Jazz
is a
musical art form that originated
in
New Orleans,
Louisiana,
United States around the start
of the
20th century. Jazz uses
improvisation,
blue notes,
swing,
call and response,
polyrhythms, and
syncopation.
Overview
Jazz has roots in the combination
of
West African and
Western music traditions,
including
spirituals,
blues and
ragtime, stemming from
West Africa, western
Sahel, and
New England's religious
hymns,
hillbilly music, and
European military band music.
After originating near the beginning
of the
20th century, jazz styles spread
in the
1920s, influencing other musical
styles. The origins of the word
jazz are uncertain. The word is
rooted in American
slang, and various derivations
have been suggested. For the origin
and history of the word jazz,
see
Origin of the word jazz.
The instruments used in marching
bands and dance band music at the
turn of century became the basic
instruments of jazz: brass, reeds,
and drums, using the Western 12-tone
scale. A "...black musical spirit
(involving rhythm and melody) was
bursting out of the confines of
European musical tradition [of
the marching bands], even though the
performers were using European
styled instruments."[1]
Small bands of musicians, mostly
self taught, who led
funeral processions in
New Orleans played a seminal
role in the articulation and
dissemination of early jazz,
traveling throughout communities in
the Deep South and to northern
cities.
The
postbellum network of public
schools, as well as civic societies
and widening mainstream
opportunities for education,
produced more formally trained
musicians. For example,
Lorenzo Tio and
Scott Joplin were schooled in
classical European musical forms.
Tio was a Creole who was born in
Mexico.[2]
Joplin, the son of a former slave
and a free-born woman of color, was
largely self-taught until age 11,
when he received lessons in the
fundamentals of music theory. Jazz
is not a pure folk music, in that it
more often derives from artists with
formal music training and skills.
Improvisation
Jazz as a genre is often
difficult to define, but
improvisation is a key element
of the form. Improvisation has been
an essential element in
African-American music since early
forms of the music developed, and is
closely related to the use of call
and response in African-American
cultural expression.
The form of improvisation has
changed over time. Early folk
blues music often was based
around a
call and response pattern, and
improvisation would factor in the
lyrics, the melody, or both. In
Dixieland jazz, musicians take turns
playing the melody while the others
improvise countermelodies. In
contrast to the classical form,
where performers try to play the
piece exactly as the author
envisioned it, the goal in jazz is
often to create a new
interpretation, changing the melody,
harmonies, even the time signature.
If classical music is the composer's
medium, jazz is able to stand up for
the rights of the performer too, to
'adroitly weigh the respective
claims of the composer and the
improviser'.[3]
By the
Swing era,
big bands played using arranged
sheet music, but individual
soloists would perform improvised
solos within these compositions. In
bebop, however, the focus
shifted from arranging to
improvisation over the form;
musicians paid less attention to the
composed melody, or "head," which
was played at the beginning and the
end of the tune's performance with
improvised sections in between.
Later styles of jazz such as
modal jazz abandoned the strict
notion of a chord progression,
allowing the individual musicians to
improvise more freely within the
context of a given scale or mode
(e.g.,
So What on the
Miles Davis album
Kind of Blue). The
avant-garde and
free jazz idioms permit, even
call for, abandoning chords, scales,
and rhythmic meters.
When a pianist, guitarist or
other chord-playing instrumentalist
improvises an accompaniment while a
soloist is playing, it is called
comping (a contraction of
the word "accompanying"). "Vamping"
is a mode of comping that is usually
restricted to a few repeating chords
or bars, as opposed to comping on
the chord structure of the entire
composition. Most often, vamping is
used as a simple way to extend the
very beginning or end of a piece, or
to set up a segue. In some modern
jazz compositions where the
underlying chords of the composition
are particularly complex or fast
moving, the composer or performer
may create a set of "blowing
changes," which is a simplified set
of chords better suited for comping
and solo improvisation.
