Jazz Music: A Progressive Work of Art

The decade of the 1940’s was an important era in the history of jazz. The 1940’s was a transition from traditional jazz into modern jazz. Leading this transition was the introduction of the Bebop period in Jazz. Bebop created controversy in the jazz world for being a contradiction to traditional jazz and was widely disliked by many audiences across America. Despite its controversy, Bebop, also referred to as “Bop,” was one of the most important eras in the history of Jazz. The technical creations by some of Bebop’s greatest musicians influenced future generations of jazz musicians

The second generations of Jazz musicians were some like Joe “King” Oliver, Kid Ory, and Jelly Roll Morton. These people formed a small band and started to reshape the way the original Jazz music was played. They have made it into a different style with more complications and twists and turns. And so it became known as “Hot Jazz”. King Oliver found a young artist by the name of Louis Armstrong. He soon grew to become the greatest Jazz musician anyone has known. He is still a big star in the world today. By the 20th Century, African-American musical styles became the dominant force.

Thesis: Although Jazz music was first introduced over 80 years ago, the genre still influences artists and the new music they make to this day.

Jazz is the world - famous music genre that originated from the African - American communities that existed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the town of New Orleans, United States. The genre of jazz has many subgenres which have evolved over time to give us current modern day jazz. The two jazz genres which will be compared and contrasted in this essay will be the two subgenres; Bebop, and Ragtime Jazz, which differ but at the same time have some similarities.

From its inception, Jazz has applied both innovative approaches in different degrees and boundless configuration. And has continually amplified, progress, and modify music through various distinctive episodes of growth. So, an all-encompassing denotation of jazz is likely vain. Additionally, jazz as a music whose prime attribute was “improvisation,” for example, revealed to be too regulated and chiefly false. Meanwhile composition, adaptation, and ensembles have also been imperative constituent of Jazz (for most of its backstory). Furthermore, “syncopation” and “swing,” often viewed as important and distinctive to jazz, are certainly lacking the genuineness of it, whether of the 1920s (or of later decades). However, the prolonged perception that swing could not transpire without syncopation was utterly refuted when trumpeter Louis Armstrong often produced vast swing while playing repeated, and unsyncopated quarter notes (Armstrong, L., Fitzgerald, E., & Middleton, V. (1988). Satchmo. Gong.)

Picture this: the year is 1926 and you are walking down the street in downtown Chicago. You pass a crowded club, where you hear the upbeat and speedy rhythms of music pouring out. The sound consumes you, fills you with joy, and persuades you to dance. You walk into the club to find numerous people swinging and tossing themselves around each other, enjoying the fast-paced and boisterous music. This is the appearance of jazz music, and in the early 20th century, jazz music swept the nation. With artists like Jelly Roll Morton, Joe King Oliver, Sidney Bichet , Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, jazz filled the souls of Americans, promoting a free and fun lifestyle. Although these artists had different beginnings,

During the early 1900’s, a new style of music began to take shape in the colorful city of New Orleans. People from all over the world came to exchange stories, conversation, and music. Although it is a very hard genre of music to define, it is said that Jazz is the combination of European and African music that was brought in via the ports. With mostly an African American population, the musicians shared their music in Storyville - a cultural melting pot, and began to spread the “New Orleans Sound”. They contributed to what would soon be known as Jazz in 1917. The spontaneous nature of Jazz’s syncopation and sound makes it a very humanistic style of music and makes every performance original. Every day we improvise, whether it is in conversation or spur of the moment decisions. These truly unique elements caused Jazz to become a symbol of America, and changed music forever.

The Jazz Age was a national undertaking that took place in America during the 1920’s, also known as “the Roaring Twenties” from which both jazz music and dance emerged. Despite the era ending with the beginning of The Great Depression in the 1930’s, jazz has lived on in American pop culture. The birth of jazz music is often credited to African-Americans, but it soon expanded to America’s white middle class. This resulted in jazz being combined by both African-American traditions and ideals with white middle class society.

Jazz music originated in New Orleans around the beginning of the 20th century, developing through various increasingly complex styles. These scores are generally marked by intricate, propulsive rhythms; polyphonic ensemble playing; improvisatory, virtuosic solos; melodic freedom and a harmonic idiom. These pieces range from simple diatonicism, through chromaticism, to atonality (Dictionary.com). The foundation of jazz is associated with the Black experience in the United States, but different cultures have added their own personal experiences and styles to this art form as well. As a result of jazz spreading around the world, it grew locally, regionally, and nationally in cultures. Each decade brought a new form of jazz including brass bands in the twenties, swing bands in the thirties, and smooth cool jazz in the forties.

A style of music that was created in the 20th century, Jazz has had a major impact on American culture. Originating from work songs African American slaves used to sing on plantations, the foundations of jazz first began as a three piece music group using instruments like the Fiddle, Banjo and the drum. These instruments formed a style known as Ragtime, which can be recognized as one of the first styles that marked the birth of jazz. Although jazz grew out of a lifestyle shaped by plantation life, over the course of the next hundred years, jazz evolved immensely, as it underwent many changes and branched off into various substyles. In the beginning of the 1900s, New Orleans style of Jazz also known as “Classic Jazz” became tremendously popular to all ethnicities. Performed by black, whites and African American creoles, Classic Jazz took the form of a small-band. These bands would performed at parties and dances with large brass instruments that had been salvaged from the civil war which include the clarinet, banjo, bass, guitar saxophone, cornet, trombone, tuba, drums and occasionally a piano. This dynamic new music combined syncopation of ragtime with modified popular melodies like marches, hymns work song and the blues. However in 1925 everything changed as Jazz introduced a new genre called Hot Jazz. This new style of jazz was characterized by spontaneous collective solos, that stirred up an emotional and “hot” climax. Additionally Hot Jazz was played with drums, banjo

The music was upbeat just like the mentality of the era it was composed. After the World War 1, people embarked on the beliefs of the American dream and focused their attention on the innovation and creativity. Although there was conservative mentalities, the innovation and creativity mind was the spreading very fast in America. It was at this moment that jazz music was developed. The jazz age has been associated bebop music and made the era a period of innovative music (Porter, 2002). Most music in the modern era such as rhythm and blues, the hip-hop, rock songs and pop, got their roots from the jazz music. The jazz music focused on the music itself, and the used lyrics would tell that the instruments suggest. Just like the modern jazz, it made it easy for people to dance and enjoyable and most of the people would sit and listen. Modern music have tried to embody the appeal of the jazz music, and this forms one of the many ways in which jazz music modeled the music today. Despite the fact that the era of jazz music gone, the legacy used in the music will never be forgotten, due to the permanent stamp it did place in the world

During the 1950s many musicians began reacting to bebop and experimenting with it and trying to put their own twist to it. These jazz players were taking a cue from 1949 Miles Davis recording “Birth of the Cool,”

Bebop was one of the first styles of music to be classified as "modern" jazz and not as popular as swing music. Bebop melodies were very difficult, full of notes and off-beat. It was hard to dance to. It is a different kind of jazz that not everyone can play. Swing Era has also been called the Big Band Era. Majority bands usually had a featured vocalist and each band had a recognizable feature. Dancing was very important in the Swing

Cool Jazz originated in the late 1940 's. It was created from the mix of classical music and jazz music. Miles Davis is known as the creator of cool jazz and his most important album was "Birth of Cool". People also say that cool jazz was a smoother style of bebop. The rhythm of cool jazz is more of a melodic flow. Cool jazz also originated in New York

The mystery of Jazz and its powerful impact on the music community can be explained largely by the context of it’s creation. Jazz was born in the United States, and because of this, many have referred to Jazz as “America’s music.” Like America, Jazz has a balance between structure and spontaneity. It capitalizes on the fluidity of the musicians, having several different instruments with independent spirits, coming together as one to form a great piece of music. Unlike other styles of music, Jazz has a certain way about it that makes it stand-alone in the world of genres. It improvises, moves, and transforms itself in a moment’s notice based on the musician’s intuition. Just as America harbors democracy, so too does a jazz ensemble, showing both the responsibility to a larger group, yet still allowing room for individual freedom. It all comes down to how well others can respect the overall framework and structure of the jingle.