What is jazz?

Jazz took shape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The recognized birthplace is New Orleans, a subtropical city in the southern U.S. state of Louisiana.

Among the many popular music, jazz is the earliest to appear and is one of the more influential in the world, jazz is actually the folk music of the United States. European church music, African American fiddling and banjo tradition fused with African chants and African American labor horns to form the original "folk blues," and "ragtime" and "folk blues" constituted early jazz.

From the 17th to 18th centuries, Western colonialists trafficked a large number of black Africans to the Americas, where they became slaves of the white man, and were forced to work and suffer. In the fields, after labor, the black slaves miss their homeland and relatives, often sing a kind of dirge to express their pain. This music also permeated some religious songs. Because the blue in the American people, is regarded as the color of melancholy, this kind of sad song, also collectively called Blues (blue). The Chinese translation is "blues". We often find from the American music works with Blues song name, such as "Rhapsody in Blue", "Blue Tango", "Blue Love" and so on.

Another origin of jazz comes from a type of piano music called "ragtime". Ragtime" is the phonetic translation of the word Ragtime. The word means "uneven beat". Therefore, it is also known as "Ragtime". It was also developed from African folk music, and at the end of the 19th century, a black pianist named Scott Joplin (1869-1917) created a new style of piano music: the right-hand soprano voice played a main theme or arpeggio with a very special syncopated rhythm. Generally, in 4/4 time, the first and third beats are strong beats, and the second and fourth beats are weak beats, while he played a strong tone in the soprano voice once every beat and a half, i.e., when three eighth notes are played, while the left hand played a regular rhythm consisting of quarter notes and light and heavy notes, with strong bass beats on the first and third beats, and chords and weak beats on the second and fourth beats. This left and right hands form a staggered beat, so that the music with humor, joy, lively interest, because of this creation, Joplin was known as the "King of Ragtime".

Some people say that the word Jazz is derived from the African word Jaiza. The original meaning of this word is "speed up the drums"; another theory is: in the early years of New Orleans, there is a musician named Jasper, we are accustomed to call him Jas, and then passed again and again, it became Jazz; there are also said that the word Jazz is the evolution of the word Chaz.

Early black jazz musicians could not read music, and they played only by inspiration, freely changing the tunes they were familiar with. So there was a strong improvisational nature. Because of the small number of musicians, three or five musicians often work together, and after a long time, they naturally form a tacit understanding with each other.

In the winter of 1923, New York's "Palace Orchestra" foreman Paul Whiteman approached the composer Gershwin, saying he wanted to organize an original concert, which had a grand finale that would surprise the audience, which was to combine jazz and symphonic music, and Gershwin, a musical innovator, began to write in January of 1924, and it took only one week to complete. Gershwin, a musical innovator, began writing in January 1924 and completed the program in just one week. Because it mainly used the "blues scale" and the seventh chord composed of minor third, pure fifth and minor sixth, the piece was named "Rhapsody in Blue", which is translated as "Rhapsody in Blue" in China. The performance was a great success. From then on, jazz by serious musicians and the intellectual class of the reappearance of many composers also went so far as to follow suit, created a lot of jazz style music works, such as some of the United States musical, Xing Demeter's "Dance Suite", Stravinsky's "Black Concerto", etc., are used in jazz music material and rhythm.

The characteristics of jazz music:

(1) In terms of the major scale, its third (Mi) and seventh (Si) levels are often lowered a bit (usually spoken of as a semitone lowering, but in fact less than a semitone). Sometimes the fifth (Sol) note is also lowered by a semitone. These descending tones are often complemented by glissandos and trills, thus enhancing the melancholy, sad color of the song; because of these characteristics, the scale formed in this way, people call it the "blues scale".

(2) The melody uses syncopated rhythms and triplets, creating a reversal of weight;

(3) The rhythms are mostly double beats, usually 4/4, and some are 2/4;

(4) In terms of lyrics and melodic structure, the blues uses symmetrical, rhyming two-line words. The first line is repeated. Each section of the tune 12 bars, each sentence 4 bars, thus forming: ‖ ∶ A ∶ ‖ + B three-sentence solid tune structure

(5) chords commonly used main chord (Ⅰ), genus chord (Ⅴ) and subordinate chords. (Ⅳ), so the harmony sounds harmonious and plain.

Other characteristics of factors:

Jazz singing using meaningless "liner notes" in the rules of improvisation to form a unique style of jazz singing.

Jazz syncopated rhythms are complex and varied, especially the continuous syncopation across the bar often shifts the original rhythm of the entire bar, resulting in a sense of uncertainty and wanderlust.

The original 4/4 beat rhythm was changed to 3/16 beat.

The melody of jazz often uses the blues scale (1 2 b3 3 4 5 6 b7 7) to form its characteristics, and sometimes adds #4 and some other variations on the basis of the blues scale to make it more colorful.

The harmony of jazz is much more complex than that of pop music, which is based on seventh chords, and makes a lot of use of extended tones (e.g., 9th, 11th, and 13th) and alternative chords, and sometimes there is a succession of downward pure fifths and subgeneric chords, which makes it present colorful and varied harmonic effects.

Impromptu improvisation is one of the skills jazz musicians (or singers) must practice.

Some of the variations of jazz:

Early jazz

The early jazz (1900-1917) repertoire consisted of 32-bar, 4-measure, AABA pop song-style tunes; 4-bar, two-key ragtime tunes; and 12-bar instrumental blues tunes. The harmonic rhythms of ragtime tunes tend to be faster than the other two. The blues tune has the slowest harmonic tempo, but its solo melodic line has more variant transitions with varying onsets and quite a few pitch changes. There are many early songs in the repertoire with the name "blues" that are actually pop songs or some other cognate form.

Early jazz bands were set up with an average of eight musicians. The New Orleans-style jazz band added two instruments to its regular format. Sometimes a cornet and a rhythm instrument were added, sometimes a violin was added as a leader. During the performance, each member of the band, not just the soloist, improvises. With spontaneous humility and cooperation, limited only by the structure of the chord progressions, this new sound was recognizable to any listener in the early 20th century as "jazz".

Free jazz

Free jazz was born in the 1960s, and as soon as it appeared, it became a favorite of jazz musicians and jazz fans alike.

Free jazz is different from the previous jazz, there are not too many limitations in harmony and melody, and the performers can play freely, boldly and as they wish in the process. Free jazz has a new concept of rhythm, beat and symmetry are disrupted, at the same time, it also emphasizes the intensity and tension of the music itself, adding a large number of dissonant harmonies, and blending African, Indian, Japanese, and Arabian music together, using Indian sitar, tabla double drums, amplified thumb pianos, sirens, and a large number of electronic equipment and percussion instruments, so that some of the free jazz jazz bands look like a non-jazz avant-garde band.

Swing

In the late 1920s, the Great Depression hit the United States, and jazz became popular in a number of clandestine hotels, bars, brothels, and other venues, resulting in the emergence of a number of jazz bands more suited to dancing, the swing big bands. The earliest swing band was Fletcher Henderson's (Fletcher Henderson) big band, but it was the success of Benny Goodman's (Benny Goodman) big band in 1935 that really established swing, and until the end of the big band era in 1946, swing was an important force in popular music. Swing differs from early jazz in that there is less emphasis on ensemble playing and more on soloing. Individual improvisation was largely based on melody, which was more adventurous than previous performances.

Many of the jazz artists of this period often communicated, explored, and borrowed from each other, along with some of the European classical artists, so you can hear echoes of Beethoven and Brahms in swing as well.

Swing inherited some of the traditions of early jazz, but it also opened up new frontiers for solo performances, and many big band musicians went on to become jazz superstars.

Cool Jazz

The Birth of The Cool, an album by the Miles Davis Nine, was released in 1950 and marked the

birth of Cool Jazz.

The tone chosen for Cool Jazz is light and muted, with a soft, dry sound. The solos bring you a soft soothing and restrained feeling. The riffs are subtle and deep, sometimes reminiscent of classic European chamber music, and while Cool Jazz incorporates the tonal, melodic, and harmonic strengths of Bop, the improvisations are softer and smoother than Bop, and the tone is more harmonic, and Cool Jazz is often characterized by a sense of looseness, rather than the inner tension of Bop.

Cool jazz drummers are also quieter, not interfering with the other tones. In short, Cool jazz is restrained and "to the point", which is why its fans call it "Cool".

Fusion

In the 1970s, fusion music evolved, and its original definition was actually a blend of jazz improvisation and rock 'n' roll rhythms. However, as pop, rhythm and blues, and various other forms of music flourished around the world, Fusion music borrowed from these styles, and what we now know as Fusion music has become a hybrid with the name Jazz.

Regtime

Regtime (ragtime) jazz is a fusion of European classical music and European military music. He disrupted the strict rhythmic laws of classical music, and there is a delay in the player's mastery of the rhythm. The progression of the piece is usually a delayed start, followed by an emphasis on the syllables, this style is extremely common in piano playing at the time. regtime jazz in the twentieth century out of the fifteen years is very prevalent, although this style of jazz has a very significant impact on the form of jazz, but because of the lack of Blues and improvisation, so can not be called real jazz.

Bebop

The term "bebop" comes from the wordless syllables (or nonsensical yelling) that jazz musicians make while practicing or humming instrumental melodies. Bebop phrases often end abruptly with a characteristic "long and short" pattern, and this rhythm is often hummed as "Rebop" or "Bebop". The term first appeared in print as the title of a 1945 New York recording by the Gillespie 6-piece band, "Bebop for Salted Peanuts".

Bebop developed during the swing era with tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Don Byas, Art Tatum and Nat Cole on piano, Roy Eldgridge on trumpet, Count Basie's Rhythm section, and the likes of Charlie parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, miles Davis and Bud Powell.

Bebop music is usually played by small jazz bands of three to six members. They did not use sheet music, which was the very guideline they used to counter swing's use of adapted sheet music. The program consists of playing the melody in its entirety once (or twice in the case of a 12-bar blues), followed by several improvised solo staccato phrases accompanied by a rhythm section (usually piano, bass, and drums), and then a repetition of the melody from the first staccato phrase to close the piece. The rhythm section repeats the harmonic patterns (including variations) throughout the piece to maintain the structure of the piece.