Music in New Jersey
By Matteo Vanzan, Alessandro Paganini and Davide Farinella
Music in New Jersey
Bruce Springsteen became an American icon with complex lyrical stories about teens growing up in Freehold and other economically depressed areas of New Jersey.
New Jersey is famous for:
1)Jazz music: In the early 20th century, Newark was an important center for jazz innovation. There are a lot of musicians from New Jersey: Count Basie, saxmen Wayne Shorter and James Moody and trumpeter Woody Shaw of Newark, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. New Jersey keeps on being important for many Jazz musicians, for example: Steve Turre, Frank Fontaine, Wallace Roney, Tom "Bones" Malone and many others.
2)Folk music: Folk music is widespread throughout Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey. Various workshops and festivals throughout New Jersey have celebrated folk music. The Folk Project has hosted many folk music singers like Richard Shindell, Bob Franke and Odetta. The New Jersey Folk Festival is held every year at Rutgers University, celebrating a variety of artists.
3)Hard Rock and Heavy Metal: Skid Row is a heavy-metal band formed in 1980s and reached the height of its success in the early 1990s. Sebastian Bach, formerly Skid Row, is a Canadian singer who had lived in New Jersey. The New Jersey bands Overkill and Hades has been performing Trash Metal around the world. There are a lof of metal bands in New Jersey,for example, Symphony X and Evoken. Music historian and broadcaster Eddie Trunk host the television show That Metal Show which celebrates "all things hard rock and heavy metal". An arguably significant part of the New Jersey Metal scene includes the Old Bridge Metal Militia. They were a group of the "most extreme," metal heads who lived in the township of Old Bridge, New Jersey.
4)Punk and Hardcore: Punk rock and Hardcore have played an important role in the music of New Jersey. The most famous punk band from New Jersey is The Misfits. Like the later music of the Misfits, Adrenalin O.D. is usually credited with igniting the early N.J. hardcore scene at the dawn of the 1980s. Other notable punk bands from New Jersey include hardcore punk band Hogan's Heroes. Tom Verlaine, founder and frontman of the punk/new wave group Television , is from Morristown, New Jersey. In the late 70's/early 80's the Shore Core Punk rock scene evolved at the Jersey Shore, with its epicenter in Long Branch & Asbury Park.