Jazz is a kind of music in which improvisation is typically an important part. In most jazz performances, players play solos which they make up on the spot, which requires considerable skill. There is tremendous variety in jazz, but most jazz is very rhythmic, has a forward momentum called "swing," and uses "bent" or "blue" notes. You can often hear "call--and--response" patterns in jazz, in which one instrument, voice, or part of the band answers another. Jazz can express many different emotions, from pain to sheer joy.
In jazz, you may hear the sounds of freedom-for the music has been a powerful voice for people suffering unfair treatment because of the color of the skin, or because they lived in a country run by a cruel dictator. Jazz musicians place a high value on finding their own sound and style, and that means, for example, that trumpeter Miles Davis sounds very different than trumpeter Louis Armstrong whose sound you can hear in Louis's Music Class.
Jazz musicians like to play their songs in their own distinct styles, and so you might listen to a dozen different jazz recordings of the same song, but each will sound different. The musicians' playing styles make each version different, and so do the improvised solos. Developed in New York City during the early 40s, bop hit the international scene in and took everyone by surprise with its energetic and radical approach to swing jazz music.
In the hands of innovators such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, the old swing music was given much faster tempos and more spare accompaniments from the rhythm section which opened up space for rapid fire pyrotechnical solos. Still a favorite genre in jazz music schools around the world, many clubs still feature be-bop to this day, but today's bop sounds tamer and calmer than the original item.
Bop page. Bossa Nova Although it had been developing throughout the 50s, Bossa Nova became popular in the early 60s as a more mellow alternative to the aggressive urban sounds of hard bop and the avant-garde. Bossa Nova was a Brazilian concoction that combined simplified and slowed down samba rhythms, relaxed cool jazz sensibilities and modern European impressionistic harmonies into a music that was pleasing, but hardly simplistic.
The pulsing relaxed rhythm, marked with hypnotic accents, that defines Bossa Nova can be heard in the songs and guitar rhythms of Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Bossa Nova page. Classic s Jazz Classic Jazz refers more to a transitional era s , rather than any specific style. During the s jazz slowly shifted from the exuberant New Orleans and Dixieland styles toward a more sophisticated and urbane swing style. Many artists who participated in this transition had careers that overlapped into Dixieland in the early 20s, and into swing in the middle 30s.
The leaders of classic s jazz are orchestra leader Fletcher Henderson and his star soloist, Louis Armstrong. The Henderson orchestra did away with the constant polyphonic soloing of New Orleans jazz and replaced it with cool relaxed riffing which provided a background for Armstrong's expressive melodies and exciting solos. Classic jazz is still played by jazz lovers all over the world, although not always with the right feel. Classic s Jazz page.
Cool Jazz Cool jazz arose slowly in the late 40s when many jazz musicians realised there was no point in following in the fast paced be-bop footsteps of Diz and Bird and began to try a more relaxed and quieter approach to playing. Early examples of cool jazz came from Miles Davis' Nonet and Lenny Tristano's group, while later practitioners like Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker showed up on the west coast where cool jazz was often referred to as west coast jazz.
Many cool jazz saxophonists looked to the pre-bop languid sax style of Lester Young for inspiration. Also, 3rd Stream influenced arrangements that featured Baroque style counterpoint became popular during the cool era.
One lasting innovation of the cool genre is the idea of concert hall influenced 'chamber jazz' as pioneered by The Modern Jazz Quartet. For some critics, west coast jazz seemed like a souless sell-out compared to the more challenging and urban flavored be-bop of New York City.
In Miles Davis was one of the first 'cool' band leaders to lead the way to a more aggressive next phase in jazz, hard bop. Cool jazz began to fade before the arrival of fusion and never made a comeback afterwards. Today Cool Jazz is a retro style that defines a certain time and place in jazz history, but is still played by some.
Cool Jazz page. Dixieland Dixieland started as a continuation of the original New Orleans jazz tradition see New Orleans Jazz genre , but in a different locale and under different circumstances. During the early s, many New Orleans musicians drifted up to Chicago seeking work where they continued their musical traditions, but no longer as marching bands.
The more stationary aspect of these bands led to the addition of the piano to the band, while the stand up bass replaced the tuba.
The music also began to evolve as the musicians began to play with a faster more aggressive feel, and the rhythm section began to accent the 2 and 4 of the beat which led to the driving accented rhythms of RnB and rock-n-roll. Dixieland has had many revivals over the years, sometimes authentic and sometimes corny and amateur. To this day you can still find bands all over the world that play this traditional form of jazz. Dixieland page. Ska arose in the early 60s and involved the intersection of American RnB and Caribbean rhythms.
Many professional ska musicians were out of work Jamaican jazz musicians who brought their jazz background and sensibilities to ska recordings. The highly influential Skatalites are a good example of an early jazzy ska band. Reggae grew out of ska and featured slowed down relaxed rhythms, rasta lyrics and African rhythms. The rhythms of reggae have a had a major influence on jazz, as well as the entire world of music.
Dub is reggae music stripped down and re-mixed into mostly instrumental tracks in which individual instrumental parts are constantly shifting in and out of the mix. Dub style mixing has had a huge influence on modern groove based music and can show up in almost any genre. Modern jazz and fusion musicians have often gravitated towards dub as a style to work with and solo over. In the jazz and fusion world, dub has been a major influence on nu jazz and acid jazz. Early Jazz Early Jazz page.
Eclectic Fusion Fusion was a term coined in the early 70s to designate a style of music that involved a combination of jazz, rock, funk and Latin styles.
The Eclectic Fusion artist tends to be a bit more urban and hard edged than the 70s fusion artist, and is liable to call on a much more diverse array of influences. Eclectic Fusion page.
Exotica Exotica can range from silly campy novelty records for 'swingin bachelor pads' to more serious experimental blends of jazz, Latin rhythms, studio technology and modern orchestration. The JMA exotica genre excludes the former but welcomes the latter. Good examples of the more artistic practitioners of the Exotica genre include Martin Denny and Les Baxter. Both Denny and Baxter were accomplished jazz musicians who also drew on a wealth of other musical influences including French impressionistic composers, Afro-Cuban jazz and Polynesian percussion to create highly original and creative musical landscapes.
Other jazz influenced artists that might be found in the Exotica genre include: artists who record creative versions of well known pop songs, artists who juxtapose in-congruent styles in an ironic fashion, artists who have an anachronistic presentation and musical style, and artists who create unique recordings that do not fit easily into any standard genre.
A final common element of many exotica artists is a sense of ironic kitsch, this element is easily recognized by fans of the genre, but may be too subtle for outsiders to recognize. Although the age of tiki lounges has long passed, artists who can be labeled as exotica still exist. Many of today's exotica practitioners create colorful and often psychedelic instrumental tracks similar in length to a pop song. The use of analog synthesizers, vintage keyboards and effects are often common as well.
Many of today's exotica artists came up through the trip-hop scene. Exotica page. Funk The worlds of jazz and funk have been intertwined since the early days when James Brown brought us the One. Both genres have been such an influence on each other over the years that it is often hard to tell where one starts and the other ends. The funk genre at JMA is not an exhaustive list of all the funk bands in the world, but is instead a list of the best, most pure funk bands that are of the most interest to jazz fans.
Funk is a genre that is often misunderstoood, poorly imitated and pimped for all the wrong reasons. You will find none of that at JMA.
Its hard to describe what is pure funk, but often it involves interweaving snippets of syncopated melody that intertwine in circles within loops and land on the one every other bar. Funk artists such as Bootsy and Parliament, with their constant improvised polyphony, are closer to the concept of early jazz than most jazz artists since the s. Funk page. Funk Jazz Funk jazz is a sub-genre of jazz fusion and is basically the blending of funk rhythms with jazz improvisation.
Funk Jazz page. Fusion Rock and RnB came from jazz in the s via the jump blues genre. Needless to say, over the years jazz, rock and RnB have enjoyed a close relationship and have cross-influenced each other from the beginning. In the mid to late 60s, rock and RnB under went major changes with rock becoming much louder and more experimental under the influence of artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Cream, while RnB became more syncopated and abstract with the new funk sound created by James Brown, Bootsy Collins, Sly Stone and Larry Graham.
Meanwhile, Latin jazz was undergoing similar experimental changes under the guidance of artists such as Hermato Pascoal and Flora Purim. At this point in the mid to late 60s, any intersection between jazz, rock, funk and Latin became a radically different form of music that eventually came to be called fusion.
Hard Bop Cool jazz's reign as the prevalent jazz style after bop's demise was short lived as many jazz players, especially on the east coast, wanted to return to a style of jazz that had a little more grit and aggression.
Hard bop was a return to some of the ascetics of bop, but also offered some new differences. Hard bop brought back the faster tempos of the bop era, but in hard bop the harmonic changes did not come in such rapid fire succession and musicians found themselves stretching out on longer modal style solos.
The new emphasis on albums rather than singles also led to longer songs. Hard bop players also began to bring more influences from the church, blues and RnB into jazz which foreshadowed the coming of soul jazz. Despite an influx of avant-garde jazz in the 60s, hard bop remained the prevalent jazz style until the emergence of fusion in the late 60s. Hard bop has enjoyed many revivals over the years and remains one of the most enduring and popular styles in jazz.
Miles Davis is considered an early innovator in the field of hard bop, but Art Blakey and the many musicians who played in his Jazz Messengers are considered to be the epitome of the style. Hard Bop page. Jazz Education In the late 60s, Jamey Aebersold started introducing albums that featured top notch musicians playing the rhythm sections to well known bebop, swing, hard bop and post bop tunes for aspiring musicians to practice soloing over.
It was a brilliant idea, and soon other musicians began to contribute their own play along educational records. Although the idea of the play along record started with jazz, these days you can find such records, CDs, video tapes and DVDs in almost any genre imaginable.
Jazz Education page. Jazz Related Jazz Related page. JMA is only interested in fully developed sophisticated jazz influenced music. We do not list generic trip-hop, internet radio 'chill' tracks or other types of music built with obvious repeating looped samples.
It could be argued that improvised poetry to a syncopated beat is just another form of jazz. For this reason, JMA maintains a select cadre of rap artists chosen for their influence on the development of the genre, or for their close relationship to the greater world of jazz.
Jazz Related Gospel The call and response motifs in gospel music are a direct descendant of African music and plantation field hollers, which makes gospel music a reservoir for African music traditions.
Gospel and jazz have been linked together from the very beginning, and the recent rise in popularity of radio stations that play 'gospel jazz', particularly in the US south, is a testament to the ongoing connection between these two musical forms and how they bring new life to each other. We also include some historically important gospel artists such as Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Jazz Related Gospel page. The best example of that is. It is also interesting to note the appearance of musicians from Jazz influenced. You can still trace back various rhythmic, melodic and harmonic tools put forth in jazz in. From indie to hip.
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