Jazz Music

Dizzy Gillespie, who was born in South Carolina in 1917, had an amazing talent, and by the age of 20 he was already touring with major bands. He helped bebop really emerge. Bebop was a type a jazz that was more robust and difficult to play. Overall, bebop still remains the stepping stone into multiple new forms of jazz. In conclusion, I believe that the early history of jazz is vital in really understanding the complexity and beauty of jazz as a whole.

Furthermore, his band later became the Hot Seven. Louis Armstrong was able to pave a new road for jazz; transforming it from an ensemble to more of a soloist’s art. Solos and improvisation play crucial roles in jazz as it allows musicians to freely express themselves through their various play style. In addition, improvisation is also what would later define a jazz musician. Louis Armstrong was not only able to alter jazz, but additionally, introduced the concept of scat singing.

The first true virtuoso soloist of jazz, Louie Armstrong was a dazzling improviser, technically, emotionally, and intellectually. Armstrong, often called the "father of jazz," always spoke with deference, bordering on awe, of his musical roots, and with especial devotion of his mentor Joe Oliver. He changed the format of jazz by bringing the soloist to the forefront, and in his recording groups, the Hot Five and the Hot seven, demonstrated that jazz improvisation could go far beyond simply ornamenting the melody. Armstrong was one of the first jazz musicians to refine a rhythmic conception that abandoned the stiffness of ragtime, employed swing light-note patterns, and he used a technique called "rhythmic displacement." Rhythmic displacement was sometimes staggering the placement of an entire phrase, as though he were playing behind the beat.

The Roaring Twenties was also known as the Jazz Age. A famous author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, labeled the period from 1919-1929 as the “Jazz Age” because of the immense change it brought about in culture and music in America. African Americans originally developed jazz in the lower Mississippi Delta and it was nourished in New Orleans. New Orleans was the city of popular jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong. While Jazz has been used in many types of music, including blues, tango, African and Indian, the most basic form o f Jazz is the 32-bar format of the American pop song.

He infused blues feelings, changed the rhythms and made it swing. He did all this by making music so beautiful and it brought tears to the eyes of other musicians. Talking about Louis Armstrong, he was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana, the stage name Satchmo. He fame from the 1920s, he had a great ability to use cornet and virtuoso trumpet. He laid the foundation for the large and influential jazz movement.

(Schuller, 1968) The 1920s saw the first few major figures in jazz such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton make their appearance and impact on the jazz scene. Jelly Roll Morton had claimed that he invented jazz because he developed the notation for it and Louis Armstrong has made his mark as being one of the most influential jazz performers. (Biography.com) Jazz in 1920s America came to be known as Dixieland Jazz (name characteristics) and, by now, was. By the 1930s, jazz had become more widespread and more popular and saw the emergence of big bands (larger groups or jazz musicians). Jazz in this decade was easier to listen to and the majority of well-known jazz songs such as Sing, Sing, Sing, In a Sentimental Mood and Take the A Train were composed.

Bands led by the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Bunny Berrigan, Lionel Hampton, Harry James, and Gene Krupa sprang into being.With big band Swing music in full bloom, it was only logical that jitterbug dancing should also rocket to national popularity, which it did. Jazz music had an amazing affect on the “Roaring Twenties.” It tells many stories of sadness, experience and most of all, life.

This same type of feel is one of the most defining characteristics of modern jazz music. The idea of this pulse allows different players to play different rhythms at the same speeds. These complex rhythms mashed together, or polyrhythms, were introduced to the United States as the slave trade began to take its course. Afterwards, spirituals blossomed from “plantation Blacks who fused Western European harmonies with African songs, modalities, and practices” (Banfield, 96) such as polyrhythms. Spirituals were quite popular among the slave community and eventually gave birth to the next musical stepping stone to jazz, blues.

Ragtime was cheerful and a upbeat type of music, nothing like no one ever heard before. Ragtime and the Blues are considered to be the maternities of Jazz. Blues and Ragtime were the fore competitors of Jazz in closely corresponding periods introducing the idea of syncopation. Syncopation is the dislodgment of a common recurrent intonation away from a robust beat onto a weak beat. Introducing the idea of syncopation and the bringing together of European and African American traditions.

Historians believe that the birthplace of Jazz music win in New Orleans, Louisiana. It started in New Orleans because there was all kinds of music there. The music that was especially prominent there was Ragtime, from Missouri, and The Blues, from Mississippi (Tyle, np). Just before World War I, the Creole band toured around the country as part of a vaudeville company. This introduced Jazz to many parts of the country.