About Jazz

Overview Jazz is a form of music that originated in Africa. In less than a century, this music, called jazz, with a distinctly American flavor, has evolved from an obscure, folk-inspired music to one of the most significant art forms produced on American soil. Today it is heard and played in almost every corner of the world, and jazz has flourished in many forms, from roots blues and ragtime through New Orleans jazz to Dixieland jazz, swing, mainstream jazz, bebop, modern jazz to free jazz and electronic jazz. The amazing thing is not that jazz has come in so many forms, but that each form has been so important that it has maintained its own character and uniqueness and has survived to this day. In order to appreciate jazz in all its forms, one must be open-minded and listen to it in all its forms. [Edit Paragraph] Traceability </B> jazz from the development of folk songs, there are a variety of sources, it is not easy to carefully verify. 19th century during the period of music is the United States South plantation black slaves to express their own lives and emotions of the important means. From the end of the 19th century, jazz was based on traditional British and American music, mixed with blues, ragtime and other musical genres, and was a "hybrid" product. The black music of the Americas preserved a great deal of African characteristics, with distinctive rhythmic features, and retained the characteristics of collective improvisation. The combination of this tradition with the music of the new settlements, much of it vocal, resulted in the creation not just of a new sound but of a whole new form of musical expression.

The most famous Afro-American music was religious. These beautiful, moving songs were listened to by whites, but with a more upper-class flavor than such songs sung in country black churches. Gospel music as it is known today is more accurately a reflection of the emotional power and melodicism of early Afro-Americans than an inheritance of the religiosity of the music of the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers of the early decade of the twentieth century.

Other early forms of music include work songs, children's songs, and dance tunes dating back to the days of slavery, all of which have become important musical legacies, especially considering that musical activity was quite severely restricted under the system of the time.

Characteristics of jazz

Jazz has many unique features of its own compared to other music:

1) Improvisation or singing

2) Use of the blues scale

3) Extreme complexity of jazz rhythms

4) Exclusively jazz chords

5) Distinctive use of timbres [edit This paragraph] History of development Birth of the blues After the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the black slaves, the development of Afro-American music was rapid. The instruments abandoned by military bands plus the newly acquired freedom of movement formed the roots of jazz: brass, dance music, and the blues. Seemingly simple as a musical form, but actually capable of almost endless variations, the blues has always been an important part of any kind of jazz, and it has managed to maintain its own independent existence. It is safe to say that without the blues there would be no rock and roll today. A brief description of the characteristics of the blues in general is that it consists of music in sections of eight or twelve bars, with tightly written lyrics, and its "melancholy (blue)" character is due to the fact that the "mi" and "si" notes in the scale are replaced by a "blue" sound. The "melancholy (blue)" character is due to the chromatic drop of the "mi" and "si" notes in the scale. In fact, the blues is a form of secular music as opposed to religious music.