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Information: the origin and history of jazz.

Jazz originated from African-Americans at the end of 19, and originated in New Orleans, Louisiana in the southern United States. It has a history of one hundred years. From the earliest "ragtime" and "folk blues" to the large-scale New Orleans jazz; From1920s, the famous "Dixieland" mainly composed of group improvisation to191930s, the "swing music" with dance as its main function; From "Bi Popo" who pursued superb improvisation with chord playing as the main theme in the 1940s to "Bi Popo" and "Cool" with different styles in the 1950s and 1960s, and then to the "Freedom" school. From the fusion of "rock" and jazz in 1970s and 1980s, the emergence of "synthesis" to the birth of "neoclassicism" in 1990s; To this day, every jazz style is active.

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Jazz, with a strong and lasting vitality, has already broken through regions and races after a hundred years of evolution and integration.

It has become a kind of worldwide music.

The history of jazz in China can be traced back to more than half a century ago. In 1930s and 1940s, Shanghai was the birthplace of jazz in China, where there were quite large-scale jazz performances and some excellent jazz musicians. But jazz at that time was mainly for ballroom dancing. After decades of vicissitudes, jazz almost disappeared in China, with a fault of nearly forty years. This period is an important development stage of jazz. Jazz has long been out of the stable dance form, integrated with rich musical style, cultural characteristics and playing skills, which has the most charm, expressiveness and appeal of music itself, and has long been among the ranks of elegant arts. Since the end of 1980s, jazz has been revived in China and gained more and more development space.

Today's jazz has already surpassed all kinds of single musical cultural forms and developed into a kind of music belonging to the spiritual category, which can best reflect the inspiration and innovation of musicians. It includes soloists, small orchestras and big orchestras similar to symphony orchestras. Jazz is probably the only thing in the world that can be compared with classical music. Because jazz is not only unique in melody, harmony and rhythm, but more importantly, it revives the long-lost improvisation of classical music. In addition, jazz's strong sense of rhythm, complex chord system and superb playing skills are all reflected and expressed differently because of musicians' preferences, cultural backgrounds and life experiences. Jazz, through its unique musical language, never repeats, is full of rich cultural characteristics and plays flexible music with great personality. Sometimes deep and sad, like crying without tears, sometimes strong and loud, radical and unrestrained, giving people a profound spiritual experience and spiritual pleasure.

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Jazz originated from the fusion of folk music, pop music and classical music in New Orleans in the early 20th century. It has evolved from at least two trends. A creative contribution of African Americans in music-ragtime music and blues music, which we will talk about later. Second, the continuous exploration of two special aspects in the performance of some existing music forms (pop music, March, four-pair dance quartet, etc.). ). One is to emphasize the color change of pitch, which is considered to be out of tune in orthodox European music, but it is very common in jazz and is not considered to be a wrong or irregular playing technique; The other is to emphasize the roughness and change of timbre. In addition to these two kinds, there is a special way of playing, called Ragging. Raging refers to the method of grabbing and dragging beats in order to select notes to cut in or emphasize stress. It divides the undivided sound patterns to create a ragging effect. This makes the notes connect with the notes in an ambiguous way. Stress promotes the notes and makes them vivid, which finally forms the special rhythm effect that we now regard as jazz, and is also one of the foundations of jazz swing. But most scholars don't think so at this point. Most of them regard the swing of jazz as a great contribution of African or American blacks.

Music researchers believe that this evolution of pitch and timbre does not directly come from the imitation of African blacks singing for jazz musicians. On the contrary, it comes from the imitation of more imaginative voices (black Tian Ge, labor songs, street vendors' cries, blues, etc.). ). These materials are always humorous and narrative when they are used in the Bard Show (a performance in which a white person plays a black person and sings a black song, which originated in America in the19th century). For example, in the recording "Livery Stable Blues" by the original Dixieland jazz band 19 17, you can hear music imitating the traditional American barn dance. This tendency to constantly explore the sound of musical instruments may partly come from the tradition of African music, but we must remember that at the same time, there are still similar traditions among people of different races in New Orleans. For example, American Anglo-Saxon music and Irish Scottish music, which appeared in New Orleans at the same time as jazz, also have the tradition of random tone sandhi, which tends to produce what we call blues. In other words, this tendency to play is not an inevitable and unique embodiment of African-American music tradition. No matter what kind of music we try to distinguish, we must remember that jazz, which is a mixture of many kinds of music, has many similarities with other music besides what people usually say. For example, the rhythm of early jazz can also be heard in classical music and pop songs from Europe, not just in African and American black folk music. )

However, jazz and African music have many similarities in musical characteristics. From the origin to the present, black musicians with African descent have surpassed white musicians in different styles and genres of jazz. If we want to understand the inevitability behind this phenomenon, it is necessary for us to pay attention to the history and environment of jazz development. Early jazz didn't have the opportunity to get in touch with African music directly and absorb its characteristics, but it was obtained through second-hand indirect channels (at that time, some other types of music in the New World of America absorbed some characteristics of African music by getting in touch with African music). To understand why this happened, it is necessary to know when African slaves were sold to the United States. They are not allowed to carry musical instruments. Originally, people from the same village were disrupted and placed together, making a group of slaves have no common language to use. However, their love for music and some traditions remained. Relying on the same tradition and love for music, these slaves and their descendants constantly tampered with European music such as church hymns, folk songs and dance music. This is why black musicians usually sound a little strange when playing some European music.

Why did jazz originate in New Orleans?

New Orleans has long had a unique cultural tradition. From the end of18th century to the beginning of19th century, most of New Orleans was occupied and lived by the French, who always paid close attention to art and were more interested in music and dance than the residents in other parts of the country. Therefore, in the19th century, New Orleans had the largest number of music groups in the United States. In short, New Orleans has a tradition of "having fun".

New Orleans is the center of all kinds of music activities, full of different styles of music. You can hear the opera, and you can also see the cheerful flute dance performance of the sailors; Europe's minuet and four pairs of dances and African witchcraft ritual music are actually "peaceful" in this city; The music of brass bands in Patrick Gilmore and john philip sousa is very popular with everyone. Besides, you can also hear the labor songs of laborers and the music cries of street vendors.

Another important factor that makes New Orleans an ideal environment for jazz is that it attracts a large number of southern slaves who have just been liberated and free. This city is full of great temptations with its numerous job opportunities, rich social activities and diversified lifestyles. With 1809 Haitian Creoles pouring into this overcrowded city, New Orleans has become the center of black culture in North America (all kinds of music are integrated into it).

New Orleans became an economic center because it was close to the mouth of the Mississippi River, which was a busy waterway trade route between the United States and the Caribbean. As a seaport welcoming travelers from all over the world, New Orleans maintained its carnival atmosphere, and it also had the largest and most famous red light district in the United States at that time. (The red light district, which musicians often say, was later called "Storyville", which came from a senior municipal official named Story at that time. It was he who proposed in 1897 to plan an area in a corner of the city to legally develop the porn industry. Because of Storyville's influence in the history of jazz music, some record companies, book publishers and night managers nicknamed it. ) It is the singing, dancing, pornography, liquor selling and other industries in New Orleans mentioned here that provide a large number of employment opportunities for musicians. Understanding these related backgrounds is very helpful to understand the origin of jazz. Next, we will talk about church music and see how it integrates the musical traditions of European colonists and African slaves.

/kloc-before the middle of the 0/7th century, the intermarriage between whites and blacks in New Orleans promoted the integration of European and African traditions. The descendants of these interracial marriages are called "colored Creoles" or "Creoles" for short, because their ancestors were partly African and partly French. However, there are significant differences between the two African-American groups living in New Orleans. Creoles are no longer called "Negro", but this title is also used for blacks with little or no white blood. Creoles are mostly well-educated and successful people, such as businessmen, doctors, landlords or craftsmen. They speak French, many people have slaves, and they also ask their slaves to speak French. Most children born in Creole families have received a high degree of music training, and some even went to music schools in Paris to study. Many Creoles live in the downtown area of New Orleans, which is now called the French quarter, while blacks live in the neighborhood where people of color live, mostly far away from the downtown area. They are basically servants or unskilled coolies. Creoles have completely inherited the tradition of European music. On the contrary, black music still retains some characteristics of African music. Although many musicians far away from the city have also received some music training, their music is rougher than that of Creoles as a whole. Some elements of improvisation have appeared in their music, but this feature is far from mature. Generally speaking, many European musical traditions have been absorbed by Creole music, and black music has maintained some traditional musical characteristics of African ancestors.

There are two forms of black singing in Lower New Orleans: black religious music (a middle between European church music and African singing) and labor songs (to alleviate the hardships of manual labor). Another common black singing method is peddling by street vendors, which is very infectious in many changes of timbre and intonation. The above three kinds of black music gradually formed an unaccompanied performance singing method, and later developed into guitar and banjo as accompaniment. At first, no matter what way the players accompanied the singing, the harmony they used was accompanied by melody lines (contrary to the melody and harmony relationship of European traditional music which later developed into jazz accompaniment system, the choice of the middle tone to the melody tone in European music tradition was limited). In the early African-American singing, the accompaniment of harmony was very simple, and sometimes only two or three chords were used to accompany the whole song. The lyrics and melody are also very simple, and there is a long pause between sentences and paragraphs. This early form of music is now called blues (you can find works by robert johnson, Sen House, Charlie Parton and other early blues masters).

Robert johnson, the king of the delta) Bruce.

The Rolling Stones, steve miller, Led Zeppelin, eric clapton and Chili peppers all covered his works.

Son house is the idol of muddy waters, a famous Bruce master in Chicago.

Charlie Payton, another early Delta Blues master, ragtime was also popular in New Orleans. As a noun, "Rage" is used to define the form of this kind of music creation. It draws lessons from the March of European military bands in structure and adopts the characteristics of black banjo music in rhythm. If "Rag" is used as a verb, it means constantly changing the rhythm of the song and forming a distinct sense of division and beat. The word "ragtime" is almost synonymous with those piano works that appeared in the period of 1890 and the works of scott Jopling (1868- 19 17) which was very popular at that time (listen to scott Jopling's work "Lagtime in Maple Leaf"). This term can be used to refer to all the works of that period, not just the piano. For example, from 1890 to 1920, not only ragtime bands, ragtime singers and ragtime banjo players, but also ragtime pianists specializing in ready-made works began to appear. Many musicians who are now called jazz musicians will call themselves "ragtime" musicians, and some scholars call ragtime the earliest jazz style. However, Ragtime is only a limited improvisation, and its arousal of jazz swing music is also limited, so it cannot be called the beginning of jazz.