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A Brief History of Jazz

The Origins of Jazz in America

• African slaves, exploited on plantations in the southeastern United States brought their African background, music included.

• They began using European musical instruments in the early 19th century

• Three “black” genres were developed• The mixture of them brought the Jazz

• A little influence of European music, both popular and classical, also contributed

BLUESWORK SONGS

GOSPEL SPIRITUALS

The place of birth:NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans • From +1860´s, with the end of slavery• Main harbour in the Mississippi Delta• Storyville, the red-light district, full of bars

where music was played all the time• The main instruments used are wind , piano,

banjo, and double bass• White people begin to

enjoy “black” music• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4jU8IQK5b0

Ragtime and New Orleans Style

• They are the first styles of Jazz

• 1900 to 1920 decade• Fast, rhythmic music, for

dancing and fun. Bar music

• Improvisation becomes the main feature of Jazz

• Dixieland, this style played by white players http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hSAxCzC4fM

Swing and the Big Bands• Jazz music became more

popular in the 1920s and 1930s with the rise of Swing music and the big bands, specially in the East coast

• Happy music for dancing• Many musicians moved to

Chicago and New York...• Louis Armstrong, Duke

Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald

Bebop The 40´s

• Not big orchestras but small “combos”: drums, piano, double bass and one or two solo wind players (guitar sometimes)

• Much more difficult music, more virtuosic, faster, for listening in small dark bars...

• Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie Thelonious Monk...

Cool Jazz50´s

• Miles Davis broke from his early Bebop days and started a new Jazz movement (“Cool Jazz”) . Slow, sentimental...

• Chet Baker• This period had the peak

and the start of the decline of Jazz’s popularity (Rock ‘n Roll was rising at this time)

Jazz moves to the fringe

• From the 70´s to today, Jazz music has lost a lot of its popularity

• Experimental artists and the Free Jazz movement were not popular with mainstream listeners

Jazz music survives in the summer Festivals

Present time• Few people listen to jazz nowadays, despite

the rising of new and very interesting styles as Afro Cuban Jazz or Latin Jazz, Flamenco Jazz...

Chucho Valdés...

Chano Domínguez y Niño Josele

Some jazz words...

• Walking bass: “metronomic” bass line so the soloist can improvise freely above ithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=693zGPGhpjc

• Scat : singing no lyrics but syllabus meaningless, using the voice as an instrument improvising (Louis Armstrong created it...)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EyGEOJBxBM

• Mute: a metal or other materials device in the trumpet´s pavillion to make the sound softerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZamplraxSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmIqJXkEGKY

• Brushes: used insted of sticks for a softer and more sophisticated sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFmhMUERW0U

Rhythm section

• Standard: In Jazz, 90% of the songs are “standards”, meaning that they keep a peculiar structure

32 bars with a main theme, called A and a different part called B

A8 bars

A8 bars

B8 bars

A8 bars