Transcript Jazz: The American Music - Raleigh Charter High School

Jazz: The American Music
"Jazz is a good barometer of freedom. In
its beginnings, the United States
spawned certain ideals of freedom and
independence through which,
eventually, jazz was evolved, and the
music is so free that many people say
it is the only unhampered, unhindered
expression of complete freedom
yet produced in this country."
• Duke Ellington
“What a Wonderful World” Louis Armstrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2VCwBzGdPM
Blues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zYzzmlK_9I
Historical and Cultural Perspectives
• Definitions
• Origins of the word “jazz”
• African-American Roots
Definitions
• Confluence of African and European Music Traditions
– Jazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of
the 20th century in African American communities in the
Southern United States from a mingling of African and European
music traditions. The style’s West African influence is evident in
its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation
and the swung note. (Wikipedia)
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE2CtJ3hgvU
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVEoUkf-gN4
– Jazz is a "form of art music which originated in the United States
through the confrontation of blacks with European music … jazz
differs from European music in that jazz has a special
relationship to time, defined as 'swing', a spontaneity and vitality
of musical production in which improvisation plays a role; and
sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of
the performing jazz musician. Thus, improvisation is clearly one
of the key elements in jazz.” Jazz Critic Joachim Berendt
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVvF7S2hW5U
Word Origins
• The word jazz began as a West Coast slang
term of uncertain derivation. The earliest known
references to jazz are in the sports pages of
various West Coast newspapers covering the
Pacific Coast League, a baseball minor league:
– Ben Henderson, Portland Beavers, 1912. BEN'S
JAZZ CURVE. "I got a new curve this year," softly
murmured Henderson yesterday, "and I'm goin' to
pitch one or two of them tomorrow. I call it the Jazz
ball because it wobbles and you simply can't do
anything with it."
• The first musical reference to jazz was in
Chicago about 1915 as found in the Chicago
Daily Tribune on July 11, 1915:
– Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues . . . The Worm had
turned--turned to fox trotting. And the "blues" had
done it. The "jazz" had put pep into the legs that had
scrambled too long for the 5:15. . . . At the next place
a young woman was keeping "Der Wacht Am Rhein"
and "Tipperary Mary" apart when the interrogator
entered. "What are the blues?" he asked gently.
"Jazz!" The young woman's voice rose high to drown
the piano. . . . The blues are never written into music,
but are interpolated by the piano player or other
players. They aren't new. They are just reborn into
popularity. They started in the south half a century
ago and are the interpolations of darkies originally.
The trade name for them is "jazz."
• The first known use in New Orleans, discovered
by lexicographer Benjamin Zimmer in 2009,
appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune
on Nov. 14, 1916:
– Theatrical journals have taken cognizance of the "jas
bands" and at first these organizations of syncopation
were credited with having originated in Chicago, but
any one ever having frequented the "tango belt" of
New Orleans knows that the real home of the "jas
bands" is right here. However, it remains for the
artisans of the stage to give formal recognition to the
"jas bands" of New Orleans.
African/American Roots
Modern Day Congo Square
•
By 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought
almost half a million Africans to the United
States. The slaves largely came from West
Africa and brought strong tribal musical
traditions with them.
•
Lavish festivals featuring African dances to
drums were organized on Sundays at Place
Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans
until 1843.
•
African music was largely functional, for work
or ritual, and included work songs and field
hollers. The African tradition made use of a
single-line melody and call-and-response
pattern, but without the European concept of
harmony. Rhythms reflected African speech
patterns, and the African use of pentatonic
scales led to blue notes in blues and jazz.
• Congo Square Dancers
African
Drumming Ensemble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xQtpLU-NvI
• In the early 19th century an increasing number
of black musicians learned to play European
instruments, particularly the violin, which they
used to parody European dance music in their
own cakewalk dances.
• In turn, European-American minstrel show
performers in blackface popularized such music
internationally, combining syncopation with
European harmonic accompaniment.
• Another influence came from black slaves who
had learned the harmonic style of hymns and
incorporated it into their own music as spirituals.
Compendium of Jazz Styles
and Performers
1890s to 1910s
The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for the
education of freed African-Americans, though strict segregation
limited employment opportunities for most blacks. However, blacks
were able to find work as entertainmers in dances, minstrel shows,
and in vaudeville. Black pianists also played in bars, clubs, and
brothels, as ragtime developed.
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
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Ragtime
Blues
New Orleans Dixieland
Ragtime
• Origins and Style
– Ragtime (alternately spelled Ragged-time) is an originally
American musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity
between 1897 and 1918.
– Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged", rhythm.
– It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American
cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being
published as popular sheet music for piano.
– Ragtime fell out of favor as Jazz claimed the public's imagination
after 1917, but there have been numerous revivals since as the
music has been re-discovered.
• Proponents: Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin (1868 – 1917)
Maple Leaf Rag
• Joplin was an African-American and pianist, born near
Texarkana, Texas into the first post-slavery generation.
• He achieved fame for his unique ragtime compositions,
and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime."
• During his brief career, he wrote forty-four original
ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas.
• Joplin died at age 48 and his music was mostly forgotten
by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime
aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early
1970s.
• In 1976 Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer
Prize.
•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc
Aeolian Player Piano
• Aeolian Company, founded in 1878,
developed the player piano, a self-playing
piano, containing a pneumatic or electromechanical mechanism that plays on the
piano action pre-programmed music via
perforated paper rolls.
• Ragtime became a favorite selection for
the player piano
Aeolian Player Piano
Player Roll
Blues
• Origins and Style
– Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within
the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the
end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and
chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads.
– The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated after the
Emancipation Act in 1863, between 1870 and 1900.
– This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping, smallscale agricultural production and the expansion of railroads in the southern
United States.
– Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a
move from group performances to a more individualized style.
– The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the AfroAmerican community, the spirituals.
– When the blues appeared, before blues gained its formal definition in terms of
chord progressions, the blues was defined as the secular counter part of the
spirituals.
• Form
– The blues form is characterized by
• the use of specific chord progressions — the
twelve-bar chord progressions being the most
frequently encountered
• blue notes sung or played for expressive purposes
and distinguished by the use of the flattened third,
fifth and seventh of the associated major scale.
Chords played over a twelve-bar
scheme:
Chords for a blues in C:
I
I or IV
I
I7
C
C or
F
C
C7
IV
IV
I
I7
F
F
C
C7
V
V or
IV
I
I or V
G
G or
F
C
C or
G
• Lyrics
– The traditional blues verse was probably a
single line, repeated four times.
– It was only later that the current, most
common structure of a line, repeated once
and then followed by a single line conclusion,
became standard, the so-called AAB pattern.
• Proponents:
– Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson, Blind Boy
Fuller, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
(1892 – 1937)
• “The Empress of the
Blues”
• Major influence on
subsequent jazz
vocalists
• “Baby Won’t You
Please Come Home”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCrtErmipXE
New Orleans Dixieland
• Origins and Style
– Dixieland is an early style of jazz that developed in New Orleans and it
is the earliest recorded style of jazz music.
– The style combined earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles,
ragtime and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation.
– The "standard" band consists of a "front line" of trumpet, trombone, and
clarinet, with a “rhythm section" of at least two of the following
instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano and drums.
– The definitive Dixieland sound is created when one instrument (usually
the trumpet) plays the melody or a recognizable paraphrase or variation
on it, and the other instruments of the "front line" improvise around that
melody. This creates a more polyphonic sound.
– The swing era of the 1930s led to the end of many Dixieland Jazz
musicians' careers.
• Proponents: King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Original Dixieland Jass
Band, Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong
(1901 – 1971)
• Nicknamed “Satchmo”
or “Pops”
• American jazz
trumpeter and singer
(scat)
• Foundational influence
on jazz was to shift
music’s focus from
collective
improvisation to solo
performers
All-Star Band
“Dream a Little Dream”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFl97eZbruc
“Hello Dolly”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmfeKUNDDYs
“When the Saints Go Marching In”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA
1920s and 1930s
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
Swing
European Jazz
Swing
• Origins
– Prohibition in the United States (from 1920 to 1933)
banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit
speakeasies becoming lively venues of the “Jazz
Age”.
– Jazz started to get a reputation as being immoral and
many members of the older generations saw it as
threatening the old values in culture and promoting
the new decadent values of the Roaring 20s.
– While New Orleans remained an important jazz
center, Chicago became the main center during this
timeframe.
• Precursors and Influences of Big Band Swing
– Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924.
“There’ll Come a Time”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pj1ZEKz4Cw
(1903-1991)
The Wolverines
– Also in 1924, Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson
Dance Band and then formed his virtuosic Hot Five Band.
(1901-1971)
Fletcher Henderson
Dance Band
“Variety Stomp”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcYBwRjMqjg&list=PL4BD19972C5BB458E
Hot Five Band
– Jelly Roll Morton recorded with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings
in an early mixed-race collaboration, then in 1926 formed his
Red Hot Peppers.
(1890 – 1941)
– There was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white
orchestras, such as Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. In 1924
Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which
was premièred by Whiteman's Orchestra.
(1890 – 1967)
Paul Whiteman Orchestra
George Gershwin (1898 – 1937)
“Rhapsody in Blue”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U40xBSz6Dc
– Other influential large ensembles included Duke Ellington’s band
(which opened an influential residency at the Cotton Club in
1927) in New York, and Earl Hine’s Band in Chicago. All these
performers and ensembles significantly influenced Big Band
Swing.
Duke Ellington
(1899 – 1974)
Duke Ellington Band
Cotton Club
New York City
Earl Hines
(1903 – 1983)
Grand Terrace Café
Chicago
Earl Hines Band
• Style
– The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some
virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders.
– Swing was also dance music. It was broadcast on the radio 'live'
nightly across America for many years especially by Hines and
his Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra broadcasting coast-to-coast
from Chicago. Although it was a collective sound, swing also
offered individual musicians a chance to 'solo' and improvise
melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex.
– Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to
relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black
musicians and black bandleaders white ones.
• Proponents:
Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey,
Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines,
Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Louis Armstrong
Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey
(1905 – 1956)
(1904 – 1957)
Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra
Tommy Dorsey “Opus One”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7QjMZ4ckZc
Harry James
(1916 – 1983)
Harry James Orchestra and Frank Sinatra
“Stardust”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_bI8ANUSLI
Artie Shaw
(1910 – 2004)
“Moonglow”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKQ7v3S9atM
Artie Shaw Orchestra
Glenn Miller
(1904 – 1944)
Glen Miller Orchestra
“Sing, Sing, Sing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2S1I_ien6A
“In the Mood”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CI-0E_jses
Beginnings of European Jazz
• Outside of the United States the
beginnings of a distinct European style of
jazz emerged in France with the Quintette
du Hot Club de France which began in
1934.
• Belgian guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt (1910 – 1953)
popularized gypsy jazz, a mix of 1930s American swing,
French dance hall “musette" and Eastern European folk
with a languid, seductive feel. The main instruments are
steel stringed guitar, violin, and double bass. Solos pass
from one player to another as the guitar and bass play
the role of the rhythm section.
J’attendrai Swing”, 1959
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6bZskQlY4w
“Dark Eyes”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHQ0twHQgo
1940s and 1950s

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Dixieland Revival
Bebop
Cool Jazz
Hard Bop
Modal Jazz
Free Jazz
Dixieland Revival
• In the late 1930s there was a revival of “Dixieland" music, harkening
back to the original contrapuntal New Orleans style. This was driven
in large part by record company reissues of early jazz classics by
the Oliver, Morton, and Armstrong bands of the 1930s.
• There were two populations of musicians involved in the revival.
One group consisted of players who had begun their careers playing
in the traditional style, and were either returning to it, or continuing
what they had been playing all along, such as Bob Crosby’s Bobcats,
Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davison. Most of these
groups were originally Midwesterners, although there were a small
number of New Orleans musicians involved.
• The second population of revivalists consisted of young musicians
such as the Lu Watters Band. By the late 1940s, Louis Armstrong’s
All-Stars Band became a leading ensemble. Through the 1950s and
1960s, Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz
styles in the US, Europe, and Japan, although critics paid little
attention to it.
Bob Crosby
(1913 – 1993)
“Jazz Me Blues”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQWEMXyEAS8
The Bob Cats
Lu Watters
(1911 – 1989)
Lu Watters’ Band
“Love Me or Leave Me”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed9p5XLGZn0
Bebop
•
Origins and Style
– In the early 1940s bebop performers helped to shift jazz from danceable popular
music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from
swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as
an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value.
– Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it used faster tempos.
Beboppers introduced new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz; the
dissonant tritone (or "flatted fifth") interval became the "most important interval of
bebop" and players engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based
improvisation which used "passing" chords, substitute chords, and altered
chords.
– The style of drumming shifted as well to a more elusive and explosive style, in
which the ride cymbal was used to keep time, while the snare and bass drum
were used for unpredictable, explosive accents.
•
Proponents: Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford
Brown, tenor sax player Leston Young, and drummer Max Roach
Charlie Parker (1920 – 1955)
Dizzie Gillespie (1917 – 1993)
• “Hot House”
Charlie Parker
Dizzie Gillespie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3rZ5mpGqlc
Charlie Parker
Dizzie Gillespie
Thelonious Monk
(1917 – 1982)
• “Blue Monk”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWOz9mILqbA
Bud Powell
(1924 – 1966)
• “A Night in
Tunisia”
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pthRYbt3JCE
Max Roach
(1924 – 2007)
• “Mr. Hi Hat”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8syiOwwVyY
Cool Jazz
• Origins and Style
– By the end of the 1940s, the nervous energy and tension of
bebop was replaced with a tendency towards calm and
smoothness, with the sounds of cool jazz, which favored long,
linear melodic lines. It emerged in New York City, as a result of
the mixture of the styles of predominantly white jazz musicians
and black bebop musicians, and it dominated jazz in the first half
of the 1950s.
• Proponents:
Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, the
Modern Jazz Quartet. An important recording was trumpeter Miles
Davis’ Birth of Cool (tracks originally recorded in 1949 and 1950 and
collected as an LP in 1957).
Miles Davis
(1926 – 1991)
• “Jeru” from
Birth of the
Cool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXARxrB
ozOs
• “Cool Jazz”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5xZyK4cFw
Dave Brubeck
(1920 - 2009)
• “Take Five”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQLMFNC2Awo
Hard Bop
• Origins and Style
– Hard bop is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music that
incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music,
and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing.
– Hard bop was developed in the mid-1950s, partly in response to
the vogue for cool jazz in the early 1950s.
– The hard bop style coalesced in 1953 and 1954, paralleling the
rise of rhythm and blues.
• Proponents
– Miles Davis' performance of "Walkin'" the title track of his album
of announced the style to the jazz world.
– The quintet Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, fronted by
Blakey and featuring pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Clifford
Brown, were also leaders in the hard bop movement.
Miles Davis
(1926 – 1991)
“Walkin’”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhVnWRqQ8sA
Art Blakey
(1919 – 1990)
• “Buhaina’s
Delight”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah68wqyYcRs
The Jazz Messengers
Modal Jazz
• Origins and Style
– Modal jazz is a development beginning in the later 1950s which
takes the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical
structure and improvisation.
– Previously, the goal of the soloist was to play a solo that fit into a
given chord progression. However, with modal jazz, the soloist
creates a melody using one or a small number of modes. The
emphasis in this approach shifts from harmony to melody.
• Proponents:
– Miles Davis recorded the best selling jazz album of all time in the
modal framework: Kind of Blue
– Other innovators in this style include John Coltrane (1926 –
1967) and Herbie Hancock (b. 1940).
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
“All Blues”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFuHKvEuFbU
Free Jazz
• Origins and Style
– Free jazz broke through into an open space of "free tonality" in
which meter, beat, and formal symmetry all disappeared, and a
range of world music from India, Africa, and Arabia were melded
into an intense, even religiously ecstatic style of playing.
– While rooted in bebop, free jazz tunes gave players much more
latitude; the loose harmony and tempo was deemed
controversial when this approach was first developed.
• Proponents:
Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor. John Coltrane, Archie Shepp,
Sun Ra, Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders
John Coltrane
(1926 – 1967)
• A Love
Supreme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbbLP4vSe9k
Farrell “Pharoah” Sanders
(B. 1940)
• “Thembi”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyirrcT5a6Q&list=PLEC920898469FB539
Sun Ra
(1914 – 1993)
• Sun Ra and His Arkestra
“Face the Music”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qjiQwD7VCI
1960s and 1970s
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Latin Jazz
Post Bop
Soul Jazz
Fusion
Latin Jazz
• Origins and Style
– Latin jazz combines rhythms from African and
Latin American countries, often played on
instruments such as conga, timbale, guiro,
and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies
played on typical jazz instruments (piano,
double bass, etc.)
– There are two main varieties: Afro-Cuban jazz
and Brazilian jazz
Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz
– Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the US right
after the bebop period
– It began as a movement in the mid-1950s as
bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and
Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands
influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican
musicians as
– Proponents: Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente and
Arturo Sandoval
Xavier Cugat
(1900 – 1990)
• “Tico Taco”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8LEnGmnF3o
Tito Puente
(1923 – 2000)
• “Oye Como Va”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZQh4IL7unM
Brazilian Jazz
• Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s
• Brazilian jazz such as bossa nova is derived from samba,
with influences from jazz and other 20th century classical
and popular music styles
• Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies
sung in Portuguese or English. This style was pioneered
by Brazilians Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
• The related term jazz-samba describes an adaptation of
bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American
performers such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.
Joao Gilberto
(b. 1931)
• “Desafinado”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuNEuzMzryA
Stan Getz
(1927 – 1991)
• “Bossa Nova Medley”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo1SiVwVqic&list=PL7302F398326C31BB
Post Bop
• Origins and Style
– Post-bop is a term for a form of small-combo jazz music that
evolved in the early-to-mid sixties from earlier bop styles.
– Generally, the term post-bop is taken to mean jazz from the midsixties onward that assimilates influence from hard bop, modal
jazz, avant-garde jazz, and free jazz, without necessarily being
immediately identifiable as any of the above.
– By the early seventies, most of the major post-bop artists had
moved on to jazz fusion of one form or another.
• Proponents:
– John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, Wayne
Shorter and Herbie Hancock
Wayne Shorter
(b. 1933)
• “Fee Fi Fo Fum”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEzAJJfTtBE
Herbie Hancock
(b. 1940)
• “Dolphin Dance”
from Maiden
Voyage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB2Z2DY17yQ
Soul Jazz
• Origins and Style
– Soul jazz was a development of hard bop which incorporated
strong influences from blues, gospel and rhythm and blues in
music for small groups, often the organ trio which featured the
Hammond organ. Tenor saxophone and guitar were also
important in soul jazz
– Soul jazz was developed in the late 1950s and was perhaps
most popular in the mid-to-late 1960s,
– Although the term "soul jazz" contains the word "soul," soul jazz
is only a distant cousin to soul music, with its origins in gospel
and R&B rather than jazz.
– Unlike hard bop, soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive
grooves, melodies, and melodic hooks. The kinds of rhythms
used tend to vary as well.
• Proponents: Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock, Horace
Silver
Lee Morgan
(1938 – 1972)
• “The Sidewinder”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a4n6yZIXxI
Herbie Hancock
(b. 1940)
• Cantaloupe Island
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqwmDNPegnM
Fusion
•
Origins and Style
– Fusion or, more specifically, jazz fusion or jazz rock, was developed in the late
1960s from a mixture of elements of jazz such as its focus on improvisation with
the rhythms and grooves of funk and R&B and the beats and heavily amplified
electric instruments and electronic effects of rock.
– While the term "jazz rock" is often used as a synonym for "jazz fusion", it also
refers to the music performed by late 1960s and 1970s-era rock bands when
they added jazz elements to their music such as free-form improvisation.
– After a decade of development during the 1970s, fusion split into different
branches in the 1980s. While some 1980s performers continued the
improvisatory and experimental approaches of the 1970s, others moved towards
a lighter, more pop-infused easy-listening style called smooth jazz which often
included vocals.
– Fusion music is typically instrumental, often with complex time signatures,
meters, rhythmic patterns, and extended track lengths, featuring lengthy
improvisations.
– Many prominent fusion musicians are recognized as having a high level of
virtuosity, combined with complex compositions and musical improvisation in
complex or mixed meters.
•
Proponents: Gary Burton, Larry Coryell, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
(1926 – 1991)
• “Black Comedy”
from Miles in the
Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aXx_CkSzfo
1980s to 2010
In the 1980s, the jazz community shrank dramatically and split.
A mainly older audience retained an interest in traditional and
straight-ahead jazz styles.
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
Pop Fusion
Hip-Hop
Straight Ahead
Experimental
Pop Fusion
• Origins, Style and Proponents
– In the early 1980s, a lighter commercial form of jazz
fusion called pop fusion or “smooth jazz" became
successful.
– A smooth jazz track is downtempo, layering a lead,
melody-playing instrument over a backdrop that
typically consists of programmed rhythms and various
pads and/or samples radio airplay.
– Proponents include Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny
G, Najee and Michael Lington.
Kenny G. [Kenneth Gorelick]
(b. 1956)
• “Sentimental”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro_dQ6cb09E
“Baby G”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNAeQQdR7ls
Hip Hop
• Origins and Style
– Hip hop originated in the 1970s in New York City (Bronx)
– Hip hop's "golden age" is a name given to a period usually from the late
1980s to early 90s - said to be characterized by its diversity, quality,
innovation and influence. There were strong themes of Afrocentricity
and political militancy, while the music was experimental and the
sampling was eclectic. There was often a strong jazz influence
– Hip hop music may be based around either live or produced music, with
a clearly defined drum beat (almost always in 4/4 time signature),
presented either with or without vocal accompaniment.
– Hip hop was almost entirely unknown outside of the United States prior
to the early 1980s. During that decade, it began its spread to every
inhabited continent and became a part of the music scene in dozens of
countries.
• Proponents: Public Enemy, KRS-One, Eric B and Rakim, De La
Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers
Public Enemy
• “Don’t Believe
the Hype” from
It Takes a
Nation of
Millions to Hold
Us Back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWna0J27Mw&feature=PlayList&p=BBE920EB875C4A1B
&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=19
KRS-One
[Lawrence Krishna Parker]
(b. 1965)
• “MC’s Act Like They
Don’t Know”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2tAYWZLlMQ
Straight Ahead
• In the 2000s, straight ahead jazz continues to appeal to
a core group of listeners.
• Well-established jazz musicians, such as Dave Brubeck,
Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter and Jessican Williams
continue to perform and record.
• In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of young musicians
emerged, including US pianists Brad Mehldau, Jason
Moran, and Vijay Iyer, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel,
vibrophonist Stefon Harris, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and
Terence Blanchard, and saxophonists Chris Potter and
Joshua Redman.
Joshua Redman
(b. 1969)
• Live in Lausanne
2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xQZRDpDJhE
Experimental
• The more experimental end of the
spectrum has included US trumpeters
Dave Douglas and Rob Mazurek,
saxophonist Ken Vandemark, Norwegian
pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, the Swedish
group E.S.T, and US bassist Christian
McBride.
Christian McBride
(b. 1972)
• “Bye-Bye Blackbird”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHu7ow9Kepw
Dance or Pop Music
• Toward the more dance or pop music end
of the spectrum are St. Germain [Ludovic
Navarre] , who incorporates some live jazz
playing with house beats, and
• Jamie Cullum, who plays a particular mix
of jazz standards with his own more poporiented compositions.
St. Germain
[Ludovic Navarre]
• “Pseudodementia”
from Boulevard
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7NTuwX6v6c&feature=PlayList&p=5585FE6930591A
A2&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=4
Jamie Cullum
(b. 1979)
• “What a
Difference a Day
Made”
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1r6GcPqFSo
Postlude
• In 1987, the US House of Representatives and
Senate passed a bill proposed by Democratic
Representative John Conyers, Jr. to define jazz
as a unique form of American music stating,
among other things, "...that jazz is hereby
designated as a rare and valuable national
American treasure to which we should devote
our attention, support and resources to make
certain it is preserved, understood and
promulgated."
Prelude: The Advent of Rock
Bill Haley and the Comets
“Rock Around the Clock”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fsqYctXgM