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Jazz is an original American musical art form which originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States out of a confluence of African and European music traditions. The use of blue notes, call-and-response, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note of ragtime are characteristics traceable back to jazz's West African pedigree.[1] During its early development, jazz also incorporated music from New England's religious hymns and from 19th and 20th century American popular music based on European music traditions.[2] The origins of the word "jazz," which was first used to refer to music in about 1915, are uncertain (for the origin and history, see Jazz (word)).
Jazz has, from its early 20th century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, from New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s, big band-style swing from the 1930s and 1940s, Bebop from the mid-1940s, a variety of Latin-jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and later developments such as acid jazz.
History
Origins
- See also: Origins of the blues
African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion, around the 1780s.
By 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million Africans to the United States, mostly to the East-Side New York. The slaves largely came from West Africa and brought strong tribal musical traditions with them.[3] Lavish festivals featuring African dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843, as were similar gatherings in New England and New York. African music was largely functional, for work or ritual, and included work songs and field hollers. In the African tradition, they had a single-line melody and a call-and-response pattern, but without the Western concept of harmony. Rhythms reflected African speech patterns, and the African use of pentatonic scales led to blue notes in blues and jazz[4]
In the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play Western instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European-American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized such music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted African-American cakewalk music, South American, Caribbean and other slave melodies as piano salon music. Another influence came from black slaves who had learned the harmonic style of hymns and incorporated it into their own music as spirituals.[5] The origins of the blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. Paul Oliver has drawn attention to similarities in instruments, music and social function to the griots of the West African savannah under influence.[6]
1890s-1910s
Ragtime
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Shoe Tickler Rag, cover of the music sheet for a song from 1911 by Wilbur Campbell
Emancipation of slaves led to new opportunities for education of freed African-Americans, but strict segregation meant limited employment opportunities. Black musicians provided "low-class" entertainment at dances and minstrel shows, and later vaudeville and many marching bands formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs and brothels.[7][8]
In 1897, the white composer William H. Krell published his "Mississippi Rag" as the first written piano instrumental rag. The classically-trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in the following year, then in 1899 had an international hit with "Maple Leaf Rag". He wrote numerous popular rags combining syncopation, banjo figurations and sometimes call-and-response, which led to the ragtime idiom being taken up by classical composers including Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky. Blues music was published and popularized by W. C. Handy, whose "Memphis Blues" of 1912 and "St. Louis Blues" of 1914 both became jazz standards.[9]
New Orleans music
The Bolden Band around 1905.
Morton published "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first jazz work in print.
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In New Orleans, many early jazz performers played in the brothels and bars of red-light district around Basin Street called "Storyville".[10] As well, many marching bands played at lavish funerals arranged by the African American community. The instruments used in marching bands and dance bands became the basic instruments of jazz: brass and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale and drums. Small bands of primarily self-taught African American musicians, many of whom came from the funeral-procession tradition of New Orleans, played a seminal role in the development and dissemination of early jazz, traveling throughout Black communities in the Deep South and, from around 1914 on, Afro-Creole and African American musicians playing vaudeville shows took jazz to western and northern US cities.
A "...black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of European [marching band] musical tradition, even though the performers were using European styled instruments."[11][12] Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville. From 1904, he toured with vaudeville shows around southern cities, also playing in Chicago and New York. His "Jelly Roll Blues", which he composed around 1905, was published in 1915 as the first jazz arrangement in print, introducing more musicians to the New Orleans style.[13]
That's How Dixie Was born, music sheet cover for a 1936 song
In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912, and his "Society Orchestra" which in 1913 became the first black group to make recordings.[14][15] The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson's development of "Stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline.[16]
The Original Dixieland Jass Band's "Livery Stable Blues" released early in 1917 is one of the early jazz records.[17] That year numerous other bands made recordings featuring "jazz" in the title or band name, mostly ragtime or novelty records rather than jazz. In September 1917 W.C. Handy's Orchestra of Memphis recorded a cover version of "Livery Stable Blues".[18] In February 1918 James Reese Europe's "Hellfighters" infantry band took ragtime to Europe during World War I,[19] then on return recorded Dixieland standards including "The Darktown Strutter's Ball".[15]
1920s and 1930s
The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921.
Prohibition in the United States [from 1920 to 1933] banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit speakeasies becoming lively venues of the "Jazz Age", an era when popular music included current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes. From 1919 Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San Francisco and Los Angeles where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band to make recordings.[20][21] However, the main centre developing the new "Hot Jazz" was Chicago, where King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. That year also saw the first recording by Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers.[22]
Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924 and became the first white player widely regarded by black musicians as their artistic equal.[citation needed] Also in 1924 Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band as featured soloist for a year, then formed his virtuosic Hot Five band, also popularising scat singing.[23]Jelly Roll Morton recorded with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in an early mixed-race collaboration, then in 1926 formed his Red Hot Peppers.
There was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras, such as Jean Goldkette's orchestra and Paul Whiteman's orchestra. In 1924 Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premièred by Whiteman's Orchestra. More innovative approaches to jazz arrangements were taken by the Fletcher Henderson band and Duke Ellington's band (which opened an influential residency at the Cotton Club in 1927) in New York and by Earl Hines's Band in Chicago (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe there in 1928). All three significantly influenced the development of big band-style swing music.[24]
Swing
The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band were bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines and Duke Ellington. Other Big Bands, such as Artie Shaw's, Tommy Dorsey's and Benny Goodman's "Orchestra" were highly jazz oriented while others, such as, later, Glenn Miller's, left less space for improvisation.
Swing was also dance music and it was broadcast on the radio 'live' coast-to-coast nightly across America for many years. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to 'solo' and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex and 'important' music.
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. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.
European Jazz
Outside of the United States the beginnings of a distinct European style of jazz emerged in France with the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Belgian guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall "musette" and Eastern European folk with a languid, seductive feel. The main instruments are steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos pass from one player to another as the guitar and bass play the role of the rhythm section.
1940s and 1950s
Dixieland Revival
In the late 1930s there was a revival of "Dixieland" music, harkening back to the original contrapuntal New Orleans style. This was driven in large part by record company reissues of early jazz classics by the Oliver, Morton, and Armstrong bands of the 20s. There were two populations of musicians involved in the revival. One group was comprised of men who had begun their careers playing in the traditional style, and were either returning to it, or continuing what they had been playing all along. In the late 1930s, Bob Crosby's Bobcats led this revival. Other prominent Dixieland revivalists included Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davison. Most of this group were originally midwesterners, although there were a small number of New Orleans musicians involved as well. The second population of revivalists was comprised of young musicians too young to have been involved in early jazz, but who now rejected the contemporary swing style of jazz, and who preferred the traditional approach. The Lu Watters band was perhaps the most prominent of this second group. By the late 1940s, the revival was in full swing. Louis Armstrong formed his Allstars band, which became a leading ensemble in the Dixieland revival. Through the 1950s and 60s, Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz styles in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, although critics paid little attention.[25]
Bebop
In the mid-1940s bebop performers helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value. Influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Max Roach. (See also List of bebop musicians).
Beboppers introduced new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz and engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation which used "passing" chords, substitute chords, and altered chords. The style of drumming shifted as well to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the ride cymbal was used to keep time, while the snare and bass drum were used for unpredictable accents. These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and fellow musicians. By the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary.
Cool jazz
Cool jazz emerged in the late 1940s in New York City, as a result of the mixture of the styles of predominantly white jazz musicians and black bebop musicians. Cool jazz recordings by Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz,
Classical
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