Portal:Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music, linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. (Full article...)
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Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that British jazz saxophonist Nubya Garcia's debut album Source, which incorporates reggae, cumbia, calypso, hip-hop, and soul, is an ode to her musical history?
- ... that Wolfgang Meyer, who recorded Mozart's Clarinet Concerto on a historical basset clarinet, played his last concert with jazz saxophonist Peter Lehel?
- ... that the smooth jazz–jazz fusion album Worth Waiting For was keyboardist Jeff Lorber's only solo album to reach number one on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart?
- ... that the music style of singer-songwriter Kui Lee featured a blend of traditional Hawaiian music, jazz, blues, and rock and roll?
- ... that Nilüfer Verdi is the first female jazz pianist in Turkey?
- ... that the soundtrack to the manga and anime series Kids on the Slope features American jazz musicians Art Blakey and Bill Evans?
More did you know...
• ... that Chicago composer Margaret Bonds (pictured, left) wrote her first work, the Marquette Street Blues, at the age of five?
• ... that the early musical influences of Austrian jazz-fusion guitarist Alex Machacek, who has been praised by legends like John McLaughlin, included heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden and KISS
• ... that Erin Bode (pictured, right) performed with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra for three seasons before starting her recording career as a singer?
June - December 2006
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