The history of jazz

The roots of jazz. The folk songs and plantation dance music of black Americans contributed much to early jazz. These forms of music occurred throughout the Southern United States during the late l800’s.

Ragtime, a musical style that influenced early jazz emerged from the St. Louis, Mo., area in the late 1890’s. It quickly became the most popular music style in the United States. Ragtime was an energetic and syncopated variety of music, primarily forthe piano, that empha­sized formal composition.

The blues is a form of musicthat has always been animportant part of jazz. The blues was especially wide­spread in the American South. Its mournful scale and simple repeated harmonies helped shape the character of jazz. Jazz instrumentalists have long exploited the blues as a vehicle for improvisation.

Early jazz. Fully developed jazz music probably orig­inated in New Orleans at the beginning of the 1900’s. New Orleans style jazz emerged from the city’s own mu­sical traditions of band music for black funeral proces­sions and street parades. Today, this type of jazz is sometimes called classic jazz, traditional jazz, or Dixie­land jazz. New Orleans was the musical home of the first notable players and composers of jazz, including cor­netists Buddy Bolden and King Oliver, cornetist and trumpeter Louis Armstrong, saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet, and pianist Jelly Roll Morton.

Jazz soon spread from New Orleans to other parts of the country. Fate Marable led a New Orleans band that played on riverboats traveling up and down the Missis­sippi River. King Oliver migrated to Chicago, and Jelly Roll Morton performed throughout the United States. Five white musicians formed a band in New Orleans, played in Chicago, and traveled to New York City, call­ing themselves the Original Dixieland Jass Band (the spelling was soon changed to jazz). This group made the earliest jazz phonograph recordings in 1917. Mamie Smith recorded ‘Crazy Blues’ in 1920, and recordings of ragtime, blues, and jazz of various kinds soon popular­ized the music to a large and eager public

The 1920’s have been called the golden age of jazz or the jazz age. Commercial radio stations, which first ap ­ peared in the 1920’s, featured live performances by the growing number of jazz musicians. New Orleans, Mem­phis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit, and NewYork City were all important centers of jazz.

A group of Midwest youths, many from Chicago’s Austin High School, developed a type of improvisation and arrangement that became known as ‘Chicago style’ jazz. These musicians included trumpeters Jimmy McPartland and Muggsy Spanier; cornetist Bix Beider­becke; clarinetists Frank Teschemacher, Pee Wee Rus­sell, Mezz Mezzrow, and Benny Goodman; saxophonists Frankie Trumbauer and Bud Freeman; drummers Dave Tough, George Wettling, and Gene Krupa; and guitarist Eddie Condon. They played harmonically inventive music, and the technical ability of some of the players, especially Goodman, was at a higher level than that of many earlier performers.

In New York City, James P. Johnson popularized a new musical style from ragtime called stride piano. In stride piano, the left hand plays alternating single notes and chords that move up and down the scale while the right hand plays solo melodies, accompanying rhythms, and interesting chordal passages. Johnson strongly influ­enced other jazz pianists, notably Count Basie, Duke El­lington, Art Tatum, Fats Wailer, and Teddy Wilson.

Fletcher Henderson was the first major figure in big band jazz. In 1923, he became the first leader to organ­ize a jazz band into sections of brass, reed, and rhythm instruments. His arranger, Don Redman, was the first to master the technique of scoring music for big bands. Various Henderson bands of the 1920’s and 1930’s in­cluded such great jazz instrumentalists as Louis Arm­strong and saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins.

Armstrong made some of his most famous record­ings with his own Hot Five and Hot Seven combos from 1925 to 1928. These recordings rank among the master­pieces of jazz, along with his duo recordings of the same period with pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines. Armstrong also became the first well-known male jazz singer, and popularized scat singing—that is, wordless syllables sung in an instrumental manner.

During the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, jazz advanced from relatively simple music played by performers who often could not read music to a more complex and so­phisticated form. Among the musicians who brought about this change were saxophonists Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, and Johnny Hodges; the team of vio­linist Joe Venuti and guitarist Eddie Lang; and pianist Art Tatum. Many people consider Tatum the most inspired and technically gifted improviser in jazz history.

The swing era flourished from the mid-1930’s to the mid-1940’s. In 1932, Duke Ellington recorded his composition “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” “Swing” was soon adopted as the name of the newest style of jazz. Swing emphasizes four beats to the bar. Big bands dominated the swing era, especially those of Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington.

Benny Goodman became known as the “King of Swing.” Starting in 1934, Goodman’s bands and combos brought swing to nationwide audiences through ball­room performances, recordings, and radio broadcasts. Goodman was the first white bandleader to feature black and white musicians playing together in public performances. In 1936, he introduced two great black soloists—pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. Until then, racial segregation had held back the progress of jazz and of black musicians in particular. In 1938, Goodman and his band, and several guest musi­cians, performed a famous concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Their performance was one of the first by jazz musicians in a concert hall setting.

Other major bands of the swing era included those led by Benny Carter, Bob Crosby, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Chick Webb, and, toward the end of the period, Stan Kenton. The bands in Kansas City, Mo., especially the Count Basie band, had a distinctive swing style. These bands relied on the 12-bar blues form and riff backgrounds, which consisted of re­peated simple melodies. They depended less heavily on written arrangements, allowing more leeway for rhyth­mic drive and for extended solo improvisations.

Boogie-woogie was another jazz form that became popular during the 1930’s. Chiefly a piano style, it used eight beats to the bar instead of four. Boogie-woogie featured the traditional blues pattern for most themes. The music had an intense quality that created excite­ment through the repetition of a single phrase. Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis, and Pinetop Smith were among its most important artists.

Jazz vocalists came into prominence during the swing era, many singing with big bands. Many fine jazz singers emphasized popular songs. These singers included Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat”King” Cole, Carmen McRae, and Sarah Vaughan. Blues singing at its best can be heard in recordings by Jimmy Rushing, lack Teagarden, Joe Turner, and Dinah Washington. In addition to singing, Nat ‘King’ Cole was a superb jazz pi­anist and jack Teagarden was a great jazz trombonist.

Bebop. In the early 1940’s, a group of young musi­cians began experimenting with more complicated chord patterns and melodic ideas in a combo setting. The group included trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, alto saxo­phonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelo­nious Monk, and drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach. The style they developed became known as bebop or bop.

Most bop musicians had an exceptional technique. They played long, dazzling phrases with many notes, dif­ficult intervals, unexpected breaks, and unusual turns in melodic direction. On slower tunes, they displayed a keen ear for subtle changes of harmony. Only extremely skilled musicians were able to play bebop well, and only sophisticated listeners at first appreciated it.

In bebop performances, musicians usually played an intricate melody, followed with long periods of solo im­provisation, and restated the theme at the end. The bass­ist presented the basic beat for the group by plucking a steady moving bass line. The drummer elaborated the beat with sticks or brushes on cymbals, snare drum, and tom-tom. The bass drum was reserved for unexpected accents called ‘bombs’. The pianist inserted complex chords at irregular intervals to suggest, rather than state, the complete harmonies of the piece.

Hard hop. Bebop was followed in the 1950’s by hard hop, or funky, jazz This form emphasized some of the traditional values of jazz derived from gospel and blues music, including rhythmic drive, uninhibited tone and volume, and freedom from restricting arrangements. The hard bop leaders were drummer Art Blakey and pi­anist Horace Silver. Blakey led a combo called the Jazz Messengers from the mid-1950’s until his death in 1990. The Jazz Messengers served as a training ground for many of the greatest soloists in jazz history. Trumpeter Clifford Brown and drummer Max Roach were co­leaders of another outstanding hard bop combo.

Cool jazz originated in the works of such musicians astenor saxophonist Lester Young, who starred with Count Basie, and guitarist Charlie Christian, who played with Benny Goodman. In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, these musicians made changes in the sound and style of jazz improvisation. For example, they softened the tones of their instruments, used syncopation more subtly, and played with a more even beat.

In 1948, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz recorded a slow, romantic solo of Ralph Burns’s composition ‘Early Au­tumn’ with the Woody Herman band. This work pro­foundly influenced many younger musicians. In 1949 and 1950, a group of young musicians that included trumpeter Miles Davis, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, bari­tone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, and arranger Gil Evans recorded several new compositions. These recordings emphasized a lagging beat, soft instrumental sounds, and unusual orchestrations that included the first suc­cessful use of the French horn and the tuba in modern jazz. The recordings, with Davis as leader, were later re­leased as ‘The Birth of the Cool.’

During the 1950’s, many combos became identified with the cool movement. Some of the most successful combos were the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, the Modern jazz Quartet, and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

The spread of jazz. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, the so­phisticated forms of bebop and cool jazz began to gain wide acceptance among intellectuals and college stu­dents. Jazz concerts became popular. Groups of jazz stars made a series of international tours called jazz at the Philharmonic. The international growth of jazz re­sulted in many successful overseas tours by U.S. bands and combos.

The introduction of the 33¹ /₃ rpm long-playing (LP) rec­ord, which was first produced commercially in 1948, also helped spread the popularity of jazz. For 30 years, jazz recordings had been limited to 78 rpm records that restricted performances to about 3 minutes in length. The LP allowed recorded performances to run many minutes. The LP also permitted a number of shorter per­formances to be issued on a single record.

During the 1950’s, musicians in other countries began to improve greatly as jazz performers as they were exposed to performances by American musicians through recordings and concerts. Sweden, France, Germany, Japan, and other countries developed players and com­posers whose work compared favorably with that of the leading Americans. The first foreign jazz musicians to influence Americans were Belgian-born guitarist Django Reinhardt in the late 1930’s, and George Shearing, a blind, English-born pianist who immigrated to the United States in 1947.

In 1954, the first large American jazz festival was held at Newport, R.I. Since then, annual festivals also have been held in Monterey, Calif.; New York City; Chicago; Nice, France; Montreux, Switzerland; Warsaw, Poland; Berlin, Germany; and many other locations throughout the world. These festivals have featured almost all of the most popular jazz musicians and have introduced many extended concert works by Duke Ellington, Billy Stray­born, John Lewis, and others.

The US government began to use jazz as an instrument of international good will in 1956. The U.S. Depart­ment of State sponsored tours of the Near and Middle East and Latin America by a big band led by Dizzy Gilles­pie. In 1962, Benny Goodman toured the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program.

New directions. Beginning in the 1950’s, jazz became even more experimental. Jazz music began to feature nontraditional instruments, such as French horn and bass flute. Jazz musicians began to take an interest in non-Western music, especially the modes (different ar­rangements of scales), melodic forms, and instruments of Africa, India, and the Far East.

In the late 1950’s, John Lewis, musical director of the Modern JazzQuartet, worked with classical musician and composer Gunther Schuller to write and play or­chestral works that combined elements of modern jazz and classical concert music. Stan Kenton also played this so-called third stream music when he toured the United States with a 40-piece orchestra.

Also during this period, pianist George Russell devel­oped a jazz theory of modes. In 1959, the Miles Davis combo, with pianist Bill Evans and saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, recorded composi­tions and improvised solos based on modes rather than on patterns of chords.

In 1960, saxophonist Ornette Coleman reshaped the thinking of younger jazz musicians when he recorded the album Free Jazz with a double quartet. In this re­cording, Coleman discarded harmony, melody, and reg­ular rhythms. He substituted unstructured improvisation played atonally (in no definite key). Pianist Cecil Taylor and bassist Charles Mingus conducted similar atonal ex­periments.

In the 1960’s, the influence of the music of India en­tered jazz through the adaptations of John Coltrane. Jazz musicians also began to use more unusual meters, such as ⁵ /₄, ⁷/₄ and ⁹/_8.

Fusion. In the 1970s, many musicians blended jazz and rock music into fusion jazz. Fusion combined the melodic and improvisational aspects of jazz with the rhythms and instruments of rock.. Electronic music played an important part in fusion. Jazz pianists began exploring the increased sound potential of synthesizers. Horn and string players began to use electronics to in­tensify, distort, or multiply their sounds. Many well-known jazz musicians gained new popularity by playing fusion. Some of the best-known fusion musicians were guitarist George Benson, trumpeters Donald Byrd and Miles Davis, pianist Herbie Hancock, and two combos, Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

At the same time, many veteran jazz musicians re­tained their popularity by loading groups that played in the swing, bebop, and cool styles. These leaders in­cluded Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan, and Oscar Peterson.

The late 1900’s. During he l980’s, a number of young jazz musicians returned to mainstreamjazz. Main­stream jazzincludes elements of the swing, cool and bebop styles. The most widely acclaimed young musi­cian of the 1930’s was trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a performer of both jazz and classical music. Marsalis plays with brilliant technique and tone. He and his brother, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, have led excel­lent hard bop combos.

Many young musicians continued to forge ahead with fusion groups. Two of the most widely respected fusion artists are the brothers trumpeter Randy Brecker and saxophonist Michael Brecker. In addition, Jane Ira Bloom displays a mastery of the soprano saxophone and the synthesizer.

In the 1980’s, some socalled NewWave musicians adopted minimalism, a style that often repeats simple patterns for longperiods of time. Trombonist George Lewis has experimented with combinations of free jazz, synthesized sound, African rhythms, and unusual horn techniques. Another trombonist of dazzling technique is Ray Anderson. Bebop, rock, popular, free, and various mixtures are all blended in his recordings. One group, the World Saxophone Quartet, omitted the rhythm sec­tion while preserving most of the other traditional rhyth­mic, harmonic, and melodic elements of jazz.

Today, jazz continues to feature a variety of styles. Many musicians play in historic styles such as swing and bebop. Others seek a more experimental approach. For example, the Art Ensemble of Chicago blends free jazz, African costumes and makeup, exotic instruments, and surprise techniques into theatrical musical events. Or­nette Coleman’s group, Prime Time, mixes tree and free and fusion jazz in new and interesting ways.

Electronics technology is gaining a greater role in jazz music. Such young jazz composers as Michael Daugherty are demonstrating that live musicians can in­teract creatively with computer-generated sound.

By the early 1990’s, a new generation of young jazz musicians had emerged, inspired by the commertial and artistic success of Wynton Marsalis, Young musi­cians who have gained critical praise include saxophon­ists Scott Hamilton and Christopher Hollyday, pianist Marcus Roberts, trumpeters Philip Harper arid Roy Hargrove, trombonist Dan Barrett, and guitarist Howard Alden.

 

 

Don’t you know your house from your garage?

Check out Lucy Taylor’s clubbing guide and all

will become clear…

THE BUFFER’S GUIDE TO CLUBBING

 

Whether you get down to techno or salsa, drum’n’bass or ambient you’ve never had such a vast choice of dance sounds to bump and grind the night away to. Today’s dance music is the culmination of 20 years of innovation and experimentation
by DJs in Britain and America as well as our own homegrown
talent. It began in New York in the early 70s where a thriving,
predominantly black, underground music scene in clubs such as the Loft played the classic disco sound, typified by tracks released on the legendary Philadelphia label. New York’s DJs stamped their personalities on the disco sound using computers and digital technologies. Their efforts were led by the inspirational and innovative Kraftwerk, a German electro band. With the release of Saturday Night Fever in 1978 the early New York sound burst into the mainstream and disco was established as the sound of the 70s.

Clubs like 2001 Odyssey and the Garage in New York were pioneering hotbeds of dancing and musical talent where DJs added subtle synthetic textures to the disco sound and began rapping lyrics to disco rhythms. This style came to be known as garage.

Elsewhere, in 1977 another scene was emerging in Chicago. Frankie Knuckles, a DJ in the Warehouse began to take the elements of the disco sound apart —slicing, cutting and editing the music — he introduced pre-programmed rhythms recorded on to a beatbox. Along with DJs like Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk and Ralphi Rosario, Knuckles introduced drum machines for the first time. House music (named after its eponymous first venue the Warehouse) was born.

One musical advance led to another. In Detroit Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson took the Chicago house sound, then cut and mixed it with seminal tracks by electronic bands Kraftwerk, the Human League and Depeche Mode. The result was funk with a heavy drum sound, called techno.

Another dimension of the burgeoning sound of dance music was heavily influenced by the holiday island of Ibiza, a mecca for British clubbers in the early 80s. DJs Paul Oakenfoid,

Andy Weatherall and Terry Farley who’d played funk and hip-hop in Ibiza set out to recreate the holiday experience in London. Oakenfold established Future while another Ibiza convert Danny Rampling set up Shoom. The scene exploded as E became the love drug of a post-hippie generation and a new sound resulted — acid house. In 1988 more and more clubs changed their music policy to acid house. However, the scene was moving to disused airstrips and aircraft hangers and would come to be regarded as the first Summer of Love.

A subgenre of dance music to emerge out of the rave culture was hardcore which was to remain largely underground. It was experimental, faster, harder acid house. Rupert Howe writing for The Face in March 1997 described it as “based around a series of tried-and-tested motifs: jittery synth stabs, big piano breakdowns and helium-pitch vocals… with the relentless 4/4 kickdrum which powers the music along in a state of permanent rapture”. Matthew Collin in his book Altered State, the Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House describes it as having “harsher edges and manic velocity”.

Dance music was now breaking up and developing in numerous directions. Another splinter was a fusion of techno, house and jazz-funk with a deep bassline and ragga-influenced vocal style called jungle.

Artists instrumental in developing jungle during the early 90s were Massive Attack and Goldie. Drums and bass became the lead instruments using breakbeats with influences from hardcore, house, reggae, hip-hop, soul, jazz and techno. Drum’n’bass was to enter the commercial mainstream with Goldie’s landmark album, Timeless, in 1995.

Clubbing today is a synergy of all the musical influences that came before. It has expanded and developed in many directions at once and many of the original subgenres still thrive. The next generation of DJs and artists are already puffing their own spin on the music. Radio stations no longer boycott dance music but actively promote it in an attempt to attract young listeners. Advertisers use techno or ‘tripping’ imagery to sell everything from soft drinks to cars — and dance music now straddles both the counterculture and the mainstream.

In Ireland, the rise of the one-nighter has led to clubs staging different musical themes each night of the week to attract different crowds. Martin Thomas who runs Strictly Fish in Dublin says: “People come to our clubs more for the concept than for the specific DJ that may be playing that night. They come because it’s a fun-based package”. In contrast the clubber that frequents club nights organised by Influx is a different animal altogether. He or she is “the more discerning music listener” according to Influx. You’d therefore expect to get a different crowd at Influx’s techno night in Dublin’s Red Box on alternate Saturdays to Freestylin at the Funnel on Saturdays where there’s a mix of funk, hip-hop and techno.

Denis O’Mullane of Mor Disco in Cork says it’s not the concept or the DJs so much as a more universal instinct which brings people into clubs. “The primary reason people go to clubs is to meet people of the opposite sex or of the same sex. The second reason is to drink or take drugs and the third is for the music. You can do the second and third at home but you’ve got to go out to do the first. There should be a charged energy in the air when you go into a club — you are entering a sexual world.”

New clubs, new DJs, new sounds give Irish clubbers more choice than ever before. DJs such as David Holmes and Robbie Nelson are starting to establish themselves on the international scene. There are also a number of dance labels springing up and major record companies are taking more of an interest in what Irish DJs have to offer. Mark Kavanagh’s Clubmix album recently released by PolyGram is a case in point.

As Matthew Collin says in his book Altered State, some DJs “create something that is more than the sum of the vinyl itself, forcing genres into new shapes. Some have actively instigated musical advances”.

The dance scene has come a long way. It’s no longer the preserve of the clubbing anorak or the acid-house hippie but instead offers a vast choice of sounds, style and scenes — and appeals to a much broader following. Just remember to get on up and dance the night away.