J is for Jazz

Jazz music originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans in the 1800’s.  The foundation of jazz is deeply rooted in the black experience of the United States, but other cultures have also contributed to its development over the years.

Jazz spread around the world after World War I, and with it national, regional and local music cultures gave rise to many distinctive styles, each performer seeing the music differently.

 Duke Ellington 1943

Jazz music includes brass band marches, ragtime and blues.  In the 1930’s, dance-oriented swing bands started.  In the 1940’s, bebop came along.  Cool jazz with calmer sounds emerged by the late 1940’s and in 1950; hard bop emerged, which introduced rhythm and blues, gospel and blues with saxophone and piano playing.  Two of my favorites playing saxophone are Wynton Marsalis and Kenny G.

 Wynton Marsalis 2009

 

In the early 70’s, jazz changed again with the introduction of rock music rhythms, electric instruments and amplified sound.  Other styles abound in the 2000’s, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban.

Adelaide Hall earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for performing for eight consecutive decades

Women also played a role in jazz and began playing instruments in the 1920’s.  During World War II, there were all-women jazz bands that toured Europe in the 1940’s and traveled with the USO.  The dress code for women at the time was a bit of a hindrance (strapless dresses and high-heel shoes), but they fit in with their suit-wearing male counterparts.  Some famous women in jazz were: Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Ethel Waters, Betty Carter, Adelaide Hall, Abbey Lincoln and Anita O’Day.  They were often singers and not given much credit for their composing, band leading, or instrumental skills.

 Miles Davis 1989

 

The music in New Orleans had a big effect on jazz as many early performers played venues throughout the city, including brothels and bars.  After slaves were freed it was still hard for them to find work so many of them found it in music, whether performing in jazz bands or vaudeville.

 Louis Armstrong

 

During the early 1900’s, jazz was done mostly in African-American communities and mulatto communities (mixed black ancestry), due to segregation laws.  Tourists visiting the red-light district of Storyville, New Orleans brought jazz music to a wider audience.  Many of these early pioneers in jazz later found success in Chicago after the government shut down Storyville in 1917.

In the 1920’s, skiffle, playing with homemade instruments such as washboards, jugs, kazoos and saws, emerged in Chicago.  This form of jazz later merged with country music.

Pharaoh Sanders 1978

Since jazz got a start in the “Deep South” from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants by slaves in the fields, it’s evolved more than two dozen times during the last one hundred years, as each performer interprets the music in his or her way and plays/sings it according to how they feel that day. 

I hope everyone knows a bit more about jazz now than they did.  What’s your favorite kind of music?