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A CRASH COURSE ON EXISTING MUSIC GENRES

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Part IV :: Global/World, Jazz, Blues and Country

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Published in PRESS Magazine

May 2004

Welcome to Part Four of Valerie Mayuga’s crash course on existing music genres. Last month we bombarded you with an educational assault on the good, bad and ugly faces of Rock music. So this month we thought we’d help you relax and get a little mellow with a crash course on what is probably music’s most sophisticated manifestation – Jazz. And just when you could get a peek back on the roots of jazz music, we’ve thrown in a brief ‘graf on world music and a little side note on the blues. So put your thinking caps people, this is smart music.

GLOBAL/WORLD

In the Western world, "World music" refers either to music that doesn't fall into the North American and British pop or folk traditions or to hybrids of various indigenous musics. Certain styles -- such as Jamaican reggae or Latin pop -- grew large enough to be classified as their own genre, but everything else, from traditional Chinese music to African folk, is classified as world music. Worldbeat is something different than world music, since it's usually the result of Western hybrids and fusions, yet it still falls under the world music umbrella because it borrows styles, sounds and instrumentation from various indigenous music. Sub-genres for Global / World Music are Spanish Music, Arabic Music, Asian Music, African Music, Mediterrean Music and South American Music.

JAZZ

Jazz is a genre of popular music that originated in New Orleans and was developed by black Americans around 1900 through increasingly complex styles. In the early decades of the 20th century the word jazz was used to mean most kinds of American popular and dance music. Since the 1920s, however, jazz has usually signified a tradition in Afro-American music that began as a folk music in the South and developed gradually into a sophisticated modern musical art form. While classical and rock music have often borrowed features of jazz, they remain outside the jazz tradition. Performers of jazz improvise within the conventions of their chosen style. Typically, the improvisation is accompanied by the repeated chord progression of a popular song or an original composition. Written scores, if present, are used merely as guides, providing structure within which improvisation occurs. The typical instrumentation begins with a rhythm section consisting of piano, string bass, drums, and optional guitar, to which may be added any number of wind instruments. In big bands the winds are grouped into three sections-saxophones, trombones, and trumpets. Although exceptions occur in some styles, most jazz is based on the principle that an infinite number of melodies can fit the chord progressions of any song. The musician improvises new melodies that fit the chord progression, which is repeated again and again as each soloist is featured, for as many choruses as desired. Instrumentalists emulate black vocal styles, including the use of glissandi and slides, nuances of pitch (including blue notes, the microtonally flattened tones in the blues scale), and tonal effects such as growls and wails.

BEBOP

The birth of bebop in the 1940's is considered the beginning of modern jazz. This style grew out of the small swing groups, but placed a much higher emphasis on technique and on complex harmonies, rather than on singable melodies. Alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker was the father of this movement, and trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie ("Diz") was his primary cohort. His quintet and other small group recordings that featured Dizzie and Bird formed the foundation of bebop and most modern jazz. A musical style for virtuoso musicians, bebop led to the shift in the improvisational style from adorning an original melody to organizing new patterns of quick, active, melodic lines. The musical pattern often ended abruptly with two notes, suggesting the word "be-bop". Musicians developed relationships between distended chords and esoteric scales. These notes are called melodic extensions and were added to chords by pianists to add harmonic color. Bebop notables include saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Lucky Thompson, trumpeters Fats Navarro, Kenny Dorham, and Miles Davis, pianists Bud Powell, Duke Jordan, Al Haig, and Thelonious Monk, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassists Oscar Pettiford, Tommy Potter, and Charles Mingus, and drummers Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, and Roy Haynes.

CONTEMPORARY JAZZ

Contemporary jazz is as eclectic, worldly, and dynamic as the people who perform it, as people who continually press on into new musical frontiers draw their inspiration from a world filled with musical sounds and rhythm. But beneath the constant innovation, there is maintained a common heritage: the shared standards of playing and repertoire that make jazz America's classical music.

HARD BOP

The style of jazz known as Hard Bop started in the 50's and has been described as an extension of bebop and a backlash against cool jazz. This style downplayed the technically demanding melodies of bebop without compromising intensity, by maintaining the rhythmic drive of bebop and including blues and gospel music. Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers were the most well-known for this style of jazz. Miles Davis also recorded several Hard Bop albums in the early 1950's.

RAGTIME

Ragtime was one of the first jazz styles to develop, and its role and range of styles has been obscured by the passage of time, and was the popular music of the early 20th century.

SMOOTH JAZZ

Smooth Jazz is an outgrowth of fusion, one that emphasizes its polished side. Generally, smooth jazz relies on rhythms and grooves instead of improvisation. There are layers of synthesizers, lite-funk rhythms, lite-funk bass, elastic guitars, and either trumpets, alto, or soprano saxophones. The music isn't cerebral, like hard bop, nor is it gritty and funky like soul-jazz or groove -- it is unobtrusive, slick, and highly polished, where the overall sound matters more than the individual parts. Bob James, Spyro Gyra, George Benson, John Klemmer, George Howard, Norman Connors, Craig Chaquico, Tuck & Patti, Acoustic Alchemy, Larry Carlton and Jeff Lorber are some of the celebrated artists of smooth jazz.

SOUL-JAZZ

Soul-Jazz, which was the most popular jazz style of the 1960s, differs from bebop and hard bop (from which it originally developed) in that the emphasis is on the rhythmic groove. Although soloists follow the chords as in bop, the basslines (often played by an organist if not a string bassist) dance rather than stick strictly to a four-to-the bar walking pattern. The musicians build their accompaniment around the bassline and, although there are often strong melodies, it is the catchiness of the groove and the amount of heat generated by the soloists that determine whether the performance is successful. Horace Silver, Brother Jack McDuff, Shirley Scott, Jimmy McGriff, Charles Earland, Larry Young, Nat Adderley, Jimmy Smith, Maceo Parker, Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers and Richard "Groove" Holmes are just a few of the soulful players whose music has kept soul-jazz alive through the years.

SWING

Swing was a major force in American popular music until the big-band era largely ended in 1946. Swing differs from New Orleans jazz and Dixieland in that the ensembles (even for small groups) are simpler and generally filled with repetitious riffs, while in contrast the solos are more sophisticated. Individual improvisations still paid close attention to the melody but due to the advance in musicianship, the solo

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