America’s Music History: The Jazz
"Let's try Jazz without coffee"
America’s Music History - The Jazz Age
When talking about America’s Jazz age, it is hard not to think of a dimly-lit smoky bar with smooth tunes drifting from the piano.
The Jazz Age was an important period in America’s music history where a significant cultural shift was taking place post-World War One. It acted somewhat as a bridge between black and white cultures through a joint love of music, yet despite this connection, segregation continued for decades to come.
What is Jazz?
Cultural origins
Early 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States.
Typical instruments
Guitar, Piano, Bass, Saxophone, Trumpet, Clarinet, Drum kit, Tuba, Double bass.
Swinging, swaying, generally associated with smoothness but can be abstract and hyper
African rhythms, work songs, marching bands, early blues music ragtime.
Many musicians who became famous in the 1920s Jazz Age are still widely known today with their music influencing many modern artists.
One of the most popular early jazz bands known for the New Orleans feel was the King Oliver Creole jazz band. The band consisted of musicians who were considered some of the best of their time, including King Oliver (also known as Joe Oliver), Bill Johnson, Johnny Dodds, Baby Dodds and later, Louis Armstrong.
Louis Armstrong became immediately popular and rose to fame quickly with his distinct singing voice, in addition to his trumpet playing. Some of the songs he is best known for still today include ‘What a Wonderful World’ and ‘La Vie En Rose’. His charismatic presence on stage and improvisation abilities drew in audiences. He continued to develop and evolve through different music eras from Swing to Broadway.
Emmmmmmm I don't know music, can I love Jazz?
It is not hard to tell that, since the tastes of public changes along the time, Jazz also made some change to survive.
Based on the film’s approach to jazz(La La Land), Sebastian seems to be modeled after the neo-bop school of jazz artists. For at least the past 30 years, musicians of the neo-bop movement have bemoaned the addition of rock and hip-hop into the genre — a development usually called fusion jazz — seeing it as a death knell for the purity of their music. They usually think that jazz should sound they way it did before 1965; sometimes they shun electric instruments altogether.
Clue truth for Jazz- musicians choices
This is a vision of fusion jazz that sounds nothing like the contemporary jazz scene.
Take Esperanza Spalding, a gifted musician who has brought renewed attention to the genre. One night she might go onstage with a band that mixes rock, R&B. and other influences; on another she might play with veterans Geri Allen and Terri Lyne Carrington in an all-woman trio.
Robert Glasper, whose experimental troupe might do a jazz cover of a Nirvana song or pay homage to the late hip-hop producer J Dilla, but who also spends time in a more traditional group, the Robert Glasper Trio.
Spalding and Glasper are highly regarded within jazz circles, drawing sizable crowds and winning Grammys in the process.
Other acts like Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and Otis Brown III refuse to be fixed on the idea of purity; they’d rather push jazz to evolve. Despite what La La Land might have you think, the genre has already reckoned with and resolved the debate over the sanctity of jazz.
Female? Female!
The Jazz Age also gave rise to female musicians, including blues and jazz singer Bessie Smith. Smith became one of the highest-paid black musicians of her time. Her life was cut short after a car accident in 1937, but her style continued to influence many later singers including Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin.
Another famous female jazz musician was singer Ella Fitzgerald who was dubbed ‘The First Lady of Song’. Born in 1917, her rise to fame came in the 1930s after the Great Depression. She worked with many of the great jazz singers of the time, sold over 40 million albums during her singing career and won 13 Grammy Awards. her sense of style was impeccable, mastering all subgenera of jazz, including bebop— a technically challenging music.