From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jazz is an American musical art form which originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note.[1]
From its early development until the present, jazz has also
incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music.[2] The word jazz began as a West Coast slang term of uncertain derivation and was first used to refer to music in Chicago in about 1915; for the origin and history, see Jazz (word).
Jazz has, from its early 20th century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, from New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s, big band-style swing from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s, a variety of Latin-jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and later developments such as acid jazz.
Origins
In the late 18th-century painting
The Old Plantation, African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion.
By 1808 the Atlantic slave trade had brought almost half a million Africans to the United States. The slaves largely came from West Africa and brought strong tribal musical traditions with them.[3] Lavish festivals featuring African dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843, as were similar gatherings in New England and New York. African music was largely functional, for work or ritual, and included work songs and field hollers.
In the African tradition, they had a single-line melody and a
call-and-response pattern, but without the European concept of harmony.
Rhythms reflected African speech patterns, and the African use of
pentatonic scales led to blue notes in blues and jazz.[4]
In the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European-American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized such music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. Louis Moreau Gottschalk
adapted African-American cakewalk music, South American, Caribbean and
other slave melodies as piano salon music. Another influence came from
black slaves who had learned the harmonic style of hymns and incorporated it into their own music as spirituals.[5] The origins of the blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. Paul Oliver has drawn attention to similarities in instruments, music and social function to the griots of the West African savannah.[6]
1890s–1910s
Ragtime
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Emancipation of slaves led to new opportunities for education of
freed African-Americans, but strict segregation meant limited
employment opportunities. Black musicians provided "low-class"
entertainment at dances, minstrel shows, and in vaudeville, and many marching bands formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs and brothels, and ragtime developed.[7][8]
Ragtime appeared as sheet music with the African American entertainer Ernest Hogan's hit songs in 1895, and two years later Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo "Rag Time Medley".[9][10] Also in 1897, the white composer William H. Krell published his "Mississippi Rag" as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece. The classically-trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in the following year, then in 1899 had an international hit with "Maple Leaf Rag."
He wrote numerous popular rags combining syncopation, banjo figurations
and sometimes call-and-response, which led to the ragtime idiom being
taken up by classical composers including Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky. Blues music was published and popularized by W. C. Handy, whose "Memphis Blues" of 1912 and "St. Louis Blues" of 1914 both became jazz standards.[11]
New Orleans music
The music of New Orleans had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. Many early jazz performers played in the brothels and bars of red-light district around Basin Street called "Storyville."[12]
In addition, numerous marching bands played at lavish funerals arranged
by the African American community. The instruments used in marching bands
and dance bands became the basic instruments of jazz: brass and reeds
tuned in the European 12-tone scale and drums. Small bands of primarily
self-taught African American musicians, many of whom came from the
funeral-procession tradition of New Orleans,
played a seminal role in the development and dissemination of early
jazz, traveling throughout Black communities in the Deep South and,
from around 1914 on, Afro-Creole and African American musicians playing in vaudeville shows took jazz to western and northern US cities.[13]
Morton published "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first jazz work in print.
Afro-Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton began his career in Storyville. From 1904, he toured with vaudeville shows around southern cities, also playing in Chicago and New York. His "Jelly Roll Blues,"
which he composed around 1905, was published in 1915 as the first jazz
arrangement in print, introducing more musicians to the New Orleans
style.[14] In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912, and his "Society Orchestra" which in 1913 became the first black group to make Jazz recordings.[15][16] The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson's development of "Stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline.[17]
The Original Dixieland Jass Band's "Livery Stable Blues" released early in 1917 is one of the early jazz records.[18]
That year numerous other bands made recordings featuring "jazz" in the
title or band name, mostly ragtime or novelty records rather than jazz.
In September 1917 W.C. Handy's Orchestra of Memphis recorded a cover version of "Livery Stable Blues".[19] In February 1918 James Reese Europe's "Hellfighters" infantry band took ragtime to Europe during World War I,[20] then on return recorded Dixieland standards including "The Darktown Strutter's Ball".[16]
1920s and 1930s
Prohibition in the United States (from 1920 to 1933) banned the sale of alcoholic drinks, resulting in illicit speakeasies becoming lively venues of the "Jazz Age",
an era when popular music included current dance songs, novelty songs,
and show tunes. Jazz started to get a reputation as being immoral
and many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old
values in culture and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring 20s. From 1919 Kid Ory's Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San Francisco and Los Angeles where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band to make recordings.[21][22] However, the main centre developing the new "Hot Jazz" was Chicago, where King Oliver joined Bill Johnson. That year also saw the first recording by Bessie Smith, the most famous of the 1920s blues singers.[23]
The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921.
Bix Beiderbecke formed The Wolverines in 1924. Also in 1924 Louis Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson dance band as featured soloist for a year, then formed his virtuosic Hot Five band, also popularising scat singing.[24] Jelly Roll Morton recorded with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in an early mixed-race collaboration, then in 1926 formed his Red Hot Peppers.
There was a larger market for jazzy dance music played by white orchestras, such as Jean Goldkette's orchestra and Paul Whiteman's orchestra. In 1924 Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premièred by Whiteman's Orchestra. Other influential large ensembles included Fletcher Henderson's band, Duke Ellington's band (which opened an influential residency at the Cotton Club in 1927) in New York, and Earl Hines's
Band in Chicago (who opened in The Grand Terrace Cafe there in 1928).
All significantly influenced the development of big band-style swing
jazz.[25]
Swing
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Main article: Swing music
The 1930s belonged to popular swing big band
Classical
from 
