Wings' Point Of View
Some History (for general knowledge...): Jazz was created mainly by black musicians in the early 20th century. It was produced through a combination of styles taken from European classical music, American music such as blues and ragtime, and from African tribal music. Jazz began to develop all over the U.S.A. but particularly in New Orleans. In the clubs and bars of New Orleans, musicians like Jelly Roll Morton developed a piano style known as boogie woogie. Jelly Roll Morton claimed he 'invented' jazz in 1902. The year 1910 seems to be the generally accepted date for the beginnings of jazz dance bands. The common line up was: 2 or more brass instruments, 2 or more saxophones or clarinets, piano, banjo, drum, sometimes a violin. Dance music played by these bands depended on SYNCOPATION for its interest, i.e. putting accents on notes that do not come at the beginning of the bar. The musical forms used were blues, ragtime, and cakewalk, etc. Increasing popularity of dance bands came with the fox-trot, a ballroom dance characterised by a march-like ragtime, slow or quick. It existed in a variety of slightly different styles such as Horsetrot, Fishwalk, Charleston and Black Bottom. The spread of the fox-trot was due to the phonograph, or gramophone, which allowed many people to practise their dance steps at home. Jazz was not recorded until 1916 when The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a group of white musicians, recorded Fidgety Feet. The rise of popular music changed the role of music in daily life. Song lyrics came to reflect the fundamental concerns of the family, portraying hope, despair, heroism, humour, frustration and above all love. The main factor in the growth of popular music in the 1920s was the development of radio. This had been overshadowed in the first twenty years of the century by the gramophone, but technological development enables radios to be mass-produced cheaply by the end of the First World War. In the U.S.A., sales figures for radios soared to $800 million by 1930. Many dance halls employed resident bands. The undisputed 'King of Jazz' was Paul Whiteman, a classically trained musician who turned to jazz around 1914. Bix Beiderbecke was also an extremely well-known jazz trumpeter who excelled at improvisation and introduced the saxophone into his own band. Towards the end of the 1920s New York became the centre of jazz in America. Bands started introducing other instruments such as string bass, guitar and piano which obviously increased their size so they became known as Big Bands. Big bands are exactly as their name suggests. Big bands developed in the 1920s and became especially popular in the 1930s and early 1940s. Two famous band leaders were Glenn Miller (famous for In the Mood) and Benny Goodman. Some of the 1920s big bands even included a string section. Glenn Miller's song Chattanooga Choo Choo was the world's first million selling disc. Teenagers supported their favourite band with the same excitement that many now apply to pop groups. To accompany the Swing music, new athletic dances were created which involved swinging partners around and much fancy footwork. These often had colourful names such as the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, the Big Apple and Kicking the Mule. These were very different from the slow dances like the Fox-trot which had been fashionable. The Swing band era reached its end with the end of World War Two due to the government imposing an entertainment tax of 20%, more people having TVs, and small Jazz groups were cheaper to hire than Big Bands. For the 20 or 30 years of the Swing band era, jazz became the 'pop' music of the day. If you went to a dance, put money into a jukebox, or turned on the radio, you would hear a Swing Band. During the 1940s many young musicians in America were becoming dissatisfied with the predictable sounds of Swing Jazz. Performers such as Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker began experimenting with new ideas and developed a style known as Bebop. This music abandoned the traditional rules of playing jazz. It was an energetic, up tempo form with jerky changes of rhythm, rapid melodies and much use of improvisation. Perhaps is representative of Bebop jazz. During the 1950s there was a reaction against the nervous excitement of Bebop and Cool Jazz was developed, which was more laid back and mellow, with easier rhythms and softer tones. Miles Davis was the most important figure in the development of Cool Jazz. He often used a mute on his trumpet to produce a quiet, muffled sound. Davis also introduced a range of instruments such as the oboe, flute, tuba and French Horn which had not been used in jazz before. Other performers such as Don Cherry and Roland Kirk introduced instruments from all over the world including Tibet, India and China, and called this form Free Jazz. Free Jazz was not a commercially successful style of music as many thought the squawks and squeals did not sound like music at all.
now for my own outlook:
although jazz is certainly not the most 'popular' music of the day, it's still very influential...
it has always been this way. jazz has never been a HUGE commercial success, but it has been always considered as serious music for serious people. jazz is really not for everyone, but it can't be argued that it has a very significant impact on the develpoment of music. DO NOT FORGET THAT so many other styles and genres have been evolved as a direct result of the inner developments within jazz.
One,
Wings
