Get Jazzed!
Bebop
The concept of traditional jazz first emerged in the 1930s as
jazz writers attempted to distinguish the New Orleans jazz,
which dated back to the turn of the century from the music of
the swing era that followed on its heels.
In the 1940s there was a major rival of New Orleans jazz,
and the music of Joe “King” Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, as
well as surviving pioneers like Bunk Johnson, was recorded
and celebrated by more contemporary artists such as Lu
Watters and Turk Murphy. The term “Dixieland” was used
to describe the many groups of white musicians revisiting
traditional jazz, as well as the recording of some Chicagobased traditionalists of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Eddie
Condon and Bud Freeman. Today, the phrase “traditional
jazz” is also employed to describe such early and influential
styles as ragtime, boogie woogie, and Harlem stride piano,
all of which made important contributions to the evolution of
jazz.
Bebop, often referred to simply as “bop,” was the first
modern, major post-swing style to emerge in jazz.
Through considered revolutionary and starting at its
inception, it is now regarded as one of the fundamental,
classic genres of jazz.
Bebop was developed in the early and mid-1940s by such
legendary musicians as Charlie Parker; Dizzy Gillespie;
Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. These boppers made
harmonic elaborations on the contributions of important
swing era figures like Coleman Hawkins and Lester
Young, and embarked on a new and more rapid style of
improvisation that compressed more ideas into less space,
and made far greater use of altered chords than earlier jazz.
Through some big bands explored bop, smaller groups
such as quintets were usually preferred. Bebop performances
were highly syncopated and explored polyrythmns to an
unprecedented degree. Melodies were given erratic contours,
resulting in somewhat agitated sounding performances that
many found jarring.
A huge debate erupted between those who felt the new
music was a long-awaited breakthrough, and those who
feared that bop injected elitism into jazz and alienate a vast
majority of its listening audience. Both viewpoints have
merit, but the profound and enduring impact of bebop on
jazz history in undeniable.
Big Band & Swing
Cool
A one-stop guide to all things jazz from Da Capo
Jazz 101
Learn the different styles and periods of jazz from Traditional to
Fusion and everything in between.
Traditional
During the big band era, which spanned roughly a decade
from 1935 to 1945, jazz music was at the very forefront
of popular culture in the United States. Ensembles of at
least ten or more musicians, usually featuring a saxophone
section, a brass section consisting of trumpets and
trombones, and a rhythm section comprise of piano, guitar,
bass and drums, were the most popular musical outfits in the
country.
The big bands played in a variety of styles. Dance bands
that specialized in ballad arrangements with little emphasis
on jazz or improvisations, such as those led by Guy
Lombardo and Wayne King, were referred to as “sweet
bands.” Bands which embraced more hard-driving rhythms
and featured the improvisations of stellar soloists, such as
those led by Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Count
Basie, were dubbed “swing” or “hot” bands.
While a conclusive definition of swing music has proved
elusive, it is generally agreed that swing is a rhythmic
phenomenon in which a musician manipulates the pulse and
beat of an up-tempo performance, creating musical patterns
of tension and release that often invoke a sense of excitement
in the listener.
After World War II, new post-war economic realities and
the rise of popular vocalists helped contribute to a significant
decline in big band popularity. The genre continues to this
day, however, and has grown to embrace bop, fusion, and
many other post-swing developments in the history of jazz.
The phrase “cool jazz” is often used as an umbrella term to
describe various subdued and understated styles of modern
jazz that emerged in the 1950s. As a rule, these approaches
forsook much of the frenetic approach widely associated
with bebop.
Cool saxophonists such as Stan Getz and Zoot Sims
embraced the relaxed, melodic approach to improvisation
employed by Lester Young. Cool trumpeters such as Shorty
Rogers and Chet Baker were more concerned with spare
lyricism than their bop-influenced colleagues. Gil Evans and
Gerry Mulligan were among the most influential cool jazz
arrangers.
The phrase “West Coast Jazz” was coined to describe a
significant subgenre of the cool school, namely the modern
jazz styles emanating from California from the late 1940s
through the early 1960s, as exemplified by the work of Bud
Shank, Jimmy Giuffre, Art Pepper and many others. Cool
jazz is sometimes unfairly derided as devoid of emotion,
It is in fact technically daunting music that is often quite
beautiful, and as demanding of a musician’s concentration
and commitment as any modern genre of jazz.
Mainstream
The term “mainstream” was coined by jazz authority
Stanley Dance in the 1950s in an effort to describe what
was at that time the work of contemporary musicians who
discovered the foundation for their inspiration and efforts in
the music and approach of the swing era as it was developed
in the 1930s and 1940s. It was meant to differentiate their
work from the newly emerging schools of modern jazz, such
as bebop.
Labels like “big band music” and “swing” had already
managed to attract a nostalgic glow about them, lessening
their usefulness in describing the relevance of more recent
recordings. The boundaries encompassed by the term
“mainstream jazz” have gradually broadened over the years
(today some elements of bebop and post-bop, for example,
are widely considered mainstream) and today it is employed
more liberally, although such esoteric developments as the
avant-garde and fusion styles would still be considered to lie
outside its scope.
Avant-Garde
The term “avant-garde” and “free jazz” are often used
interchangeably, an unfortunate circumstance that has led to
a number of misconceptions. When free jazz first emerged
in the 1960s, it was an avant-garde movement. Musicians
like Ornette Coleman, who felt constrained by the standard
conventions of bop, forged a new style of improvisation
with a number of variable factors that were not based on any
predetermined, underlying harmonic structure.
Free jazz is best represented by the work of such musicians
as Coleman, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane. By contrast,
the various avant-garde jazz communities of the 1970s and
1980s disdained the label “free jazz,” because much of their
music emphasizes composition and is highly organized.
Avante-garde jazz has many regional schools that meld
elements of free jazz with third-stream innovations and
ethnic music. Prominent avant-garde musicians include
Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell and Sun
Ra.
used to refer to a combination of jazz with rock and soul
influences, a hybrid style that became enormously popular in
the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when avant-garde
experimentation had alienated many jazz listeners. Also
frequently referred to as “jazz-rock,” this movement was
given a huge boost by several Miles Davis albums in the late
1960s, notably “Witches Brew” (1969).
Many of Davis’s sidemen from this period, including Tony
Williams, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea, went on to
form popular fusion outfits of their own.
In most fusion or jazz-rock, the traditional unamplified
acoustic sounds of the instruments are eschewed in favor
of synthesizers, electric keyboards and guitars, and heavily
rock-influenced drumming techniques.
Improvisation tends to take a back seat to catchy rhythmic
vamps and elementary chord progressions, and though some
purists may cringe, the music helped open the door for the
contemporary phenomenon of crossover jazz.
Source: www.jazzonline.com
Fusion
Through elements of jazz combine easily with a wide
variety of musical styles, the term “fusion” is generally
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