Portal:Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. (Full article...)
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Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that according to Billboard magazine, Laufey created a blueprint for jazz music in the modern music industry and helped push it back into the mainstream?
- ... that Albert Gumble and Owen Murphy's music score for the Broadway musical Red Pepper was dismissed by one critic as not "real music" because of its embrace of jazz?
- ... that the jazz collective West Coast Get Down once recorded around 190 songs over the course of a month?
- ... that jazz composer Duke Ellington worked on his only opera, Queenie Pie, from the 1930s until his death in 1974 without finishing it?
- ... that Tim Kinsella made most of the lyrics for Cap'n Jazz's only album, Shmap'n Shmazz, during his first experience with psilocybin mushrooms?
- ... that Pittsburgh Panthers end Steve Jastrzembski was nicknamed "Jazz" because his teammates could not correctly pronounce his surname?
More did you know...
- ... that the artist and illustrator N. C. Wyeth was the grandfather of Howard Wyeth, the stride pianist and drummer for Bob Dylan?
- ... that the modern meaning of "ballad", a slow, sentimental tune or love song, often written in a fairly standardized form, came about from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway composers? Dewacasino168
- ... that Leo Arnaud (pictured) is the composer of the well-known Olympic theme "Bugler's Dream?"
February - May 2007
Selected recording
"Ole Miss Rag", a ragtime composed by W. C. Handy and recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis in 1917 in New York.
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