What is Jazz?
great jazz playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPfFhfSuUZ4&list=PL8F6B0753B2CCA128
check out Big Band & Swing Playlist on youtube
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Jitterbug Dance-Off
Scatting was also a feature of early Jazz
Cab Calloway - Minnie the Moocher
Jazz is a kind of music in which improvisation is typically an important part. In most jazz performances, players play solos which they make up on the spot, which requires considerable skill. There is tremendous variety in jazz, but most jazz is very rhythmic, has a forward momentum called "swing,"
Sing Sing Sing - Benny Goodman
and uses "bent" or "blue" notes.
You can often hear "call--and--response" patterns in jazz, in which one instrument, voice, or part of the band answers another. (You can hear Ella Fitzgerald and Roy Eldridge do "call and response" in Ella's Singing Class.)
Ray Charles - What I'd Say
Ray Charles - Mess Around
Jazz can express many different emotions, from pain...
to sheer joy.
Glenn Miller and his Orchestra - In the Mood
In jazz, you may hear the sounds of freedom-for the music has been a powerful voice for people suffering unfair treatment because of the color of the skin, or because they lived in a country run by a cruel dictator.
THE NATURE OF JAZZ
Jazz musicians place a high value on finding their own sound and style, and that means, for example, that trumpeter Miles Davis sounds very different than trumpeter Louis Armstrong (whose sound you can hear in Louis's Music Class.)
Louie Armstrong - When the Saints Go Marching in
Miles Davis - So What
Jazz musicians like to play their songs in their own distinct styles, and so you might listen to a dozen different jazz recordings of the same song, but each will sound different. The musicians' playing styles make each version different, and so do the improvised solos. Jazz is about making something familiar--a familiar song--into something fresh. And about making something shared--a tune that everyone knows--into something personal. Those are just some of the reasons that jazz is a great art form, and why some people consider it "America's classical music."
So where does Jazz come from? In my estimation it's from Classical Music...
Freddy Martin and his orchestra - Piano Concerto In B Flat - 1941
Traditional African Music....
And Folk...
The Bill Smith Quartet - Folk Jazz
THE GROWTH OF JAZZ
Jazz developed in the United States in the very early part of the 20th century. New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, played a key role in this development. The city's population was more diverse than anywhere else in the South, and people of African, French, Caribbean, Italian, German, Mexican, and American Indian,
As well as English, descent interacted with one another. African-American musical traditions mixed with others and gradually jazz emerged from a blend of ragtime,
marches,
blues,
Tin Pan Alley,
and other kinds of music. At first jazz was mostly for dancing. (In later years, people would sit and listen to it.) After the first recordings of jazz were made in 1917,
Their 1918 hit 'Tiger Rag'
The competition: Creole Jazz Band
the music spread widely and developed rapidly. The evolution of jazz was led by a series of brilliant musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington (listen to Ellington in Duke's Music Class),
Charlie Parker,
and Miles Davis. Jazz developed a series of different styles including traditional jazz, swing (listen, for example, to Benny Carter, who got his start in swing music, in Benny's Music Class) bebop,
Charlie Parker - Bebop
Dizzy Gillespie - Bebop
cool jazz,
and jazz rock, or in this case, Psychedelic Jazz Rock Fusion...
The list goes on and on. At the same time, jazz spread from the United States to many parts of the world, and today jazz musicians--and jazz festivals--can be found in dozens of nations. Jazz is one of the United States's greatest exports to the world.
Other notables...
Chaotic/Discordant Jazz
Dave Brubeck' Take 5 (biggest selling jazz single of all time)
Nicholas Brothers
Time to make our own Jazz band:
