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What is Jazz?
Recently I have found myself listening to Jazz music more and more.
I used to believe that Jazz was Jazz - The End.
But how wrong I was! The more I looked into it the more it seemed to stretch out in front of me.
I never realised just how many different genres there were out there.
Below is some information which I have assimilated from www.wikipedia.org , breaking down Jazz into some of its sub categories, giving information on them and in some cases naming example songs, bands or people.
This has helped me understand what I am listening to a little more and so thought I would share it. Maybe you can pick up another morsel of info.
"The day you stop learning is the day you stop living" - Unknown.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jazz is an original American musical art form originating around the start of the 20th century in New Orleans, rooted in African American musical styles blended with Western music technique and theory. Jazz uses blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation.
Jazz can be broken down into numerous genres, these include:
Acid jazz - Asian American jazz - Avant-garde jazz - Bebop - Dixieland - Calypso jazz - Chamber jazz - Cool jazz - Creative jazz - Free jazz - Gypsy jazz - Hard bop - Jazz blues - Jazz-funk - Jazz fusion - Jazz rap - Latin jazz - Mini-jazz - Modal jazz - M-Base - Nu jazz - Smooth jazz - Soul jazz - Swing - Trad jazz - West coast jazz
But what do these mean? What sets them apart?
Below is a quick breakdown of what they entail.
Acid jazz (also known as groove jazz or more recently club jazz) is a musical genre that combines jazz influences with elements of soul music, funk, disco and also 90s English dance music, particularly repetitive beats and modal harmony. It developed over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as taking the boundary crossing of jazz fusion or Jazz-Funk onto new ground.
One of the aims of acid jazz is to return jazz to its roots in dancing halls; therefore, it incorporates "catchy", "groovy" sounds.
A lot of the Acid-Jazz movement is also seen as a "revival" of Jazz-Funk or Jazz-Fusion or soul jazz by Leading Djs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge. AKA "Rare Groove" crate diggers.
Asian American jazz is a musical movement in the United States begun in the 20th century by Asian American jazz musicians.
Although Asian Americans had been performing jazz music almost since that music's inception, it was not until the late 20th century when a distinctly Asian American brand of jazz began to develop. In the 1970s and early 1980s, West Coast musicians such as Gerald O****a, Glenn Horiuchi, Anthony Brown, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Mark Izu, and Russel Baba, as well as New Yorkers like Fred Ho and Jason Kao Hwang, began to create a hybrid music that was reflective of their ancestral heritages and experiences as Asian Americans, but which was at the same time also rooted in jazz, a music of African American origin. Most of the first musicians associated with the movement were of Japanese or Chinese ancestry, though more recently musicians of Filipino, Vietnamese, Indian, and Iranian descent have also become active.
Often, Asian American jazz combines standard jazz instruments with Asian instruments (such as taiko, shamisen, erhu, suona, or kulintang), which are often performed by musicians from Asia. Also, they may play jazz instruments in a manner imitative of Asian instruments. Many Asian American jazz ensembles also include musicians who are not of Asian descent.
Of particular significance to the development and promotion of the movement are the San Francisco Asian American Jazz Festival (1981-2006) and the Asian Improv record label, as well as the Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival begun by Chicago musician Tatsu Aoki.
One of the first and most prominent Asian American jazz bands is the Japanese American fusion jazz band Hiroshima, which was formed in 1974. In 2000, Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance for their recording of Ellington-Strayhorn's Far East Suite.
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines elements of avant-garde art music and composition with elements of traditional jazz. Avant-jazz overlaps with free jazz, but differs in that free jazz is generally performed with fewer, or no predetermined structure or composition.
Bebop or bop is a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. Hard bop later developed from bebop combined with blues and gospel music.
Dixieland music is a style of jazz. Dixieland developed in New Orleans, Louisiana at the start of the 20th century, and spread to Chicago, Illinois and New York City, New York by New Orleans bands in the 1910s, and was, for a period, quite popular among the general public. It is often considered the first true type of jazz, and was the first music referred to by the term jazz (before 1917 often spelled jass).
Calypso jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines elements of calypso music with elements of traditional jazz.
Chamber jazz is a genre of jazz based around small, acoustic-based ensembles where group interplay is important. It is influenced aesthetically by musical neoclassicism and is often influenced by classical forms of non-Western music. That stated in many cases the influence is traditional Celtic music, Central European folk music, or Latin American music instead. The genre primarily began in Europe so significant neoclassical composers of Europe, like Igor Stravinsky, are important in it. It is also noted for using instruments not normally associated with jazz. For example chamber jazz will make use of the oboe, mandolin, cymbalum, or the tabla.
The non-Western influences or instrumentation make chamber jazz at times listed as a kind of world music. At other times the fusion of neoclassical with jazz is deemed to be New Age and several albums of chamber jazz were released by Windham Hill Records. Windham Hill itself was co-founded by a musician linked to chamber jazz and was initially known for folk or world music.
The term is also used, on occasion, to simply mean the fusion of chamber music with jazz.
Cool jazz is a jazz style that emerged in the late 1940s in New York City.
In 1946, after the Second World War, there was an influx of Californian (predominantly white) jazz musicians to New York. Once there, these musicians mixed with the mostly African-American bop musicians. The product, cool jazz, was a lighter, more romantic style of jazz than bop; cool jazz took a relaxed, simple approach to rhythm while preserving the harmonic ideas of bop. The Claude Thornhill Orchestra with the arranger Gil Evans recorded cool jazz as early as the late 1940s; Thornhill's most popular song, "Snowfall", is still played today. Other cool musicians of the 1940's included Lennie Tristano and his colleagues Billy Bauer and Warne Marsh. The style grew more prevalent in the 1950's, attracting the attention of musicians like Miles Davis, whose recordings Birth of the Cool (1957) and Kind of Blue (1959) became among the most popular jazz albums ever produced.
Free jazz is a movement of jazz music which was developed in the 1950s and 1960s by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Joe Harriott, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. Some of the best known examples are the later works of John Coltrane. Though the music produced by these players varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the expressive possibilities of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz; each in his own way, free jazz musicians attempted to break down or extend the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features of jazz such as fixed chord changes or tempos.
Though "free jazz" is the generally used term nowadays, many other terms have been used. In the 1960s, the loosely-defined movement was sometimes called "Energy Music" or "The New Thing". Free-jazz players were other said to be playing "outside" or "out" (as opposed to "inside"--conventionally), and the word became a favorite one among musicians and record labels: albums from this period include Outward Bound, Out There, Out to Lunch (all by Dolphy), Out Front (Jaki Byard), and Destination Out (Jackie McLean).
While free jazz is most often associated with the era of its birth, many musicians - including Ken Vandermark, William Parker, John Zorn, Paal Nilssen-Love and George Lewis (trombonist) - have kept the style alive to the present day, continuing its development as a jazz idiom. In Europe the style was further extended by players such as Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker into an idiom that came to be called "free improvisation."
Gypsy jazz is an idiom that was pioneered in the 1930s by guitar legend Django Reinhardt. Django was foremost among a group of guitarists working in and around Paris in the late 1920s and 30s. This group included the Ferre brothers, who also made important contributions to the development of what has come to be known as Gypsy jazz.
One of the primary sources of employment for musicians in Paris at that time was in various popular Musette ensembles. The Musette style waltz remains an important component in the Gypsy jazz repertoire. Reinhardt combined a dark, chromatic Gypsy flavor with the swing articulation of the period to create a beautiful and original style of jazz. His genius for improvised melody was characterised by ormanented arpeggios. This approach continues to form the basis for contemporary Gypsy jazz guitar. Reinhardt's most famous group, the Quintette Du Hot Club De France, also brought fame to jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Gypsy jazz is thriving today, with fans and practitioners found all over the globe. The largest audiences and highest caliber of musicians are found in Europe. Stochelo Rosenberg is perhaps the most famous performer today.
Gypsy jazz, along with traditional Gypsy music, is learned by the passing down of knowledge from older generations. Many Gypsy musicians do not read notated music. It is more common for beginners to spend hours learning and memorizing songs from recordings and gleaning techniques from more experienced players.
In Gypsy jazz, guitar and violin are the main solo instruments, although clarinet and accordion are also common. The rhythm guitar is played using a distinct percussive technique, "la pompe", that essentially replaces the drums. An upright bass fills out the ensembles. Although many instrumental lineups exist, a group including one lead guitar, violin, two rhythm guitars, and bass is often the norm.
Hard bop is an extension of bebop (bop) music which incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing.
Its bass playing is more varied, due in part to the prominence of such virtuosos as Charles Mingus and Ray Brown; it is in part intended to be more accessible to audiences unfamiliar with or not fond of bop. David H. Rosenthal also contends in his book Hard Bop that it is to a large degree the natural creation of a generation of black American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music and jazz musicians as prominent as Tadd Dameron worked in both genres.
Hard bop musicians include Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, John Coltrane, Lou Donaldson, Miles Davis, Kenny Drew, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver.
Hard bop was developed in the 1950s and 1960s and enjoyed its greatest popularity in that era, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz.
Jazz blues is a musical style that combines jazz and blues.
The term also refers to any tune that follows the standard 12-bar blues chord progression, whilst being played in the jazz style, rather than the traditional blues style. Blues music was a major influence in the development of jazz, and such tunes -- "jazz blueses" -- are extremely common in the jazz repertiore. (In addition to the chord progression, jazz players borrowed many other stylistic devices from the blues, such as blue notes, blues-like phrasing of melodies, and blues riffs.) A jazz blues will usually feature a more sophisticated -- or at any rate a different -- treatment of the harmony than a traditional, "blues" blues would, but the underlying features of the standard 12-bar progression remain discernable. One of the main ways the jazz musician accomplishes this is through the use of chord substitutions: a chord in the original progression is replaced by one or more chords which have the same general "sense", or function, but which add a different color, or add some secondary, shorter-term, harmonic movement within the span of the existing overall harmonic movement. An important example of this occurs in the 9th and 10th bars, where the usual blues progression, V --> IV, is almost always replaced by the typical jazz cycle-of-fifths progression ii minor --> V. The 12-bar blues form, in Bb, often becomes
Bb7 / Eb7 / Bb7 / Bb7
Eb7 / Edim7 / Bb7 / Dm7-G7
Cm7 / F7 / Dm7-G7 / Cm7-F7
Where each slash represents a new measure, in the jazz blues. The significant changes include the Edim7, which creates movement, and the iii-VI-ii-V turnaround, a jazz staple.
Jazz-funk is a sub-genre of jazz music characterized by a strong back beat, electrified sounds and first electronic analog synthesizers. The integration of funk, soul, and R&B music and styles into jazz resulted in the creation of a genre whose spectrum is indeed quite wide and ranges from strong jazz improvisation to soul, funk or disco with jazz arrangements, jazz riffs, and jazz solos, and sometimes soul vocals. Jazz-funk is a mostly American genre, where it was popular throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s, but it also achieved noted appeal on the club-circuit in England during the mid 1970s. Other possible names for this genre include soul jazz and jazz fusion, but neither entirely overlap with jazz-funk.
Jazz fusion (sometimes referred to simply as fusion) is a musical genre that loosely encompasses the merging of jazz with other styles, particularly rock, funk, R&B, electronic music and world music. It began with jazz musicians mixing the forms and techniques of jazz with the electric instruments of rock, and rhythmic structure from African-American popular music, both "soul" and "rhythm and blues", as well as crossovers by some rock artists to add prominent jazz elements to their music. The 1970s were the most visible decade for fusion, but the style has been well represented during more recent times. Fusion albums - even those that are made by the same artist - often include a variety of musical styles. It can be argued that rather than being a coherent musical style, fusion is a musical tradition and approach.
Many prominent fusion musicians are recognized as having a high level of virtuosity, allowing for compositions and musical improvisation in complex time signatures and metres rarely seen in other Western musical forms, perhaps best recognized in the work of jazz composers Dave Brubeck and Don Ellis. Fusion music generally receives almost no broadcast airplay on radio in the United States, owing perhaps to its often complexity, usual lack of vocals, and frequently extended track lengths. A number of Internet radio stations do feature fusion music, including dedicated channels on popular services such as AOL Radio and Yahoo! Launchcast.
Jazz rap is a fusion of alternative hip hop music and jazz, developed in the very late 1980s and early 1990s. Known for intellectual, often socio-political or Afrocentric lyrics and jazz beats (sometimes performed by a live band, instead of sampled), jazz rap has not become a huge mainstream success; it instead sells primarily to a small specialized fan base.
Though some claim the proto-hip hop, jazzy poet Gil Scott-Heron the beginning of jazz rap, the genre arose in 1988 with the release of the debut singles by Gang Starr ("Words I Manifest", which samples Charlie Parker) and Stetsasonic ("Talkin' All That Jazz", which samples Lonnie Liston-Smith). One year later, Gang Starr's debut LP, No More Mr. Nice Guy and their work on the soundtrack to Mo' Better Blues, and De La Soul's debut 3 Feet High and Rising have proven remarkably influential in the genre's development. De La Soul's cohorts in the Native Tongues Posse also released important jazzy albums, including the Jungle Brothers' debut Straight Out the Jungle (1988, 1988 in music) and A Tribe Called Quest's debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990, 1990 in music).
Latin jazz is the general term given to music that combines rhythms from African and Latin American countries with jazz harmonies from Latin America, the Carribean, Europe and United States.
The two main categories of Latin Jazz are Brazilian and Afro-Cuban.
• Brazilian Latin Jazz includes bossa nova and samba.
• Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz includes salsa, merengue, songo, son, mambo, bolero, charanga and cha cha cha.
One of the contribution of Latins (Latino's in Spanish) to America, Latin Jazz was further popularized in the late 1940s when Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton began to combine the rhythm section and structure of Afro-Cuban music, exemplified by Machito and his Afro-Cubans, with jazz instruments and solo improvisational ideas. Stan Kenton released an arrangement of the Afro-Cuban tune The Peanut Vendor, which is considered by many to be the first Latin Jazz recording of the American Jazz counterparts. In 1947, Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with Machito conga player Chano Pozo to perform the "Afro-Cuban Drums Suite" at Carnegie Hall. This concert brought Latin-Jazz to the attention of others,and Pozo remained in Gillespie's band to produce "Cubana Be, Cubana Bop".
In comparison to American Jazz, Latin Jazz employs straight rhythm, rather than swung rhythm. Latin Jazz rarely employs a backbeat, using a form of the clave instead. The conga, timbale, güiro, and claves are percussion instruments which often contribute to a Latin sound.
Samba originates from nineteenth century Afro-Brazilian music such as the Lundu. It employs a modified form of the clave. Bossa Nova is a hybrid music based on Samba's rhythm but influenced by European and American music from Debussy to US jazz. Bossa Nova originated in the 1960s, largely from the efforts of Brazilians Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, and American Stan Getz. Its most famous song is arguably The Girl from Ipanema sung by Gilberto and his wife, Astrud Gilberto.
Latin jazz music, like most types of jazz music, can be played in small or large groups. Small groups, or combos, often use the Be-bop format made popular in the 1950s in America, where the musicians play a standard melody, many of the musicians play an improvised solo, and then everyone plays the melody again. In Latin jazz bands, percussion often takes a center stage during a solo, and a conga or timbale can add a melodic line to any performance.
Mini-jazz is a type of jazz music characterized by swing dancing and jazzy melodies with influences from rock music. Predominant in Haiti in the 1970s, its popularity has waned since the 1990s. Marco Bottura is a major artist in the mini-jazz era. Mini-jazz typically includes a small jazz orchestra ensemble.
Modal jazz is jazz played using musical modes rather than chord progressions.
M-Base (short for "macro-basic array of structured extemporization") is a concept of how to create modern music which reached its peak in the mid-to-late-80s and early 90s. It was also a word used to reference a collective of musicians, poets and dancers in this same time period who were associated with the movement. M-Base is often seen as a kind of jazz, but, strictly speaking, this is not entirely accurate, and the participants do not view M-Base in this manner.
M-Base is built on the innovations of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and especially the free funk of Ornette Coleman's electric bands, along with many other spontaneous composers. It is also influenced by the rhythmic innovations of many of the groups led by singer James Brown, as well as having direct roots in West African Music and West African cultural and philosophical ideas. One of its most noticeable musical traits is the innovative use of overlapping rhythmic cycles of various lengths inside of which the participants improvise, giving the music an unpredictable form. Other characteristics are curvilinear melodic elements, non-standard harmonic structures coupled with a mastery of improvisation based on these forms, resulting in a decidedly non-western cultural and philosophical bent.
Some of the main exponents of this concept in the 1980s - 1990s were saxophonist Steve Coleman (whose present style is an extension of these ideas), saxophonist Greg Osby, trombonist Robin Eubanks, saxophonist Gary Thomas, pianist Tim Murphy, and singer Cassandra Wilson, who are all still active in music performing and recording. Their more recent performances, especially Coleman's, still demonstrate a debt to M-Base. Additionally, many newer musicians in the spontaneous composition arena - along with various artists in other areas utilizing spontaneous creation in poetry, dance, and popular forms like Hip-Hop - are also heavily influenced by the M-Base conception.
Nu-jazz (sometimes electro-jazz, jazztronica, or phusion) was coined in the late 1990s to refer to styles which combine jazz textures and sometimes jazz instrumentation with electronic music. Like the terms electronica and jazz, nu jazz is a loosely defined umbrella musical style. It ranges from combining live instrumentation with beats of jazz house (exemplified by French St Germain, German Jazzanova and Fila Brazillia from the UK) to more band-based improvised jazz with electronic elements (such as that of the British The Cinematic Orchestra, the Belgian PhusionCulture Nu-jazz improvisation collective and the Norwegian future jazz style pioneered by Bugge Wesseltoft, Jaga Jazzist, Nils Petter Molvær and others). It is a term sometimes ascribed to Squarepusher's music.
Nu-jazz typically ventures farther into the electronic territory than does its close cousin, acid jazz (or groove jazz), which is generally closer to earthier funk, soul and rhythm and blues, although releases from noted groove jazz artists such as the Groove Collective blur the distinction between the styles.
Smooth jazz is generally described as a genre of music that utilizes instruments (and, at times, improvisation) traditionally associated with jazz and stylistic influences drawn from, among other sources, funk, pop and R&B. Since the late 1980s, it has become highly successful as a radio format; one can tune in to a "smooth jazz"-themed station nearly everywhere in the United States. Despite its apparently large following, there has been something of a backlash against the genre, mostly from jazz purists who consider its recordings bland and overly commercial.
Soul jazz was a development of hard bop which incorporated strong blues and gospel influences in music for small groups featuring keyboards, especially the Hammond organ. Important soul jazz organists include Bill Doggett, Charles Earland, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Les McCann, "Brother" Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Lonnie Smith, Don Patterson, Jimmy Smith and Johnny Hammond Smith. Tenor saxophone was also important in soul jazz; important soul jazz tenors include Gene Ammons, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Eddie Harris, Houston Person, and Stanley Turrentine. Alto player Lou Donaldson was also an important figure, as was Hank Crawford.
Unlike hard bop, soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive grooves and melodic hooks, and improvisations were often less complex than in other jazz styles.
Probably the best known soul jazz recording is Ramsey Lewis's "The In Crowd," a major hit of 1965. Soul jazz was developed in the late 1950s, and was perhaps most popular in the early 1970s, though many soul jazz performers, and elements of the music, remain popular.
Soul music is only distantly related to soul jazz - it arose from gospel and blues rather than from jazz sources.
Swing music, also known as swing jazz, is a form of jazz music that developed during the 1920s and had solidified as a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States. Swing is distinguished primarily by a strong rhythm section, usually including double bass and drums, medium to fast tempo, and the distinctive swing time rhythm that is common to many forms of jazz.
Trad jazz, short for "traditional" jazz is a music genre popular in Britain and Australia from the 1940s onward through the 1950s and which still has enthusiasts today. It represented a recreation of the sounds and playing styles of New Orleans dixieland jazz. British and Australian bands of this genre copied the playing style of such artists as Sidney Bechet or King Oliver.
Opinions are divided about whether "trad jazz" is a valid name because one point of view would have it that jazz is a folk music tradition like any other, while the opposite point of view holds that jazz playing breaks loose from traditions and conventions so that, therefore, "traditional jazz" is a contradiction in terms.
In Britain during the 60's trad jazz was used to dance skip jive, a descendant of jive and swing dance.
For definition, many aficionados today consider trad to be the traditional playing of a piece with solo after solo leading up to a finish. Some feel that "hot jazz" though similar to trad, and indeed containing many of the same tunes, was more ensemble playing with less individual virtuosity brought to the forefront. Early King Oliver pieces define hot jazz to many. As individual performers began stepping to the front as soloists, the music changed. Ironically, one of ensemble players in King Oliver's Original Creole Band, Louis Armstrong, was by far, the most influential of the soloists, creating a big demand for the new style of jazz in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Other influential stylists who are still revered in trad jazz circles today include Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke and Muggsy Spanier.
West coast jazz is a form of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles at about the same time as hard bop jazz was developing in New York City, in the 1950s and 1960s. West Coast Jazz was generally seen as a subgenre of cool jazz.
It featured a less frenetic, calmer style than hard bop. The Pacific Jazz Records record label carried West coast jazz, while Blue Note was the biggest bebop label. Some of the major pioneers of West coast jazz were Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, and Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond.
Some jazz critics, such as French critic Hugues Panassié, looked down upon West Coast Jazz as inauthentic, due to most - but not all - musicians in the style being white. However, there were a sizable number of African American musicians who played in the style, such as Curtis Counce and Hampton Hawes.
Phew, thats it. Hope I didnt miss any biggies and above all, I hope this has been informative.
Cheers, Mark
Recently I have found myself listening to Jazz music more and more.
I used to believe that Jazz was Jazz - The End.
But how wrong I was! The more I looked into it the more it seemed to stretch out in front of me.
I never realised just how many different genres there were out there.
Below is some information which I have assimilated from www.wikipedia.org , breaking down Jazz into some of its sub categories, giving information on them and in some cases naming example songs, bands or people.
This has helped me understand what I am listening to a little more and so thought I would share it. Maybe you can pick up another morsel of info.
"The day you stop learning is the day you stop living" - Unknown.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jazz is an original American musical art form originating around the start of the 20th century in New Orleans, rooted in African American musical styles blended with Western music technique and theory. Jazz uses blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation.
Jazz can be broken down into numerous genres, these include:
Acid jazz - Asian American jazz - Avant-garde jazz - Bebop - Dixieland - Calypso jazz - Chamber jazz - Cool jazz - Creative jazz - Free jazz - Gypsy jazz - Hard bop - Jazz blues - Jazz-funk - Jazz fusion - Jazz rap - Latin jazz - Mini-jazz - Modal jazz - M-Base - Nu jazz - Smooth jazz - Soul jazz - Swing - Trad jazz - West coast jazz
But what do these mean? What sets them apart?
Below is a quick breakdown of what they entail.
Acid jazz (also known as groove jazz or more recently club jazz) is a musical genre that combines jazz influences with elements of soul music, funk, disco and also 90s English dance music, particularly repetitive beats and modal harmony. It developed over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as taking the boundary crossing of jazz fusion or Jazz-Funk onto new ground.
One of the aims of acid jazz is to return jazz to its roots in dancing halls; therefore, it incorporates "catchy", "groovy" sounds.
A lot of the Acid-Jazz movement is also seen as a "revival" of Jazz-Funk or Jazz-Fusion or soul jazz by Leading Djs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge. AKA "Rare Groove" crate diggers.
Asian American jazz is a musical movement in the United States begun in the 20th century by Asian American jazz musicians.
Although Asian Americans had been performing jazz music almost since that music's inception, it was not until the late 20th century when a distinctly Asian American brand of jazz began to develop. In the 1970s and early 1980s, West Coast musicians such as Gerald O****a, Glenn Horiuchi, Anthony Brown, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Mark Izu, and Russel Baba, as well as New Yorkers like Fred Ho and Jason Kao Hwang, began to create a hybrid music that was reflective of their ancestral heritages and experiences as Asian Americans, but which was at the same time also rooted in jazz, a music of African American origin. Most of the first musicians associated with the movement were of Japanese or Chinese ancestry, though more recently musicians of Filipino, Vietnamese, Indian, and Iranian descent have also become active.
Often, Asian American jazz combines standard jazz instruments with Asian instruments (such as taiko, shamisen, erhu, suona, or kulintang), which are often performed by musicians from Asia. Also, they may play jazz instruments in a manner imitative of Asian instruments. Many Asian American jazz ensembles also include musicians who are not of Asian descent.
Of particular significance to the development and promotion of the movement are the San Francisco Asian American Jazz Festival (1981-2006) and the Asian Improv record label, as well as the Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival begun by Chicago musician Tatsu Aoki.
One of the first and most prominent Asian American jazz bands is the Japanese American fusion jazz band Hiroshima, which was formed in 1974. In 2000, Anthony Brown's Asian American Orchestra received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance for their recording of Ellington-Strayhorn's Far East Suite.
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines elements of avant-garde art music and composition with elements of traditional jazz. Avant-jazz overlaps with free jazz, but differs in that free jazz is generally performed with fewer, or no predetermined structure or composition.
Bebop or bop is a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. Hard bop later developed from bebop combined with blues and gospel music.
Dixieland music is a style of jazz. Dixieland developed in New Orleans, Louisiana at the start of the 20th century, and spread to Chicago, Illinois and New York City, New York by New Orleans bands in the 1910s, and was, for a period, quite popular among the general public. It is often considered the first true type of jazz, and was the first music referred to by the term jazz (before 1917 often spelled jass).
Calypso jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines elements of calypso music with elements of traditional jazz.
Chamber jazz is a genre of jazz based around small, acoustic-based ensembles where group interplay is important. It is influenced aesthetically by musical neoclassicism and is often influenced by classical forms of non-Western music. That stated in many cases the influence is traditional Celtic music, Central European folk music, or Latin American music instead. The genre primarily began in Europe so significant neoclassical composers of Europe, like Igor Stravinsky, are important in it. It is also noted for using instruments not normally associated with jazz. For example chamber jazz will make use of the oboe, mandolin, cymbalum, or the tabla.
The non-Western influences or instrumentation make chamber jazz at times listed as a kind of world music. At other times the fusion of neoclassical with jazz is deemed to be New Age and several albums of chamber jazz were released by Windham Hill Records. Windham Hill itself was co-founded by a musician linked to chamber jazz and was initially known for folk or world music.
The term is also used, on occasion, to simply mean the fusion of chamber music with jazz.
Cool jazz is a jazz style that emerged in the late 1940s in New York City.
In 1946, after the Second World War, there was an influx of Californian (predominantly white) jazz musicians to New York. Once there, these musicians mixed with the mostly African-American bop musicians. The product, cool jazz, was a lighter, more romantic style of jazz than bop; cool jazz took a relaxed, simple approach to rhythm while preserving the harmonic ideas of bop. The Claude Thornhill Orchestra with the arranger Gil Evans recorded cool jazz as early as the late 1940s; Thornhill's most popular song, "Snowfall", is still played today. Other cool musicians of the 1940's included Lennie Tristano and his colleagues Billy Bauer and Warne Marsh. The style grew more prevalent in the 1950's, attracting the attention of musicians like Miles Davis, whose recordings Birth of the Cool (1957) and Kind of Blue (1959) became among the most popular jazz albums ever produced.
Free jazz is a movement of jazz music which was developed in the 1950s and 1960s by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Joe Harriott, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. Some of the best known examples are the later works of John Coltrane. Though the music produced by these players varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the expressive possibilities of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz; each in his own way, free jazz musicians attempted to break down or extend the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features of jazz such as fixed chord changes or tempos.
Though "free jazz" is the generally used term nowadays, many other terms have been used. In the 1960s, the loosely-defined movement was sometimes called "Energy Music" or "The New Thing". Free-jazz players were other said to be playing "outside" or "out" (as opposed to "inside"--conventionally), and the word became a favorite one among musicians and record labels: albums from this period include Outward Bound, Out There, Out to Lunch (all by Dolphy), Out Front (Jaki Byard), and Destination Out (Jackie McLean).
While free jazz is most often associated with the era of its birth, many musicians - including Ken Vandermark, William Parker, John Zorn, Paal Nilssen-Love and George Lewis (trombonist) - have kept the style alive to the present day, continuing its development as a jazz idiom. In Europe the style was further extended by players such as Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker into an idiom that came to be called "free improvisation."
Gypsy jazz is an idiom that was pioneered in the 1930s by guitar legend Django Reinhardt. Django was foremost among a group of guitarists working in and around Paris in the late 1920s and 30s. This group included the Ferre brothers, who also made important contributions to the development of what has come to be known as Gypsy jazz.
One of the primary sources of employment for musicians in Paris at that time was in various popular Musette ensembles. The Musette style waltz remains an important component in the Gypsy jazz repertoire. Reinhardt combined a dark, chromatic Gypsy flavor with the swing articulation of the period to create a beautiful and original style of jazz. His genius for improvised melody was characterised by ormanented arpeggios. This approach continues to form the basis for contemporary Gypsy jazz guitar. Reinhardt's most famous group, the Quintette Du Hot Club De France, also brought fame to jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Gypsy jazz is thriving today, with fans and practitioners found all over the globe. The largest audiences and highest caliber of musicians are found in Europe. Stochelo Rosenberg is perhaps the most famous performer today.
Gypsy jazz, along with traditional Gypsy music, is learned by the passing down of knowledge from older generations. Many Gypsy musicians do not read notated music. It is more common for beginners to spend hours learning and memorizing songs from recordings and gleaning techniques from more experienced players.
In Gypsy jazz, guitar and violin are the main solo instruments, although clarinet and accordion are also common. The rhythm guitar is played using a distinct percussive technique, "la pompe", that essentially replaces the drums. An upright bass fills out the ensembles. Although many instrumental lineups exist, a group including one lead guitar, violin, two rhythm guitars, and bass is often the norm.
Hard bop is an extension of bebop (bop) music which incorporates influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing.
Its bass playing is more varied, due in part to the prominence of such virtuosos as Charles Mingus and Ray Brown; it is in part intended to be more accessible to audiences unfamiliar with or not fond of bop. David H. Rosenthal also contends in his book Hard Bop that it is to a large degree the natural creation of a generation of black American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music and jazz musicians as prominent as Tadd Dameron worked in both genres.
Hard bop musicians include Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, John Coltrane, Lou Donaldson, Miles Davis, Kenny Drew, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver.
Hard bop was developed in the 1950s and 1960s and enjoyed its greatest popularity in that era, but hard bop performers, and elements of the music, remain popular in jazz.
Jazz blues is a musical style that combines jazz and blues.
The term also refers to any tune that follows the standard 12-bar blues chord progression, whilst being played in the jazz style, rather than the traditional blues style. Blues music was a major influence in the development of jazz, and such tunes -- "jazz blueses" -- are extremely common in the jazz repertiore. (In addition to the chord progression, jazz players borrowed many other stylistic devices from the blues, such as blue notes, blues-like phrasing of melodies, and blues riffs.) A jazz blues will usually feature a more sophisticated -- or at any rate a different -- treatment of the harmony than a traditional, "blues" blues would, but the underlying features of the standard 12-bar progression remain discernable. One of the main ways the jazz musician accomplishes this is through the use of chord substitutions: a chord in the original progression is replaced by one or more chords which have the same general "sense", or function, but which add a different color, or add some secondary, shorter-term, harmonic movement within the span of the existing overall harmonic movement. An important example of this occurs in the 9th and 10th bars, where the usual blues progression, V --> IV, is almost always replaced by the typical jazz cycle-of-fifths progression ii minor --> V. The 12-bar blues form, in Bb, often becomes
Bb7 / Eb7 / Bb7 / Bb7
Eb7 / Edim7 / Bb7 / Dm7-G7
Cm7 / F7 / Dm7-G7 / Cm7-F7
Where each slash represents a new measure, in the jazz blues. The significant changes include the Edim7, which creates movement, and the iii-VI-ii-V turnaround, a jazz staple.
Jazz-funk is a sub-genre of jazz music characterized by a strong back beat, electrified sounds and first electronic analog synthesizers. The integration of funk, soul, and R&B music and styles into jazz resulted in the creation of a genre whose spectrum is indeed quite wide and ranges from strong jazz improvisation to soul, funk or disco with jazz arrangements, jazz riffs, and jazz solos, and sometimes soul vocals. Jazz-funk is a mostly American genre, where it was popular throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s, but it also achieved noted appeal on the club-circuit in England during the mid 1970s. Other possible names for this genre include soul jazz and jazz fusion, but neither entirely overlap with jazz-funk.
Jazz fusion (sometimes referred to simply as fusion) is a musical genre that loosely encompasses the merging of jazz with other styles, particularly rock, funk, R&B, electronic music and world music. It began with jazz musicians mixing the forms and techniques of jazz with the electric instruments of rock, and rhythmic structure from African-American popular music, both "soul" and "rhythm and blues", as well as crossovers by some rock artists to add prominent jazz elements to their music. The 1970s were the most visible decade for fusion, but the style has been well represented during more recent times. Fusion albums - even those that are made by the same artist - often include a variety of musical styles. It can be argued that rather than being a coherent musical style, fusion is a musical tradition and approach.
Many prominent fusion musicians are recognized as having a high level of virtuosity, allowing for compositions and musical improvisation in complex time signatures and metres rarely seen in other Western musical forms, perhaps best recognized in the work of jazz composers Dave Brubeck and Don Ellis. Fusion music generally receives almost no broadcast airplay on radio in the United States, owing perhaps to its often complexity, usual lack of vocals, and frequently extended track lengths. A number of Internet radio stations do feature fusion music, including dedicated channels on popular services such as AOL Radio and Yahoo! Launchcast.
Jazz rap is a fusion of alternative hip hop music and jazz, developed in the very late 1980s and early 1990s. Known for intellectual, often socio-political or Afrocentric lyrics and jazz beats (sometimes performed by a live band, instead of sampled), jazz rap has not become a huge mainstream success; it instead sells primarily to a small specialized fan base.
Though some claim the proto-hip hop, jazzy poet Gil Scott-Heron the beginning of jazz rap, the genre arose in 1988 with the release of the debut singles by Gang Starr ("Words I Manifest", which samples Charlie Parker) and Stetsasonic ("Talkin' All That Jazz", which samples Lonnie Liston-Smith). One year later, Gang Starr's debut LP, No More Mr. Nice Guy and their work on the soundtrack to Mo' Better Blues, and De La Soul's debut 3 Feet High and Rising have proven remarkably influential in the genre's development. De La Soul's cohorts in the Native Tongues Posse also released important jazzy albums, including the Jungle Brothers' debut Straight Out the Jungle (1988, 1988 in music) and A Tribe Called Quest's debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990, 1990 in music).
Latin jazz is the general term given to music that combines rhythms from African and Latin American countries with jazz harmonies from Latin America, the Carribean, Europe and United States.
The two main categories of Latin Jazz are Brazilian and Afro-Cuban.
• Brazilian Latin Jazz includes bossa nova and samba.
• Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz includes salsa, merengue, songo, son, mambo, bolero, charanga and cha cha cha.
One of the contribution of Latins (Latino's in Spanish) to America, Latin Jazz was further popularized in the late 1940s when Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton began to combine the rhythm section and structure of Afro-Cuban music, exemplified by Machito and his Afro-Cubans, with jazz instruments and solo improvisational ideas. Stan Kenton released an arrangement of the Afro-Cuban tune The Peanut Vendor, which is considered by many to be the first Latin Jazz recording of the American Jazz counterparts. In 1947, Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with Machito conga player Chano Pozo to perform the "Afro-Cuban Drums Suite" at Carnegie Hall. This concert brought Latin-Jazz to the attention of others,and Pozo remained in Gillespie's band to produce "Cubana Be, Cubana Bop".
In comparison to American Jazz, Latin Jazz employs straight rhythm, rather than swung rhythm. Latin Jazz rarely employs a backbeat, using a form of the clave instead. The conga, timbale, güiro, and claves are percussion instruments which often contribute to a Latin sound.
Samba originates from nineteenth century Afro-Brazilian music such as the Lundu. It employs a modified form of the clave. Bossa Nova is a hybrid music based on Samba's rhythm but influenced by European and American music from Debussy to US jazz. Bossa Nova originated in the 1960s, largely from the efforts of Brazilians Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, and American Stan Getz. Its most famous song is arguably The Girl from Ipanema sung by Gilberto and his wife, Astrud Gilberto.
Latin jazz music, like most types of jazz music, can be played in small or large groups. Small groups, or combos, often use the Be-bop format made popular in the 1950s in America, where the musicians play a standard melody, many of the musicians play an improvised solo, and then everyone plays the melody again. In Latin jazz bands, percussion often takes a center stage during a solo, and a conga or timbale can add a melodic line to any performance.
Mini-jazz is a type of jazz music characterized by swing dancing and jazzy melodies with influences from rock music. Predominant in Haiti in the 1970s, its popularity has waned since the 1990s. Marco Bottura is a major artist in the mini-jazz era. Mini-jazz typically includes a small jazz orchestra ensemble.
Modal jazz is jazz played using musical modes rather than chord progressions.
M-Base (short for "macro-basic array of structured extemporization") is a concept of how to create modern music which reached its peak in the mid-to-late-80s and early 90s. It was also a word used to reference a collective of musicians, poets and dancers in this same time period who were associated with the movement. M-Base is often seen as a kind of jazz, but, strictly speaking, this is not entirely accurate, and the participants do not view M-Base in this manner.
M-Base is built on the innovations of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and especially the free funk of Ornette Coleman's electric bands, along with many other spontaneous composers. It is also influenced by the rhythmic innovations of many of the groups led by singer James Brown, as well as having direct roots in West African Music and West African cultural and philosophical ideas. One of its most noticeable musical traits is the innovative use of overlapping rhythmic cycles of various lengths inside of which the participants improvise, giving the music an unpredictable form. Other characteristics are curvilinear melodic elements, non-standard harmonic structures coupled with a mastery of improvisation based on these forms, resulting in a decidedly non-western cultural and philosophical bent.
Some of the main exponents of this concept in the 1980s - 1990s were saxophonist Steve Coleman (whose present style is an extension of these ideas), saxophonist Greg Osby, trombonist Robin Eubanks, saxophonist Gary Thomas, pianist Tim Murphy, and singer Cassandra Wilson, who are all still active in music performing and recording. Their more recent performances, especially Coleman's, still demonstrate a debt to M-Base. Additionally, many newer musicians in the spontaneous composition arena - along with various artists in other areas utilizing spontaneous creation in poetry, dance, and popular forms like Hip-Hop - are also heavily influenced by the M-Base conception.
Nu-jazz (sometimes electro-jazz, jazztronica, or phusion) was coined in the late 1990s to refer to styles which combine jazz textures and sometimes jazz instrumentation with electronic music. Like the terms electronica and jazz, nu jazz is a loosely defined umbrella musical style. It ranges from combining live instrumentation with beats of jazz house (exemplified by French St Germain, German Jazzanova and Fila Brazillia from the UK) to more band-based improvised jazz with electronic elements (such as that of the British The Cinematic Orchestra, the Belgian PhusionCulture Nu-jazz improvisation collective and the Norwegian future jazz style pioneered by Bugge Wesseltoft, Jaga Jazzist, Nils Petter Molvær and others). It is a term sometimes ascribed to Squarepusher's music.
Nu-jazz typically ventures farther into the electronic territory than does its close cousin, acid jazz (or groove jazz), which is generally closer to earthier funk, soul and rhythm and blues, although releases from noted groove jazz artists such as the Groove Collective blur the distinction between the styles.
Smooth jazz is generally described as a genre of music that utilizes instruments (and, at times, improvisation) traditionally associated with jazz and stylistic influences drawn from, among other sources, funk, pop and R&B. Since the late 1980s, it has become highly successful as a radio format; one can tune in to a "smooth jazz"-themed station nearly everywhere in the United States. Despite its apparently large following, there has been something of a backlash against the genre, mostly from jazz purists who consider its recordings bland and overly commercial.
Soul jazz was a development of hard bop which incorporated strong blues and gospel influences in music for small groups featuring keyboards, especially the Hammond organ. Important soul jazz organists include Bill Doggett, Charles Earland, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Les McCann, "Brother" Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, Lonnie Smith, Don Patterson, Jimmy Smith and Johnny Hammond Smith. Tenor saxophone was also important in soul jazz; important soul jazz tenors include Gene Ammons, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Eddie Harris, Houston Person, and Stanley Turrentine. Alto player Lou Donaldson was also an important figure, as was Hank Crawford.
Unlike hard bop, soul jazz generally emphasized repetitive grooves and melodic hooks, and improvisations were often less complex than in other jazz styles.
Probably the best known soul jazz recording is Ramsey Lewis's "The In Crowd," a major hit of 1965. Soul jazz was developed in the late 1950s, and was perhaps most popular in the early 1970s, though many soul jazz performers, and elements of the music, remain popular.
Soul music is only distantly related to soul jazz - it arose from gospel and blues rather than from jazz sources.
Swing music, also known as swing jazz, is a form of jazz music that developed during the 1920s and had solidified as a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States. Swing is distinguished primarily by a strong rhythm section, usually including double bass and drums, medium to fast tempo, and the distinctive swing time rhythm that is common to many forms of jazz.
Trad jazz, short for "traditional" jazz is a music genre popular in Britain and Australia from the 1940s onward through the 1950s and which still has enthusiasts today. It represented a recreation of the sounds and playing styles of New Orleans dixieland jazz. British and Australian bands of this genre copied the playing style of such artists as Sidney Bechet or King Oliver.
Opinions are divided about whether "trad jazz" is a valid name because one point of view would have it that jazz is a folk music tradition like any other, while the opposite point of view holds that jazz playing breaks loose from traditions and conventions so that, therefore, "traditional jazz" is a contradiction in terms.
In Britain during the 60's trad jazz was used to dance skip jive, a descendant of jive and swing dance.
For definition, many aficionados today consider trad to be the traditional playing of a piece with solo after solo leading up to a finish. Some feel that "hot jazz" though similar to trad, and indeed containing many of the same tunes, was more ensemble playing with less individual virtuosity brought to the forefront. Early King Oliver pieces define hot jazz to many. As individual performers began stepping to the front as soloists, the music changed. Ironically, one of ensemble players in King Oliver's Original Creole Band, Louis Armstrong, was by far, the most influential of the soloists, creating a big demand for the new style of jazz in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Other influential stylists who are still revered in trad jazz circles today include Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke and Muggsy Spanier.
West coast jazz is a form of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles at about the same time as hard bop jazz was developing in New York City, in the 1950s and 1960s. West Coast Jazz was generally seen as a subgenre of cool jazz.
It featured a less frenetic, calmer style than hard bop. The Pacific Jazz Records record label carried West coast jazz, while Blue Note was the biggest bebop label. Some of the major pioneers of West coast jazz were Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, and Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond.
Some jazz critics, such as French critic Hugues Panassié, looked down upon West Coast Jazz as inauthentic, due to most - but not all - musicians in the style being white. However, there were a sizable number of African American musicians who played in the style, such as Curtis Counce and Hampton Hawes.
Phew, thats it. Hope I didnt miss any biggies and above all, I hope this has been informative.
Cheers, Mark
