COLEGIUL NAŢIONAL IONITA ASAN CARACAL

COORDINATING TEACHER: STUDENT: IONUT BOTAR VIEZA BIANCA 2010

CONTENTS

RATIONALE……………………………………………………………..3

CHAPTERS

1. 1890s-1910s: Ragtime, Dixieland………………………………...4

2. 1920s-1930s: Boogie-Woogie, Swing, Scat………………………8

3. 1940s-1950s: BeBop, Cool, Free Jazz……………………………12

4. 1960s-1970s: Bossa Nova, Jazz/Rock Fusion, Soul jazz………..15

5. 1980s-2000s: Acid Jazz, World Fusion, Modern Creative……..23

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………..24

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………….…….25

Rationale

2

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

I have chosen this theme bearing in mind Plato’s quotation as mentioned above. Jazz music has always overwhelmed me with its charm and uniqueness. I owe my first encounter with this music to my father who once told me that jazz, like poetry, has no social or national borders and it accompanies us on the span of our life. I felt the power and the impact of his words when I first listened to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”, a song which was to become the soundtrack of my life.

There is an alchemy in jazz music. According to everyone’s moods, you can find joy or sorrow in its sound, you can find bliss, excitement and togetherness. There is no bond so special as that between music and human spirit.

Jazz music was born at the dawns of the 20th century in New Orleans, representing a break from traditional music alongside with the use of improvisation, and despite racial restricted freedoms typical of the age, jazz emerged as a free expression of creation of the black community, playing a major role in the history of arts in the United States of America.

I also approached this subject because I have always been fascinated by negro spirituals, expressions of religious faith, of spiritual devotion and a yearning for freedom from bondage originated by enslaved African-Americans in the United States. The spirituals made me dream of human solidarity and dissolution of racial discrimination, made my heart throb with emotion and side with the tempests of those enslaved as if an universal grief

Jazz has been called America's classical music, and for good reason. Along with the blues, its forefather, it is one of the first truly indigenous musics to develop in America, yet its unpredictable, risky ventures into improvisation gave it critical cache with scholars that the blues lacked. At the outset, jazz was dance music, performed by swinging big bands.

Soon, the dance elements faded into the background and improvisation became the key element of the music. As the genre evolved, the music split into a number of different styles, from the speedy, hard-hitting rhythms of be-bop and the laid-back, mellow harmonies of cool jazz to the jittery, atonal forays of free jazz and the earthy grooves of soul jazz. What tied it all together was a foundation in the blues, a reliance on group interplay and unpredictable improvisation. Throughout the years, and in all the different styles, those are the qualities that defined jazz.

1. 1890s-1910s: RAGTIME, DIXIELAND

3

The music that we call jazz was born around the year 1895 in New Orleans. It brought together the elements of Ragtime, marching band music, and the Blues. What made Jazz different from the other earlier forms of music was the use of improvisation. Jazz represented a break from tradition music where a composer wrote an entire piece of music on paper, leaving the musicians to break their backs playing exactly what was written on the score. In a Jazz piece, however, the song is simply a starting point, or sort of a starting point for the Jazz musicians to improvise around. The song being played may have been popular and well-known that the musicians themselves didn't compose, but once they had finished, the Jazz Musicians had more or less written a new piece of music that bore little resemblance to the original piece. Actually, many of these early musicians were bad sight readers and some couldn't even read music at all. Regardless, their superb playing amazed audiences and the upbeat music they played was a different but well-liked escape from the traditional music of that time.

The first Jazz is thought to have been played by African Americans and Creole musicians in New Orleans. Buddy Bolden, a cornet player, is generally considered to be the first real jazz musician, possessing an incredible sound. Other early players of the time included Freddie Keppard, Bunk Johnson, and Clarence Williams. Most of these musicians may seen unknown to most people, their ideas are still affecting the way Jazz is being played today. Generally these early musicians could not make very much money and were stuck working menial jobs to make a living. The second wave of New Orleans Jazz musicians include such players as Joe Oliver, Kid Ory, and Jelly Roll Morton. These men formed small bands and took the music of earlier musicians, improved its complexity, and gained greater success. This music is known as "Hot Jazz" due to the enormously fast speeds.

A young cornet player by the name of Louis Armstrong was discovered by Joe Oliver in New Orleans. He soon grew to become one of the greatest and most successful musicians of all time, and later one of the biggest stars in the world. The impact of Armstrong and other early Jazz musicians changed the way we look at music, and their work will forever be studied and admired.

Ragtime

Piano ragtime began to be published in the late 1890s. It was immediately successful and subjected to various kinds of popularization, almost all of which have continued. It was (and is) sometimes played fast and shallow, with deliberately still rhythms, on a jangling prepared piano -- so much so that it is difficult to convince some listeners that the early ragtime composers were highly gifted melodists and serious craftsmen who produced an admirable body of musical art.

Ragtime was basically a piano keyboard music that Gilbert Thomas said was an "Afro- American version of the Polka." Somewhere in the background of the music is the Sousa style march, thus the first great ragtime composition, Maple Leaf Rag, by the first great ragtime composer, Scott Joplin, was built on four melodies, or themes. If we assign a letter to each theme, the structure of Maple Leaf Rag comes out to ABACD. In ragtime, these themes were sixteen measures like their European counterparts.

There is every reason to believe that a rich body of Afro-American inspired music preceded ragtime, although there are no recordings from those years. Certainly the cakewalk, an Afro-American dance initially based on an elegant, stylized parody of Southern white courtly manners, preceded it, and there was published cakewalk music, although publishers in those

4

days were not quite sure how to indicate its rhythms properly. But ragtime introduced, in the accents of its right-hand melodies, delightful syncopation onto the heavy 2/4 oompah rhythm of its cakewalk-derived bass line and almost immediately became a kind of national, even worldwide craze.

The first true ragtime composition was published by William Krell called "The Mississippi Rag" in 1897. Tom Turpin, the first published African American composer wrote "The Harlem Rag" the same year. Over the cores of Ragtime’s initial popularity, a number of composers merged as the voice of this musical form, namely James Scott, Louis Chauvin, Joseph Lamb and Scott Joplin.

Little is known of the early development of Ragtime, however it is clear that it surfaced after years of evolution in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Billy Strayhorn, Paris (1960)

Ragtime has been traced to minstrel shows and cakewalks as early as 1895. The cakewalk, originated in the Caribbean’s, arrived in the United States as a syncopated music form based on a march, the polka and a two-step. Once Ragtime emerged as a unquiet musical form, it became a strong base for the music that lay ahead of it, jazz.

By the early 1900s, Ragtime was no longer being performed by a solo pianist. Small orchestras, military bands and piano-banjo combos were among the earliest recordings of Ragtime, which added elements that alluded to popular dance bands of the Dixieland, New Orleans and Swing styles yet to be developed. An individual musical voice was being established in America, it was an exciting era of development and change.

Dixieland

Because the Dixieland revival (one could say fad) of the 1950s was eventually overrun by amateurs, corny trappings (such as straw hats and suspenders), and clichés, many musicians playing in that idiom grew to dislike the term and wanted it to be changed to "traditional" or "classic." But rather than blame the term or the style, it seems more justifiable to separate the professionals from the poor imitators.

Dixieland, a style that overlaps with New Orleans jazz and classic jazz, has also been called "Chicago jazz" because it developed, to an extent, in Chicago in the 1920s. Most typically, the framework involves collective improvisation during the first chorus (or, when there are several themes, for several choruses), individual solos with some riffing by the other horns, and a closing ensemble or two with a four-bar tag by the drummer (which is answered by the full group).

5

Although nearly any song can be turned into Dixieland, there is a consistent repertoire of 40 or so songs that have proven to be reliable. Despite its decline in popularity since the 1950s, Dixieland (along with the related classic jazz and New Orleans jazz idioms) continues to flourish as an underground music style.

Dixieland is an umbrella to indicate musical styles of the earliest New Orleans and Chicago jazz musicians, recorded from 1917 to 1923, as well as its developments and revivals, beginning during the late 1930s. It refers to collectively improvised small band music. Its materials are rags, blues, one-steps, two-steps, marches, and pop tunes. Simultaneous counterlines are supplied by trumpet, clarinet, and trombone, accompanied by combinations of piano, guitar, banjo, tuba, bass, and drums. Major exponents include; Joe King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Paul Mares, Nick LaRocca, Bix Beiderbecke, and Jimmy McPartland.

Major developers and revivalists include Bob Crosby's Bobcats, Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Bob Scobey, Bob Wilber, Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart (World's Greatest Jazz Band), The Dukes of Dixieland, Turk Murphy, and James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band. Aficionados make distinctions between various streams of traditional New Orleans jazz, the earliest Chicago jazz, and the assorted variations that are performed by revivalist bands. Some historians reserve Dixieland for white groups playing traditional jazz. Some restrict it mostly to disciples of the earliest white Chicagoans.

Early New Orleans Dixieland (1900-1917)

The earliest style of jazz, the music played in New Orleans from about the time that Buddy Bolden formed his first band in 1895 until Storyville was closed in 1917, unfortunately went totally unrecorded. However with the success of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917 and the many performances documented in the 1920s, it became possible to hear what this music sounded like in later years.

Ensemble-oriented with fairly strict roles for each instrument, New Orleans Jazz generally features a trumpet or cornet providing a melodic lead, harmonies from the trombone, countermelodies by the clarinet, and a steady rhythm stated by the rhythm section (which usually consists of piano, banjo or guitar, tuba, or bass and drums).

This music is a direct descendant of marching brass bands and, although overlapping with Dixieland, tends to de-emphasize solos in favor of ensembles featuring everyone playing and improvising together. Due to its fairly basic harmonies and the pure joy of the ensembles, it is consistently the happiest and most accessible style of jazz.

As rural music moved to the city and adopted new instruments, the polyphony typical of the African- American singing tradition found an expression in the style now identified as Early New Orleans Dixieland. It differed from the later Chicago Dixieland and the even later revival Dixieland in its instrumentation and rhythmic feeling. These first groups used a front line of a cornet, clarinet, and a trombone. The rhythm section was made up of banjo, tuba, and drums. The origin of these instruments was in the marching bands reflected the need to move while playing.

The rhythm section accompanied the front line on a flat-four fashion, a rhythmic feeling that placed equal emphasis on all four beats of the measure. This equal or flat metric feel was later

6

replaced by Chicago groups with a measure that emphasized the second and fourth beats and was referred to as 2/4 time (accents on 2 and 4).

Chicago Style Dixieland (The 1920s)

The merger of New Orleans Style Dixieland with ragtime style led to what is now referred to as Chicago Style Dixieland. This style exemplified the Roaring Twenties, or to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the jazz age." Chicago was exciting at this time and so was its music. In 1917 with the closing of Storyville in New Orleans, Chicago became the center of jazz activity. Many workers from the south migrated to Chicago and brought with them a continued interest in the type of entertainment they had left behind. The New Orleans instrumentation was augmented to include a saxophone and piano and the influence of ragtime added 2/4 backbeat to the rhythmic feeling. The banjo moved to guitar and the tuba moved to string bass. The tempos were generally less relaxed than New Orleans Dixieland, and the music seemed more aggressively performed. There was jazz activity in other cities as well, mainly New York and Kansas City. These centers would later claim center stage as they moved toward a definition of swing, but during the 1920’s Chicago remained the hub of jazz. During this time in Chicago, Louis Armstrong’s

Louis Armstrong

influence as a soloist was influencing the fabric of otherwise democratic ensemble. His individual style started the trend toward the soloist being the primary spokesperson for jazz.

2. 1920s-1930s: Boogie-Woogie, Swing, Scat

Boogie-Woogie

7

Boogie Woogie, or "barrelhouse" is a blues-based piano style in which the right hand plays an accompaniment figure that resembles a strummed rhythm, such as is typically played on the guitar or banjo in rural blues dances.

This could be expressed as a walking octave, an open-fifth pounded out with a blue third thrown in, or even a simple figure such as falling triad (as in the work of Jimmy Yancey); the approach varies to the pianist. The style probably evolved in the American Midwest alongside that of ragtime, to which it is closely related.

The earliest description of the style occurs in print circa 1880. Elements of boogie-woogie can be found prior to 1910 in piano works by such disparate figures such as Blind Boone, Luckey Roberts and the classical composer Charles Ives. The earliest recorded examples of boogie woogie are found on piano rolls made in 1922 by Cow Cow Davenport, and by the end of the 1920s dozens of boogie woogie pianists had recorded ranging geographically from Texas to Chicago.

Boogie-woogie practically disappeared from records during the depression. However, it returned with a vengeance in the late '30s, popularized by a smart Deane Kincaide arrangement for Tommy Dorsey’s band of the 1929 composition "Boogie Woogie" written by Clarence "Pine Top" Smith, a Chicago pianist who is also credited with coining the term. Boogie-woogie enjoyed its heyday in the early '40s, and as a result, one-time Chicago barrelhouse pianists such as Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson found themselves feted as celebrities in New York’s exclusive café society circles.

Nat King Cole, NYC [Quartet] 1949

After the Second World War interest in the style subsided, but elements of the sound were absorbed into the playing of early rock & roll artists such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. It also remains an important component to New Orleans pop music, as in the work of Professor Longhair and Dr. John. Among living pianists working in nightclubs and cocktail bars, it can be said that boogie-woogie has never truly lost its popularity even today.

During the 1930s, the strict blues form was being used more in jazz recordings as the tempos were speeding up. In the years just before 1940, the primitive blues form of boogie woogie became a popular fad. Music historians have credited Meade Lux Lewis for the boogie woogie craze. All during the 40s boogie influenced a number of arrangements within the big bands. The swing bands found great success when they added the element of boogie, such as

8

the case of Will Bradley’s "Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar," and Tommy Dorsey’s "Boogie Woogie."

Of the boogie woogie players who came to promeinence during the boogie fad; seven stand out as the major contributors and influences: Pine Top Smith, Albert Ammons, Jimmy Yancey, Joe Sullivan, Clarence Lofton, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. In later years Freddie Slack, Cleo Brown and Bob Zurke came to promidence as the younger generation of boogie woogie players.

The blues based boogie would later merge with the stride style to became the main line of development of jazz piano playing, a form that would lead to a major movement in jazz, led by the "Fatha," Earl Hines.

Swing

While New Orleans jazz has improvised ensembles, when jazz started becoming popular in the 1920s and demand was growing for larger dance bands, it became necessary for ensembles to be written down, particularly when a group included more than three or four horns.

Although swing largely began when Louis Armstrong joined Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra in 1924 and Don Redman began writing arrangements for the band that echoed the cornetist's relaxed phrases, the swing era officially started in 1935 when Benny

Goodman's Orchestra caught on.

Swing was a major force in American popular music until the big-band era largely ended in 1946. Swing differs from New Orleans jazz and

Dixieland in that the ensembles (even for small groups) are simpler and generally filled with repetitious riffs, while in contrast the solos are more sophisticated. Individual

improvisations still paid close attention to the melody but due

to the advance in musicianship, the solo flights were more adventurous.

The swing-oriented musicians who continued performing in the

Billie Holiday, NYC [Angel with Smoke] (1949)

style after the end of the big band era (along with later generations who adopted this approach) were also playing "mainstream."

The many stars of swing during the big-band era included trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Bunny Berigan, Harry James, and Roy Eldridge; trombonists Tommy Dorsey and Jack Teagarden; clarinetists Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw; tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Ben Webster; altoists Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter; pianists Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Count Basie, and Nat King Cole; guitarist Charlie

9

Christian; drummers Gene Krupa and Chick Webb; vibraphonist Lionel Hampton; bandleader Glenn Miller; and singers Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Jimmy Rushing..

Most swing-style groups had at least 10 musicians and featured at least three or four saxophones, two or three trumpets, two or three trombones, piano, guitar, bass violin, and drums. Guitarists, bassists and drummers offered repeating rhythms that were sufficiently simple, buoyant, and lilting to inspire social dancers, the style's largest audience. Musicians strove for large, rich tone qualities on their instruments. Solo improvisers did not seek intricacy in their lines so much as lyricism and a hot, confident feeling that was rhythmically compelling. For these reasons, the musical period of the 1930s and 1940s has been called the swing era and big-band era. Not all dance music played by big bands of the 1930s and 1940s was jazz. A large segment of the public, however considered almost any lively, syncopated popular music to be jazz.

Journalists and jazz fans drew distinctions between bands that conveyed the most hard-driving rhythmic qualities and extensive solo improvisations and those that conveyed less swing feeling and improvisation. The former were called swing bands or hot bands (for example, the bands of Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Andy Kirk and Duke Ellington).

The latter were called sweet bands (for example the bands of Glenn Miller, Wayne King, Freddy Martin, and Guy Lombardo). Many listeners, however, did not make such distinctions. They considered all the big dance bands to be swing bands. This is not surprising because all the bands (even Guy Lombardo's) did play some jazz and even the honest of swing bands (like Duke Ellington's) featured some sweet numbers.

Conversely, some of the biggest hits by Glenn Miller's sweet band contained brief jazz improvisations and conveyed quite danceable swing feeling. An instructive illustration for this confusion regards Tommy Dorsey's immensely popular bands of the 1940s. The groups had first-rate jazz oriented accompanists, swinging arrangements, and a number of top-notch jazz improvisers. Yet huge portions of their repertory were composed of ballads and vocal features. Therefore, though jazz historians don't usually give Dorsey's bands much attention, jazz musicians generally confer high respect upon them.

Scat

"Anyone who attempts to sing extemporaneously, that is scat, will tell you that the hardest aspect of that kind of singing is to stay in tune. You are wondering all over the scales, the notes coming out of your mouth a millisecond after you think of them." ---Mel Torme.

Scat is the art of creating an instrumental-style improvisation vocally. This requires a vocabulary of vowels and consonants related less to identifiable words and more to the tone and articulation of jazz instrumentalists such as in the trumpet-like "Oop-Pop-a-Da" by Babs Gonzales or Sarah Vaughan's saxophonic "Shulie-abop." first done on records by Louis Armstrong.

Scat is most closely associated by the general public with Ella Fitzgerald and her many imitators. Brought to an early peak of perfection by Leo Watson who, by introducing occasional real words inspired the development of a vocal-orchestra.

10

Louis Armstrong’s improvisational approach to written lyrics, mixing, jumbling, and reinventing the words along expressive musical lines, echoed new directions in jazz. As early as 1926, Armstrong dropped the lyrics to "The Hebbie Jeebies" and spontaneously substituted scatting for the words. The technique was copied so often that an actual jazz form develpoed. Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys, featuring Bing Crosby, were thought to be the first white group to use the scat style. Whiteman’s national radio programs promoted scat, however, it wasn’t until Ella Fitzgerald adopted the styles that scat became a house-hold word.

Ella seemed to add dazzle to scatting and clearly defined it as a vocal improvisation using phonetic sounds similar to the instrumental sounds of jazz. To paraphrase a popular song, if Louis named scat, Ella claimed it! With her recording of "Flying Home" (thought to be her first scat based song, released in 1947) she introduced variations of scat which showcased a segment of songs made famous by other performers. These sampling, variations included the works of Lionel Hampton, Chick Webb, Slam Stewart and Dizzy Gillespie. In fact the recording also showed that Ella was already educated on the fast emerging bebop movement.

Other singers added to the early ideas of scat including Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. During the bebop era, Sarah Vaughan was able to vocalize much of the notes that Charlie Parker was playing. Vaughan was also key in bringing jazz, and scat into the American home, with a number of radio and TV programs beginning in the late 1960s. In more recent years, Mel

Sarah Vaughan, NYC [Singing in Black Dress] (1949)

Torme gained fame as a scat singer, again keeping the style alive, thanks to his recordings and world tours. Today scat has scaled new heights of virtuosity with such performers as Bobby McFerrin, who was even able to put a few scat songs on the Top 40 Charts during the late 1980s and early 90s.

11

3. 1940s-1950s: BeBop, Cool, Free Jazz

BeBop

Also known as Bop, BeBop was a radical new music that developed gradually in the early '40s and exploded in 1945. The main difference between bop and swing is that the soloists engaged in chordal (rather than melodic) improvisation, often discarding the melody altogether after the first chorus and using the chords as the basis for the solo.

Ensembles tended to be unisons, most jazz groups were under seven pieces, and the soloist was free to get as adventurous as possible as long as the overall improvisation fit into the chord structure. Since the virtuoso musicians were getting away from using the melodies as the basis for their solos (leading some listeners to ask "Where's the melody?") and some of the tempos were very fast, bop divorced itself from popular music and a dancing audience, uplifting jazz to an art music but cutting deeply into its potential commercial success.

Ironically the once-radical bebop style has become the foundation for all of the innovations that followed and now can be almost thought of as establishment music. Among its key innovators were altoist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell, drummer Max Roach, and pianist/composer Thelonious Monk.

Although the swing style may have launched the art status of jazz by placing it in the ears and the minds of the world, it was its successor, bop, which claimed mainstream status. More significant changes, both musical and nonmusical, occurred in jazz with the advent of bop than at any other time in jazz history. The military service draft of World War II brought about the dissolution of the big bands and the rise of small combos. The country was nervous, and the music was nervous and agitated. Because many well-known players were in the military, new, young players and their ideas were able to get exposure.

There were considerable changes in techniques and attitudes toward performances. There also were changes of attitude toward audiences. Bop became the first jazz

Dexter Gordon, NYC (1948)

style that was not used for dancing. Consequently, there were great changes in the repertoire. There was also a shift away from the popularity that swing enjoyed to a more elite listening audience. The elitism also expanded to the players. If you were an accomplished swing

12

player, there was no guarantee that you would be able to survive the expectations of the bop musical world. The music’s complexity required players to extend their former playing knowledge. A theoretical underpinning began to emerge as players stretched the harmonic boundaries of early jazz styles. Players had to have a greater and more immediate sense of chord recognition, as well as their extensions and possible substitutions. The music was generally fast, demanding execution on individual instruments seldom required by previous styles. It is interesting that bop is today considered the mainstream of jazz style, yet it was not enthusiastically accepted by the jazz community at the time of its emergence.

BeBop Era

The BeBop era, 1944-1955, represents for many the most significant period in jazz history; several consider it the time when musicians began stressing artistic rather than commercial concerns, put innovation ahead of convention, and looked toward the future instead of paying homage to the past.

Others view bebop as jazz's ultimate dead end, the style that instituted solemnity and elitism among the fraternity stripped jazz of its connection with dance, and made it im- possible for anyone except hard-core collectors, academics, and other musicians to enjoy and appreciate the music. Each assessment contains enough grains of truth to merit closer, more extensive examination, and there have been many studies, dissertations and essays, devoted to addressing and evaluating these contentions. But it's undeniable jazz changed forever during the bebop years. This chapter looks at the musicians who made these sweeping changes and what they were.

Cool

Cool jazz followed bop but was entirely different in mood, in its approach to arranging, and even in its choices of instruments. World War II was over-the country was relaxed and jazz relaxed.

In this era, which began in 1947, many instruments were used in jazz for the first time. Softer-sounding instruments, unamplified, created a different mood from that expressed earlier. The G.I. Bill made schooling possible for many jazz players, which encouraged experimentation in jazz that had been previously ignored: new meters, longer forms, and explorations in orchestration. Longer forms were also made possibly by the introduction of long-playing records.

Although Lester Young came primarily out of the swing style and Miles Davis out of the bop style, they are two of the players associated with the development of the cool style. Young’s contribution was the relaxed sound and style of his playing. Davis’s work with Gil Evans that led to the recording of the "Birth of the Cool" signaled the beginning of that period. Although these first recordings appeared in New York, many of he later cool groups worked out of Los Angeles and were former members of the Stan Kenton band. Players like Gerry Mulligan, Shelly Manne, and Stan Getz were often associated with this "West Coast" style. Listen to Young’s style on "Lester Leaps In" and Davis’s "Boplicity" to hear examples of the cool sound. Also listen to Miles Davis on "Summertime" to hear sonorous sounds typical of Gil Evans’s arrangements.

13

The cool sound was exemplified by players like Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Chet Baker on trumpet, and George Shearing on piano. These players all typified the relaxed sound and manner of performance associated with cool.

Cool Jazz evolved directly from bop in the late '40s and '50s. Essentially, it was a mixture of bop with certain aspects of swing that had been overlooked or temporarily discarded. Dissonances were smoothed out, tones were softened, arrangements became important again, and the rhythm section's accents were less jarring.

Because some of the key pacesetters of the style many of whom were studio musicians were centered in Los Angeles, it was nicknamed "West Coast jazz." Some of the recordings were experimental in nature hinting at classical music and some overarranged sessions were bland, but in general this was a viable and popular style.

By the late '50s, hard bop from the East Coast had succeeded cool jazz, although many of the style's top players

had long and productive careers. Among the many top artists who were important in the development of cool jazz were Lester Young, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, and Howard Rumsey leader of the Lighthouse All-Stars.

Free Jazz

Free jazz is one name for the music of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, and their colleagues and disciples. Though Coleman and Taylor had recorded before the '60s, the free jazz term was not common until then. The free designation derives from Coleman's decision to offer performances that were not always organized according to preset melody, tempo, or progression of accompaniment chords. Freedom from these guidelines allows improvisers a greater degree of spontaneity than was available in previous jazz styles.

Though nonmusicians find much of Coleman's music indistinguishable from bebop, musicians make distinctions according to the methods used (lack of preset chords) and the melodic vocabulary (original not bebop-derived). Much of Cecil Taylor's music is extremely active. It is densely packed with rapidly shifting layers of complex harmonies and rhythms. And some recordings of Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and Ornette Coleman include loud screeches and shrieks from trumpets and saxophones, combined with nonrepetitive, highly complex sounds from basses and drums. For these reasons, some listeners equate the term "free jazz" with high-energy, seemingly chaotic group improvisations, even though freedom from adhering to preset chord progressions does not necessitate high "energy" playing or any particular tone qualities or ways of organizing tones for melodic lines. For example, some of John Coltrane's music of the middle 1960s is often classified with "free" jazz, probably because of its collectively improvised turbulence, despite its using preset arrangements of the harmonies guiding the improvisers.

14

4. 1960s-1970s: Bossa Nova, Jazz/Rock Fusion, Soul Jazz

Bossa Nova

Bossa Nova is a style of Brazilian popular song that was most successful in the early 1960s. Strangely cool by comparison with other exportable by the harmonic language of West Coast Jazz, it soon acquired a permanent place in international middle of the road music.

It has also repaid its debt to the West Coast by entering the repertoire of all easy listening jazz players everywhere. The performers who played Bossa Nova gained almost a cult following in the decades that followed, thanks in large part to Jazz Festivals.

Influenced by West coast jazz, in the 1950s composer Antonio Carlos Jobim helped to form Bossa Nova, a new music that blended together gentle Brazilian rhythms and melodies with cool-toned improvising; the rhythms are usually played lightly as 3-3-4- 3-3 with beats 1, 4, 7, 11, and 14 being accented during every two-bars (played in 8/4 time).

Joao Gilberto's soothing voice perfectly communicated the beauty of Jobim's music. The late '50s film Black Orpheus helped introduce Jobim's compositions to an American audience. Other important early exponents of bossa nova were guitarist Charlie Byrd, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz (Byrd and Getz teamed up for the highly influential Jazz/Samba), and housewife- turned-singer Astrud Gilberto -- who, along with her husband (Joao) and Getz, made "The Girl From Ipanema" a huge hit. The very appealing bossa nova's popularity peaked in the mid-'60s, but it has remained a viable music style.

Jazz/Rock Fusion

The word Fusion has been so liberally used since the late '60s that it's become almost meaningless. Fusion's original definition was best: a mixture of jazz improvisation with the power and rhythms of rock. Up until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate. But as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces.

15

By the early '70s, fusion had its own separate identity as a creative jazz style (although snubbed by many purists) and such major groups as Return to Forever, Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Miles Davis' various bands were playing high-quality fusion that mixed some of the best qualities of jazz and rock. Unfortunately, as it became a money-maker and as rock declined artistically from the mid-'70s on, much of what was labeled fusion was actually a combination of jazz with easy-listening pop music and lightweight R&B. The promise of fusion went unfulfilled to an extent, although it continued to exist in groups such as Tribal Tech and Chick Corea's Elektric Band.

As jazz developed its cannon and rock and roll filled its role as America’s popular music, a new crossover began between the two musical styles. This musical crossover eventually became known as fusion in the jazz community beginning around 1965. Jazz began to import rock’s instruments, volume, and stylistic delivery.

Like bop, fusion did not occur without controversy. As jazz was establishing its legitimacy, it was taking a risk by fusing with rock. Rock also represented a generational division in the American profile. It accompanied the emergence of the post- World War II baby boom to adolescence. It was the first associated exclusively with the young generation and worked as a banner distinction. Its further

association with the social and political polarity of the 1960s tended to reinforce the

generation lines. Jazz criticism at that time was founded in the swing and, to a lesser extent, the bop traditions. Rock fusion

represented a

Miles Davis

commercialization of an emerging American art form. As the popularity of rock was carried by the baby boom into the adult listening market, its possible fusion seemed guaranteed.

The earliest notable fusion experiments happened again under the guidance of Miles Davis in his albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. This later album included players who later form the most popular fusion groups.

The most prominent later fusion groups belonged to former Davis players, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, and Wayne Shorter. At the time, this style offered a new virtuosity which, like earlier technical approaches, has become a part of common practice.

16

Soul Jazz

Soul Jazz came partly from the funky subcategory of hard bop. Its earthy, bluesy melodic concept and the repetitive, dance-like rhythmic aspects stood as higher priorities than the invention of complex harmonies and intricate solo improvisations jazz swing feeling was foremost. Considerably simplified-often only a hint of bebop harmony or rhythmic complexity remained--soul-jazz became the form of hard bop known to the largest audience, particularly in the music of Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Jimmy McGriff, Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, Hank Crawford, Stanley Turrentine and Houston Person. Soul Jazz combined the urban, electrified Chicago harp style with that of California swing bands and added a touch of Philadelphia tenor sax jazz from the 1960s.

Note that some listeners make no distinction between soul-jazz, and funky hard bop, and many musicians don't consider soul-jazz to be continuous with hard bop They consider it more an extension of the jazz-influenced popular music called rhythm and blues (as exemplified by Earl Bostic, King Curtis, Clifford Scott, Junior Walker, Bill Doggett). Also remember that many bebop musicians chose to play simply and with bluesy vocabularies for selected contexts: for instance, Kenny Burrell, Stanley

Turrentine, J.J. Johnson, Grant Green, David "Fathead"

Newman, Gene Ammons, and Ray Bryant. Their overall output is not funky, though a few pieces on isolated

recordings meet all the above criteria for soul-jazz. The term, Soul Jazz, has also been linked to the soul singing sound that brought Motown to

prominence in the 1960s. When these vocals were added to jazz it often took

Nina Simone

on the flavor of popular soul music and funk. Artists such as Nina Simone and Lou Rawls added to the vocal expressions of this jazz form, which gave newer audiences an appreciation for jazz.

17

Soul-Jazz, which was the most popular jazz style of the 1960s, differs from bebop and hard bop ,from which it originally developed, in that the emphasis is on the rhythmic groove.

Although soloists follow the chords as in bop, the basslines often played by an organist if not a string bassist dance rather than stick strictly to a four-to-the bar walking pattern.

The musicians build their accompaniment around the bassline and, although there are often strong melodies, it is the catchiness of the groove and the amount of heat generated by the soloists that determine whether the performance is successful. Soul-jazz's roots trace back to pianist Horace Silver, whose funky style infused bop with the influence of church and gospel music, along with the blues.

Other pianists who followed and used similar approaches were Bobby Timmons, Junior Mance, Les McCann, Gene Harris with his Three Sounds, and Ramsey Lewis. With the emergence of organist Jimmy Smith in 1956 who has dominated his instrument ever sinc), soul-jazz organ combos usually also including a tenor, guitarist, drummer, and an occasional bassist caught on, and soulful players became stars, including Brother Jack McDuff, Shirley Scott, Jimmy McGriff, Charles Earland, and Richard "Groove" Holmes, along with such other musicians as guitarists Grant Green, George Benson and Kenny Burrell; tenors Stanley Turrentine, Willis "Gator" Jackson, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, David "Fathead" Newman, Gene "Jug" Ammons, Houston Person, Jimmy Forrest, King Curtis, Red Holloway, and Eddie Harris; and altoist Hank Crawford. Despite its eclipse by fusion and synthesizers in the 1970s, soul-jazz has stayed alive and made a healthy comeback in recent years.

18

5. 1980s-2000s: Acid Jazz, World Fusion, Modern Creative

Acid Jazz

The phrase acid jazz was the first jazz term to be coined by a disc jockey rather than by a musician. It is much more a marketing phenomenon than a coherent musical style, even more so than tradition and as with traditional. Acid jazz is very much the commer- cialization of a revival movement. Just like earlier revivals, it was inspired initially by listening to records rather than to live musicians. In this case the original style is that of late-1960s' and early 1970s’ jazz-funk. The sort of music that wasn't heavy enough to be free jazz or early fusion but was more jazz-oriented than the average soul record.

At the time, this found a ready response among black listeners and a few white aficionados. After the usual twenty-year gap, a new generation of fans succeeded in promoting the music to a much wider crossover audience. Most of the creative musicians who have flirted with the acid-jazz market have found it too restricting and have moved on, exactly as with other revivals and they have taken some of their listeners with them.

The music played by a generation raised on jazz as well as funk and hip-hop, Acid Jazz used elements of all three. Its existence as a percussion-heavy, primarily live music placed it closer to jazz and Afro-Cuban than any other dance style, but its insistence on keeping the groove allied it with funk, hip-hop, and dance music.

The term itself first appeared in 1988 as both a record label and the title of a compilation series that reissued jazz-funk music from the '70s -- often called "rare groove" during a major mid-'80s resurgence.

A variety of acid jazz artists emerged during the late '80s and early '90s, including either primarily live bands such as Stereo MC's, James Taylor Quartet, the Brand New Heavies, Groove Collective, Galliano, and Jamiroquai or studio projects like Palm Skin Productions, Mondo Grosso, Outside, and United Future Organization.

World Fusion

World fusion refers to a fusion of Third World music or just world music with jazz, specifically: (1) Ethnic music that has incorporated jazz improvisations (for example, Latin jazz). Frequently, only the solos are improvised jazz. The accompaniments and compositions are essentially the same as in the ethnic music. (2) Jazz that has incorporated limited aspects of a particular non-Western music.

19

Dizzy Gillespie, NYC [Playing] (1948)

Examples include performances of Dizzy Gillespie’s "A Night in Tunisia" music on some of the 1970s quartet recordings by Keith Jarrett's quartet and quintet on Impulse, in which Middle Eastern instruments and harmonic methods are modified and used; and some of Sun Ra's music from the 1950s into the l990s, in which African rhythms are incorporated; some of Yusef Lateers recordings that feature traditional Islamic instruments and methods. (3) New musical styles that result from distinctly original ways of combining jazz improvisation with original ideas and the instruments, harmonies, compositional practices, and rhythms of an existing ethnic tradition. The product is original but its flavor still reflects some aspects of a non-jazz ethnic tradition. Examples include Don Cherry's bands; some of John McLaughlin's music from the 1970s and the l990s that drew heavily on the traditions of India; some of Don Ellis's music of the 1970s that drew upon the music of India and Bulgaria; and work by Andy Narell in the 1990s that melds the music and instruments of Trinidad with jazz improvisations and funk styles.

World fusion jazz did not first occur with modern jazz and its trends are not exclusive to American jazz. For instance, Polynesian music was fusing with Western pop styles at the beginning of the twentieth century, and its feeling attracted some of the earliest jazz musicians. Caribbean dance rhythms have been a significant part of American pop culture throughout the twentieth century, and, since jazz musicians frequently improvised when performing in pop music contexts, blends have been occurring almost continuously. Django Reinhardt was melding the traditions of Gyps music with French impressionist concert music and jazz improvisation during the 1930s in France.

Modern Creative

Although partly influenced by the great improvisational masters of the past, modern creative continues to forge ahead by combining older jazz styles such as bop, free, fusion, with newer comtemporary musical styles such as pop music, funk, and rock to create a full body meduim with which to present jazz in a new modern light.

Modern jazz makes great use of new technologies in the form of modern electronic instrumentation and recording devices/mediums to bring compostional and improvisational forms to a new level. Modern creative forms tend to be softer than earlier bop derivatives while still maintaing an edge through the incorporation of more diverse, often ethnic, rhythmic approaches to the music. Coming into light in the mid 80’s and being of a predominately improvisational nature, modern creative is greatly a product of its environment - society. Though the players each have unique voices, society blends them to reflect its modern sound and feeling. Molly Johnson

20

If, as many in the music industry believe, the future of jazz singing depends on finding the perfect balance between jazz and pop, Molly Johnson seems to have been born for the job.

Sounding like Billie Holiday reborn, Canadian jazz vocalist Molly Johnson has a voice that melts an audience in a second:warm and natural, bittersweet and earthy.

Molly Johnson has rocked standing-room only audiences in nightclubs and bars from coast-to-coast as a pop artist, seduced the patrons of salons and lounges with her luscious interpretations of jazz and blues standards and even regaled royalty with her unique and charming presence.

On November 11th, 2008 Molly released her fourth full length album: LUCKY which won the 2009 JUNO Award for Best Vocal Jazz Album. Molly also received the 2009 National Jazz Award for Best Female Vocalist.

Another popular contemporary jazz and jazz-influenced singers of our time is Norah Jones.Her debut album Come Away With Me was released in 2002 and sold 22 million copies worldwide. It won 5 Grammy Awards in 2003.She doesn’t closely follow any particular genre, rather she brings her unique jazzy flavor to songs with roots in country, folk, Americana, and modern light jazz, pop and rock.

Also Erykah Badu is well-known for her sophisticated style of singing , which drew many comparisons to Billie Holiday. She weaves unusual musical influences together creating a rich texture of sound and crossing over into jazz. Baduizm, Badu’s highly acclaimed debut album, was released in early 1997 and debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts. Lead single “ On & On” reached #12 on the singles charts in both the U.S. and UK. Badu received notice for her introspective lyrics and jazzy, bass-heavy sound, and was hailed as one of the leading lights of the burgeoning neo soul genre. Baduizm eventually went triple platinum and, along with “On & On,” won Grammy Awards at the 1998 ceremonies.

Erykah Badu

Bebel Gilberto (born Isabel Gilberto de Oliveira on May 12, 1966 in New York City) is an American-born Grammy Award-nominated Brazilian popular singer often associated with bossa nova. At the age of seven, Bebel made an appearance on her mother’s first solo album Miúcha. At age nine, Bebel performed with her mother and jazz saxophonist Stan Getz at a jazz festival in New York’s Carnegie Hall.

In 2000, Bebel’s Tanto Tempo album was released on Ziriguiboom (Crammed Discs sub-label) and has sold over one million copies worldwide. The album was also nominated for two Latin Grammy Awards. Her second album, Bebel Gilberto (2004), was also released to great critical acclaim, receiving a MOBO Award in the UK and also a World Music Grammy nomination.

The daughter of celebrated crooner Nat King Cole, she was exposed to the greats of jazz, soul and blues at an early age and began performing at the age of 11. Her debut album in 1975, Inseparable, won her immediate praise, with the smash single This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) (#1 R&B, #6 Pop) winning her a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female,

21

a category that had been monopolized by Aretha Franklin. She also was named the Grammys’ Best New Artist of 1975.

It was her 1991 album, Unforgettable… with Love, featuring her own arrangements of her father’s greatest hits, that gave her the most success. Ironically, when Natalie began her career, she was determined not to capitalize on her father’s name and wanted to forge her own identity by going after the soul market in earnest.

For many years, she also found the prospect of recording her late father’s songs too painful on a personal level. But Unforgettable… With Love certainly paid off. The set sold over 5 million copies in the United States alone, and won Cole several Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance.

The album featured a duet, the title track, with her father, created by splicing a recording of his vocals into the track. As a single, it reached #14 on Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 chart, and went gold. The one sour spot in the album’s success was that it strained Natalie’s already-tumultuous relationship with her mother, Maria, who said in interviews at the time that she couldn’t listen to the album or attend any of her daughter’s concerts because she felt that the music really belonged to her late husband.

Jane Monheit (born November 3, 1977) is considered to be one of the most promising American jazz vocalists of her generation.She earned a Bachelor’s degree in music in 1999. At the age of 20, as a senior, she won the first runner-up prize at the 1998 Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition.Jane Monheit’s voice has been compared to that of Ella Fitzgerald, whom she lists as one of her influences.

Her recorded tracks range from jazz to MGM/RKO 1930s-1950s musicals and Brazilian rhythms such as the song “Comecar De Novo.” Her debut album Never Never Land was released in October 2000 and became an instant success. Her second CD album, Come Dream With Me, was released in May 2001. Her third album In The Sun was released in October 2002.

Karrin Allyson is a Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist on Concord Records.Allyson projects an instantly recognizable tonal personality, illuminating hidden layers of emotion within songs that are drawn from a vast well of styles and genres—from the blues, contemporary pop, and the Great American Songbook, to the bossa nova, chanson, and the more specialized jazz and bebop repertoire.

One of the most appealing things about her singing is its lack of mannerism. There are no dopey melismas, nothing of that afflicted gospel soul feel that a lot of younger singers depend on. She doesn’t try anything foolishly acrobatic.

Yet in her way, she’s an ambitious and adventurous performer. She sometimes puts in a scat chorus which is done almost diffidently, without showoff contours. She’ll take over a familiar lyric and make it sound fresh by use of quiet touches—sitting back on certain beats, turning away from a big line and highlighting a different one.

Sade (pronounced “shah-day”) is a Grammy-winning, world-famous English group, which achieved success in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Their music features elements of jazz, funk, soul and rnb. Sade was formed in 1982, when members of a Latino-soul band Pride — Sade Adu, (real name Helen Folasade Adu - born 16 January 1959 in Ibadan, Nigeria) Stuart Matthewman and Paul Spencer Denman — together with Paul Cook formed a splinter group and began to write their own material. Later, in 1983, Andrew Hale joined Sade. In 1984 Paul Cook left the band.

22

Her debut album, Diamond Life (with overall production by Robin Millar), went Top Ten in the U.K. in late 1984. January 1985 saw the album released on CBS’ Portrait label and by spring it went platinum off the strength of the Top Ten singles “Smooth Operator” and “Hang on to Your Love.”

Her second album, Promise (November 1985), featured “Never As Good As the First Time” and arguably her signature song, “The Sweetest Taboo,” which stayed on the U.S. pop charts for six months. Sade was so popular that some radio stations reinstated the ’70s practice of playing album tracks, adding “Is It a Crime” and “Tar Baby” to their play lists.

In 1986, Sade won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Sade made a great contribution to development of modern music. They dismantled many of the old music business ways and quite promptly became a fully functioning autonomous unit with a firm grip on every aspect of the recording process.

Sade

Cassandra Wilson (born December 4, 1955) is an American jazz singer-songwriter and two-time Grammy Award winner from Jackson, Mississippi. Two of her albums, Blue Skies (1988) and New Moon Daughter (1996), have topped the US jazz charts, and the latter also won her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1997. More recently, Wilson’s latest album Loverly (2008) also won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009.

Wilson’s repertoire includes both jazz and blues standards and renditions of pop and rock songs. Her contralto voice has been described as bluesy and sultry, and the style of her music ranges from swing to funk to bossa nova. Many of the songs she covers are by artists who usually record in other genres.

Wilson counts the late Miles Davis as one of her greatest influences. In 1989 she performed as the opening act for Davis at the JVC Jazz Festival in Chicago. In 1999 she produced Traveling Miles as a tribute to Davis. The album developed from a series of jazz concerts that she performed at Lincoln Center in November 1997 in Davis’ honor and includes three selections based on Davis’ own compositions, in which Wilson adapted the original themes.

23

Conclusion

Jazz music was born out of the segregated south from a culture based on struggle and oppression. African Americans brought with them a strong music background grounded on feeling and emotion. As jazz grew from feelings and emotions that evolved into a culture that became more accepting of African American’s background and struggles. The fusion of African American music into a dominantly white society brought more struggles. However, with that struggle came a much needed respect and admiration from society.

Jazz illustrates the wind of change in the evolution of mankind, it acted like a social instrument which pointed out the revolutionary changes society was cast in. For example, in the years during the war swing took off to the world. Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and Bob Crosby pushed swing to new levels when they made the ultimate sacrifice, to give up their lucrative careers in the U.S. and enlist into the military. Each joined and contributed to military orchestras that brought swing right to the soldiers. For the first time radios were installed into bunkers for the soldiers to hear live broadcasts.

Roosevelt believed that music could " inspire a fervor for the spiritual values in our way of life and thus to strengthen democracy against these forces which subjugate and enthrall mankind." Swing brought together the idea that the U.S. was the land of opportunity. Swing gave soldiers confidence in the democracy they were fighting for.When swing fused together with military marching bands they began to help create an image of America as culture free of segregation and bigotry. The Office of War Information used Glenn Miller’s band as propaganda to fight the fascist ideology in broadcasts heard all over Europe. Popular swing music from home became inspiration to the war effort.

Some of the remaining popular musicians like Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong did their part for the war effort by promoting bond rallies and concerts at military bases and hospitals in the U.S.

24

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Derek Bailey- Improvisation: Its Nature And Practice In Music- Da Capo Press-1993

Peretti Burton - The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban

America - University of Illinois Press-1994

Keepnews Orrin- A Pictorial History of Jazz  - Hamlyn –1968

Gottlieb William- The Golden Age of Jazz  - Simon and Schuster-1979

Internet: http://www.allaboutjazz.com

http://www.jazzstandards.com/

25