jack Laine, who ran 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, were the first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent 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 change attitudes toward race in the U.S. Women have also contributed to jazz throughout its history. Vocalists 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 instrumentalists, though they are less familiar. Women began playing instruments in jazz in the early 1920s and became especially known on piano. During World War II, when male musicians were drafted, many all-female bands took their place. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, founded in 1937, became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and 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, and she was 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 played a significant 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 thrive in jazz partly because of the probationary whiteness allotted to them at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans and Jewish Americans were sympathetic to each other's plight, 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 developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was also a vital figure in jazz's progress. He led a racially integrated band called King of Swing, and his 1938 jazz concert at Carnegie Hall was the first ever played there, described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history." Shep Fields also helped popularize sweet jazz through appearances and big band remote broadcasts from venues such as Chicago's Palmer House, Broadway's Paramount Theater, and the Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His light, elegant style stayed popular with audiences for nearly three decades, 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 rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville songs, and dance music. It also drew on American and European classical music, mixed with African and enslaved people's folk songs and the influence of West African culture. Its style has changed many times, because each performer adds a personal interpretation and improvisation, and this is one of the genre's greatest appeals.

By the 1700s, enslaved people in New Orleans gathered at a market in an area that later became known as Congo Square, famous for its African dances. Many Africans came from West Africa to North America through the Atlantic slave trade, and they brought strong musical traditions with them. Because the Black Codes banned drumming by enslaved people, African rhythms survived in the United States mostly through body rhythms 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, and 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 banned the sale of alcoholic drinks. This led to secret bars called speakeasies, which became lively places for popular music, dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes during the Jazz Age. Many older people saw jazz as a threat to old cultural values and linked it to the Roaring '20s. Henry van Dyke of Princeton University called jazz "not music at all," and 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, and in 1922 it became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings. That same year, Bessie Smith made her first recordings. Chicago was developing "Hot Jazz," and King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924. Despite its Southern black origins, jazzy dance music played by white orchestras had a larger market. In 1918, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra became a hit in San Francisco. He signed with Victor and became the top bandleader of the 1920s, hiring white musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Frankie Trumbauer, and Joe Venuti. In 1924, Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which his orchestra premiered. Olin Downes, reviewing the concert in The New York Times, said the piece showed extraordinary talent, and jazz began to be recognized as a notable musical form. After Whiteman's band toured Europe successfully, big hot jazz orchestras caught on with other white bandleaders, including Fred Waring, Jean Goldkette, and Nathaniel Shilkret. Whiteman's success led black artists to follow, 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 featured soloist. Around the same time, Guy Lombardo formed his Royal Canadians Orchestra in Canada, one of Armstrong's favorite "sweet jazz" big bands. Armstrong's solos went well beyond the original New Orleans style, and according to Schuller, his bandmates' solos, including a young Coleman Hawkins, sounded "stiff, stodgy" by comparison. The example of "Mandy, Make Up Your Mind" shows his solo improvising. After leaving Henderson's group, Armstrong formed his Hot Five band, where he popularized scat singing.

Main articles: Swing music and 1930s in jazz

In the 1930s, popular swing big bands were the top sound, and some virtuoso 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 segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders hired black musicians while 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, marked the move from big bands toward the bebop of the 1940s. An early 1940s style called jump blues used small groups and blues chords, drawing on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Duke Ellington spent the late 1920s and 1930s in Washington, D.C.'s jazz scene developing a new sound for his orchestra. He experimented with orchestral sounds, harmony, and musical form, and some of his tunes became hits. He called his music American Music rather than jazz. His works were often written for his musicians, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Concerto for Cootie" for Cootie Williams (later "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with Bob Russell's lyrics), 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 brought a "Spanish Tinge" to big-band jazz. Because American jazz records were released only in small numbers in Europe, European jazz traces many of its roots to American artists such as James Reese Europe, Paul Whiteman, and Lonnie Johnson, whose 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, and in 1926 Fred Elizalde and His Cambridge Undergraduates began broadcasting on the BBC. In France, the style took full swing with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which began in 1934. Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, which mixed American swing, French dance hall "musette", and Eastern European folk. Some researchers believe Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti pioneered the guitar-violin partnership of the genre after they were heard 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 faced new challenges. Big bands had been very popular and traveled overseas with U.S. soldiers, but at home the war made it hard to keep them going. Fewer musicians were available, record making was limited, and a shortage of rubber made touring harder. Some young musicians joined bands early, and 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 complex patterns, and faster tempos than earlier jazz. It was meant to be listened to rather than danced to.

After the war, jazz lost its place as popular music. Famous big band singers, such as Frank Sinatra, began performing as solo pop singers. Some musicians moved on to rock and roll because bebop was harder for audiences to enjoy. In the decades that followed, jazz kept changing with new styles, 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.