jazz experimental historia

Explainer: the history of jazz

Lecturer and Convenor of the Open School of Music, Australian National University

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After more than 100 years of history, it’s clear the word “jazz” means many different things to many different people. Depending on who’s doing the talking, it can either mean a highly specific musical style, or almost nothing.

The early timeline of jazz is spotty, vague and disputed, as one might expect of a musical movement that grew from a group that was both marginalised and exploited. Jazz evolved from the fringes of American society into one of the most influential, and enduring, musical movements of the 20th century.

New Orleans in the late 1800s was a remarkably cosmopolitan city, with a more racially egalitarian society than the rest of the American south. In that city, distinct musical trends began to develop, fusing elements of West African musical traditions with European harmonic structures. Musicians used readily available military band instruments left in pawn shops after the end of the American Civil War.

Scott Joplin , “the King of Ragtime”, popularised a music based on jagged (or “ragged”) rhythms, including the habañera , imported from nearby Cuba.

WC Handy , the “Father of the Blues”, travelled through Mississippi collecting and publishing folk songs utilising versions of the now standard “blues” form.

Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have invented what we call “jazz” in 1902, and did much to popularise the New Orleans sound through newly available recording technologies. By the time he recorded his Black Bottom Stomp in 1926, this new music had travelled as far as Chicago.

In 1917 the cultural hub known as Storyville was closed, which coincided with The Great Migration , in which more than a million African Americans travelled from rural communities in the South to major cities between 1910 and 1930 .

That migration, combined with recording technology and Prohibition, brought jazz to an unprecedented number of black and non-black audiences.

During this time Louis Armstrong was at the forefront of jazz. He altered the performance practice of jazz from the traditional texture in which multiple musicians play melody lines simultaneously, to what we now recognise as the individualist, soloist-plus-ensemble format .

The period between 1935 and 1946, generally referred to as the “ Swing Era ”, saw small, soloist-plus-ensemble bands of Armstrong and others (now called “combos”), largely give way to big bands, consisting of about 18 musicians.

Big names from this period, in which “Swing was King”, include Duke Ellington (thought of by some as the greatest composer in all of jazz history), Count Basie , Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller , Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman , who was the first to perform with a racially integrated band in 1938.

Bebop and the recording ban

In the early 1940s a schism occurred in jazz that forever changed the face of pop music. Many black musicians resented the success of white bands and, led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie , returned to the virtuosic combo setting.

“Bebop” was faster and more complicated than anything that had come before it. This was the first time jazz audiences sat down and listened, moving out of the dance halls and into smoky bars. Jazz was becoming art music.

Just as bebop musicians were getting the hang of their new ideas, the Musicians Union in the USA enforced a ban on new commercial recordings as part of a dispute over royalties.

For more than a year, starting in August 1942, almost no instrumental musicians were permitted to make new recordings (vocalists were, rather humorously, not considered musicians, and were exempt from the ban).

Interestingly, record labels came up with the idea of recording completely vocal (“a capella”) versions of popular songs – think of a baby-faced Frank Sinatra in a sort of period prequel to Pitch Perfect.

Before the ban, vocalists were special soloists with big bands, and usually sang a verse or two in the middle of the song. But Tommy Dorsey’s trombone, not Sinatra’s voice, was the important feature. During the ban audiences became accustomed to vocal pop music, and haven’t looked back.

From this split in the early 40s between jazz as art music, and popular music with a vocal focus, the history of jazz follows the art branch (the other turning into the history of Rock and Roll in the subsequent 10 years or so).

From Cool Jazz to Hard Bop

Jazz musicians tend not to stay in one genre too long. Out of the rejection of the fast-paced, complex bebop emerged the late 40s new West Coast scene. Cool Jazz had a more relaxed tempo, with less focus on soloing and a return to ensemble playing.

Some big names here are Chet Baker , Dave Brubeck , Bill Evans, Gil Evans (no relation), Gerry Mulligan Stan Getz , and even Miles Davis , who would be at the forefront of every innovation in jazz from the 40s, through to his death in 1991 .

This caused yet another reaction, resulting in what is known as “ hard bop ”, which fuses bebop practices with R&B, Gospel and Blues influences, and is generally recognised as the default style practised and taught around the world today.

In 1958, when bebop had taken chord progressions and virtuosity to its extreme, Miles Davis began experimenting with the other logical extreme. Jazz musicians had been playing the same standard repertoire since the days of early bebop, and had become very adept at what is called “running the changes”.

Most songs have similar chord progressions – think of those YouTube videos mashing up dozens of pop hits using the same four chords (I V VI IV progression) – and the same improvised melodies (“licks”) can be used over many different songs. Some musicians became frustrated with this apparently mechanical way of improvising, and devised a solution.

Space, melody and free jazz

If bebop had the maximum number of chord changes, what might happen when there were no, or very few, chord changes? Miles Davis’ Milestones (1958) has only two chords.

Davis sought to encourage melodic improvising by removing the “crutches” of complex changes. This “ Modal Jazz ” represented a huge shift in the techniques utilised by soloists, encouraging space in solos.

Compare the beginnings of Davis’ solo on So What with the recordings made by Davis with Charlie Parker a decade earlier.

This focus in attention to space and melody, combined with new techniques and ideas coming out of the classical avant-garde gave rise to avant-garde, and eventually “free”, jazz. Starting with The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, Ornette Coleman did away with chords altogether, encouraging musicians to play without being constrained by ideas of Western harmonic and melodic conventions.

This was quickly picked up by a number of musicians all over the world (including, perhaps most notably and importantly, John Coltrane , who had recently left Davis’ band), and gave rise to a wide range of free jazz styles.

These had little to do with each other apart from their shared lineage and their interest in sound, and the unrestricted (or at least, less-restricted) interaction between musicians.

As electronic instruments and funk gained in popularity, jazz musicians quickly jumped on new trends and innovations, starting in 1968 with Miles Davis’ Filles de Kilamanjaro .

As jazz moved through the 70s and 80s various elements of pop music seeped in, with just as many jazz elements seeping out – see David Bowie’s Young Americans (1975), for example.

When speaking of jazz in academia today (jazz theory, jazz aural skills, jazz piano class, etc.), we are using the vocabulary set out by the pioneers of bebop. As with all musics, in order to be studied and integrated into education, jazz had to be codified, and classicised.

To a jazz musicologist, the word “jazz” might connote a living, breathing tradition encompassing hundreds of musics from dozens of countries, fused with local folk and popular traditions.

But to my grandmother, jazz will always be The Andrews Sisters and that damned Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy .

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El jazz , esa melodiosa forma de arte que captura la esencia de la improvisación, la expresión y la evolución cultural, comenzó su viaje en las profundidades del corazón de Nueva Orleans . En esta ciudad, donde convergen culturas y melodías, donde nace el jazz de la fusión de sonidos africanos, europeos y americanos, dando lugar a una expresión artística profundamente enraizada en la experiencia de la diáspora africana.

Si eres un verdadero aficionado del jazz o simplemente sientes curiosidad por conocer la rica historia de este género musical, te invitamos a vivir una experiencia incomparable en Jamboree . Este emblemático club de jazz , es el escenario perfecto para explorar la profunda expresividad y evolución del jazz a través de los tiempos.

Los inicios: Nueva Orleans y la mezcla de culturas

A finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, Nueva Orleans se convirtió en el crisol de culturas que definió el sonido del jazz . Músicos afroamericanos, influenciados por melodías y ritmos africanos, comenzaron a mezclar estos elementos con la música europea, particularmente con la estructura de la banda de marcha y los himnos religiosos. La clave del jazz estaba en su capacidad de improvisación , donde cada actuación se convertía en una creación única y efímera.

El término « jazz » probablemente derivó de la jerga local, que inicialmente se usaba para describir la música animada y vigorosa que emanaba de los locales y bares de la ciudad. Esta música , que incorporaba el blues , el ragtime y otros estilos musicales, se caracterizaba por su ritmo sincopado y su insistencia en la improvisación y la creatividad individual.

La migración a Chicago y Nueva York

A medida que la Gran Migración llevó a los afroamericanos del Sur a las ciudades del norte en busca de empleo y una vida mejor, la historia del jazz viajó con ellos. Chicago y Nueva York se convirtieron en nuevos centros para el jazz, con músicos como Louis Armstrong y Duke Ellington liderando la escena. En Chicago , el jazz se electrificó con nuevos sonidos, mientras que en Nueva York, lugares como el Cotton Club en Harlem se convirtieron en el epicentro de una floreciente cultura del jazz .

Innovación y diversificación del jazz

Durante la década de 1940, el jazz experimentó una transformación con la llegada del bebop. Músicos como Charlie Parker y Dizzy Gillespie impulsaron el género hacia una mayor complejidad en la improvisación y la armonía, alejándose de las estructuras más danzables del swing. Este fue un periodo de intensa creatividad que también sentó las bases para futuras exploraciones en el género.

El free jazz , que surgió en la década de 1950, llevó la improvisación a nuevos extremos. Artistas como Ornette Coleman y John Coltrane desafiaron todas las convenciones previas, creando música que era a la vez caótica y cautivadoramente compleja. El jazz fusión , que apareció en la década de 1970, introdujo elementos de rock, funk y música mundial, con artistas como Miles Davis y Herbie Hancock redefiniendo lo que el jazz podría ser.

El jazz en el Reino Unido y más allá

Mientras tanto, el jazz también encontraba un hogar lejos de Estados Unidos . En el Reino Unido, la música se mezcló con la cultura local y ayudó a dar forma a la escena del jazz británico , que se hizo especialmente prominente en las décadas de 1950 y 1960 con músicos como Ronnie Scott, quien también estableció uno de los clubes de jazz más famosos de Londres .

Legado y relevancia contemporánea

Hoy en día, el jazz sigue siendo un símbolo de innovación y resistencia cultural. Es una forma de música que continúa evolucionando y adaptándose, encontrando nuevas formas de expresarse mientras sigue siendo fiel a sus raíces de improvisación y expresión emocional.

A través de sus múltiples transformaciones, el jazz no sólo ha proporcionado una banda sonora para cambios culturales y sociales, sino que también ha ofrecido un espacio para la exploración personal y colectiva. En ciudades como Nueva Orleans , Nueva York , y más allá, el jazz es celebrado como una forma de vida.

Así, desde sus humildes comienzos en las vibrantes calles de Nueva Orleans hasta su aceptación global, el jazz continúa siendo una potente expresión de la creatividad humana especialmente en Jamboree . Desde las raíces profundas del blues y el ragtime que retumban desde Nueva Orleans hasta las audaces exploraciones del bebop y el free jazz , Jamboree te ofrece una amplia gama de actuaciones que capturan la esencia de este arte dinámico. 

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El nacimiento del jazz: un viaje a través de su historia y evolución

El jazz es un género musical que ha dejado una huella imborrable en la historia de la música. Surgió a finales del siglo XIX en los Estados Unidos, como resultado de la fusión de diferentes tradiciones musicales africanas y europeas. El jazz revolucionó el panorama musical de la época, rompiendo las barreras establecidas y dando voz a las comunidades afroamericanas. Desde entonces, ha evolucionado y se ha adaptado a diferentes épocas y estilos, convirtiéndose en un lenguaje universal que trasciende fronteras y culturas.

Exploraremos el fascinante viaje del jazz a lo largo de su historia. Desde sus raíces en el blues y el ragtime , pasando por el swing y el bebop , hasta llegar a las corrientes más contemporáneas como el jazz fusion y el smooth jazz . Aprenderemos sobre los grandes maestros del género, como Louis Armstrong , Duke Ellington y Miles Davis , y descubriremos cómo su música ha influido en otros estilos y géneros musicales.

Sumérgete en el apasionante mundo del jazz y descubre cómo este género ha dejado una huella imborrable en la cultura y la historia. A través de este artículo, conocerás la importancia del jazz como forma de expresión artística, su influencia en la lucha por los derechos civiles y su capacidad para unir a personas de diferentes culturas y orígenes. ¡Prepárate para disfrutar de un viaje musical inolvidable !

La influencia africana en los orígenes del jazz

El jazz es un género musical que nace a finales del siglo XIX en Estados Unidos, con una fuerte influencia de la música africana. La combinación de ritmos africanos, melodías europeas y armonías afroamericanas dio lugar a un estilo musical único y revolucionario.

La música africana, con sus ritmos polirrítmicos y su énfasis en la improvisación, sentó las bases para el desarrollo del jazz. La música de los esclavos africanos en América, con su expresividad y emotividad, también contribuyó a la creación de este nuevo género.

Uno de los elementos más característicos del jazz es el ritmo sincopado , que consiste en acentuar los tiempos débiles o fuera del pulso regular. Esto se deriva de los ritmos africanos, que a menudo tienen patrones de acentuación irregulares y complejos. La sincopación es una de las características clave del jazz y le da su distintivo swing .

La improvisación es otro aspecto fundamental del jazz, y también tiene sus raíces en la música africana. En las tradiciones musicales africanas, la improvisación es una parte integral de la interpretación musical. Los músicos de jazz tienen la libertad de crear y explorar nuevas melodías y armonías en el momento, lo que les permite expresar su creatividad y personalidad única.

El jazz también adoptó elementos de la música europea, como las melodías y las armonías . Los músicos de jazz comenzaron a combinar las escalas y los acordes utilizados en la música europea con los ritmos y las improvisaciones de la música africana, creando una nueva y emocionante fusión.

Un ejemplo concreto de la influencia africana en el jazz es el uso de los tambores en la sección rítmica. Los tambores africanos, como el djembé y la conga, se incorporaron al jazz para proporcionar una base rítmica sólida y vibrante. Estos tambores añaden una capa adicional de ritmo y energía al género.

Otro caso de uso de la influencia africana en el jazz es el concepto de call and response (llamada y respuesta). Esta técnica, en la que un músico o grupo de músicos hace una frase musical y otro músico o grupo de músicos responde con otra frase, es común en la música africana y se ha adoptado ampliamente en el jazz.

La influencia africana en los orígenes del jazz es innegable. La combinación de ritmos africanos, melodías europeas y armonías afroamericanas dio lugar a un género musical único y revolucionario. La sincopación, la improvisación y el concepto de call and response son solo algunos de los elementos que el jazz heredó de la música africana. El jazz es un testimonio vivo de la riqueza y la diversidad de las culturas que se unieron en su creación.

El jazz en Nueva Orleans: cuna del género

El jazz es un género musical que tiene sus raíces en la ciudad de Nueva Orleans , Estados Unidos. Se originó a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, y se ha convertido en una de las manifestaciones artísticas más importantes y apreciadas a nivel mundial. Nueva Orleans fue el lugar donde se dio forma y se desarrolló esta música única, gracias a la influencia de diversas culturas y estilos musicales.

La ciudad de Nueva Orleans fue un crisol cultural en el que convergieron diversas influencias, como la música africana, europea y caribeña. La comunidad afroamericana, en particular, desempeñó un papel fundamental en la creación y evolución del jazz. La población negra de Nueva Orleans , descendiente de esclavos, aportó su rica tradición musical y su talento innato para la improvisación.

El jazz se gestó en los barrios populares de la ciudad, en lugares como Storyville , un distrito donde convivían la música, la vida nocturna y el comercio del entretenimiento. Fue en estos espacios donde músicos de diferentes orígenes se juntaban para tocar y experimentar con nuevos sonidos.

La improvisación es una de las características distintivas del jazz, y su origen se encuentra en las jam sessions que se llevaban a cabo en Nueva Orleans . Estas sesiones informales permitían a los músicos explorar nuevas ideas y desarrollar su técnica. Además, la música de Nueva Orleans se caracterizaba por su ritmo contagioso y su energía vibrante, lo que contribuyó a darle al jazz su estilo único.

Uno de los primeros músicos que se destacó en la escena del jazz de Nueva Orleans fue Buddy Bolden . Bolden era un cornetista y líder de banda que se convirtió en una figura icónica del género. Su estilo audaz y su habilidad para improvisar sentaron las bases para el desarrollo del jazz.

A medida que el jazz se fue extendiendo más allá de Nueva Orleans , comenzó a fusionarse con otros estilos musicales, como el blues y el ragtime. Este proceso de fusión y evolución llevó a la creación de diferentes subgéneros del jazz, como el swing, el bebop y el cool jazz.

El jazz se convirtió en una forma de expresión artística que trascendió barreras raciales y culturales. Su influencia se extendió por todo el mundo y ha dejado una huella indeleble en la historia de la música.

El jazz nació en la vibrante ciudad de Nueva Orleans , gracias a la convergencia de diferentes tradiciones musicales y la creatividad de músicos talentosos. Su evolución y fusión con otros estilos han dado lugar a una amplia variedad de subgéneros. El jazz sigue siendo una forma de expresión artística única y emocionante, que continúa influyendo en la música contemporánea.

La era del swing: el jazz se populariza en Estados Unidos

La era del swing fue un período clave en la historia del jazz , donde este género musical alcanzó una gran popularidad en Estados Unidos. Durante las décadas de 1930 y 1940, el swing se convirtió en la música de moda en salas de baile y clubes nocturnos, y las big bands se convirtieron en las protagonistas de la escena musical.

El swing se caracterizaba por su ritmo enérgico y su estilo sincopado, que invitaba a bailar y disfrutar de la música en compañía. Las orquestas de swing , lideradas por famosos directores como Duke Ellington , Count Basie y Benny Goodman , eran conocidas por su sonido potente y la habilidad de sus músicos para improvisar en solos virtuosos.

Uno de los aspectos más destacados de la era del swing fue la integración racial en la música. A pesar de la segregación racial que prevalecía en la sociedad estadounidense en ese momento, el jazz y el swing lograron reunir a músicos de diferentes razas en un mismo escenario, rompiendo barreras y promoviendo la igualdad a través de la música.

El swing también tuvo un impacto significativo en la cultura popular de la época. Las canciones de swing se convirtieron en éxitos comerciales, y artistas como Frank Sinatra y Ella Fitzgerald se dieron a conocer gracias a su participación en orquestas de swing . Además, las películas de Hollywood comenzaron a incluir números musicales de swing , lo que contribuyó a su difusión y popularidad.

En términos de influencia musical, el swing sentó las bases para el desarrollo de otros estilos de jazz, como el bebop y el cool jazz. A medida que los músicos de swing exploraban nuevas ideas y técnicas en sus improvisaciones, surgieron nuevas corrientes artísticas que llevaron el jazz a territorios aún más innovadores.

La era del swing fue un período de gran efervescencia y popularidad para el jazz en Estados Unidos. Sus ritmos contagiosos y su capacidad para unir a personas de diferentes razas dejaron un legado duradero en la música y la cultura estadounidense. Además, sentó las bases para la evolución y el desarrollo de nuevos estilos de jazz en las décadas siguientes.

El jazz y la cultura afroamericana: expresión de la lucha por los derechos civiles

El jazz , género musical originario de Estados Unidos, no solo se destaca por su riqueza sonora, sino también por su estrecha relación con la cultura afroamericana. Surgido a finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX en comunidades afroamericanas de Nueva Orleans, el jazz se convirtió en una poderosa forma de expresión artística y social para una comunidad que enfrentaba la opresión y discriminación racial.

El jazz fue una forma de resistencia y una manera de afirmar la identidad y el valor de la cultura afroamericana. A través de ritmos sincopados, improvisaciones y melodías emotivas, los músicos de jazz transmitían sus experiencias, emociones y luchas a través de sus instrumentos.

El jazz se convirtió en una herramienta para desafiar las normas sociales y políticas de la época. Durante el período de segregación racial en Estados Unidos, muchos clubes de jazz eran los únicos lugares donde se permitía la mezcla de razas, donde blancos y negros podían disfrutar de la música juntos. Esta integración en el ámbito musical fue un punto de partida para la lucha por los derechos civiles en el país.

Uno de los aspectos más destacados del jazz es su capacidad para fusionar diferentes estilos musicales. El jazz incorporó elementos de la música africana, europea y caribeña, creando así un sonido único y revolucionario. Esta fusión de influencias musicales reflejaba la realidad multicultural de la sociedad estadounidense y sentó las bases para el desarrollo de otros géneros como el rock, el funk y el hip-hop.

Algunos ejemplos concretos de la influencia del jazz en la cultura afroamericana son los grandes músicos que se convirtieron en íconos de la lucha por los derechos civiles . Louis Armstrong, considerado uno de los padres fundadores del jazz, utilizó su música y su fama para abogar por la igualdad racial. Su canción « What a Wonderful World » se convirtió en un himno de esperanza y reconciliación en plena época de segregación.

Otro ejemplo es la cantante Billie Holiday, quien a través de su voz única y emotiva, interpretó canciones que hablaban de la injusticia y el racismo. Su canción « Strange Fruit » se convirtió en un símbolo de la lucha contra el linchamiento y el odio racial.

El jazz también fue una forma de empoderamiento para las mujeres afroamericanas. Pianistas como Mary Lou Williams y vocalistas como Ella Fitzgerald y Sarah Vaughan se destacaron en la escena del jazz, desafiando los estereotipos de género y abriendo camino para futuras generaciones de artistas.

El jazz es mucho más que un género musical. Es una expresión artística y cultural que ha dejado una huella imborrable en la historia de Estados Unidos y en la lucha por la igualdad racial. A través de su música, los artistas de jazz han transmitido mensajes de resistencia, esperanza y unión, convirtiéndose en voces poderosas en la búsqueda de la justicia social. El legado del jazz perdura hasta el día de hoy, inspirando a nuevas generaciones de músicos y manteniendo viva la memoria de aquellos que lucharon por un mundo más igualitario.

El jazz en Europa: su impacto y difusión en el continente

El jazz, un género musical que nació en los Estados Unidos a finales del siglo XIX, rápidamente se convirtió en una de las expresiones artísticas más importantes del siglo XX. Su influencia se extendió más allá de las fronteras estadounidenses y llegó a Europa, donde se desarrolló de manera única y dejó una huella imborrable en la escena musical del continente.

El impacto del jazz en Europa fue significativo, ya que introdujo un nuevo estilo musical que desafió las convenciones tradicionales y atrajo a una audiencia ávida de emociones y nuevas experiencias. La música jazz se caracteriza por su improvisación , ritmo enérgico y su capacidad para transmitir emociones de una manera única.

Uno de los primeros países europeos en abrazar el jazz fue Francia, donde se convirtió en un fenómeno cultural en la década de 1920. París se convirtió en un centro de la escena del jazz, y músicos estadounidenses como Josephine Baker y Sidney Bechet encontraron un público acogedor y entusiasta. El jazz también se fusionó con otros géneros musicales franceses, como el cabaret y el chanson, creando un estilo único conocido como « jazz manouche » o jazz gitano, popularizado por el legendario guitarrista Django Reinhardt .

Otro país europeo donde el jazz dejó una huella profunda fue el Reino Unido. En la década de 1930, el jazz se convirtió en una parte integral de la escena musical británica, y músicos como George Shearing y John Dankworth contribuyeron a su popularidad. El jazz británico también se desarrolló de manera única, fusionándose con el swing y el bebop estadounidenses para crear un sonido distintivo.

El jazz también encontró un hogar en Alemania, donde músicos como Bertolt Brecht y Kurt Weill incorporaron elementos de jazz en sus obras teatrales y musicales. En la década de 1960, el jazz experimental y vanguardista ganó popularidad en Alemania, con artistas como Amon Düül II y Can explorando nuevos territorios sonoros.

En España, el jazz se mezcló con la música flamenca para crear el género conocido como « jazz flamenco «, popularizado por músicos como Paco de Lucía y Chick Corea . Esta fusión única de ritmos y estilos ha cautivado a audiencias de todo el mundo y ha llevado el jazz español a nuevas alturas.

El impacto del jazz en Europa va más allá de la música. El jazz también ha influido en el arte, la moda y la cultura en general. Ha inspirado a pintores como Piet Mondrian y a diseñadores de moda como Coco Chanel , quienes incorporaron elementos del jazz en sus obras.

El jazz ha dejado una huella profunda en Europa, transformando la escena musical y cultural del continente. Su influencia se ha extendido a través de los años y su legado perdura hasta el día de hoy. El jazz en Europa ha evolucionado de manera única, fusionándose con diversos estilos y géneros musicales para crear una experiencia auditiva única. Si bien su popularidad ha tenido altibajos a lo largo de los años, el jazz sigue siendo una forma de expresión artística y cultural que continúa inspirando a músicos y audiencias de todo el mundo.

El free jazz: la revolución y experimentación en el género

El free jazz es un subgénero del jazz que surgió en la década de 1950. A diferencia del jazz tradicional, el free jazz se caracteriza por su improvisación libre, sin restricciones armónicas o estructurales. Este estilo musical rompe con las convenciones establecidas del jazz y permite a los músicos explorar nuevas formas de expresión artística.

El free jazz se considera una revolución en el género, ya que desafía las reglas y normas establecidas del jazz convencional. En lugar de seguir patrones predefinidos, los músicos de free jazz se enfocan en la improvisación colectiva y en la creación de texturas sonoras únicas. Esto proporciona una experiencia auditiva única y emocionante para el público.

Uno de los músicos más influyentes en el desarrollo del free jazz fue Ornette Coleman. Su álbum « The Shape of Jazz to Come » (1959) es considerado uno de los primeros trabajos importantes en el género. Coleman y otros músicos de free jazz como John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor y Albert Ayler exploraron nuevas técnicas instrumentales y formas de composición, desafiando las expectativas del público y la crítica.

El free jazz ha tenido una influencia significativa en otros géneros musicales, como el rock y la música experimental. Bandas como Sonic Youth y Radiohead han incorporado elementos de free jazz en su música, creando un sonido único y vanguardista.

Para los músicos, el free jazz brinda la oportunidad de explorar su creatividad y experimentar con nuevas ideas musicales. Les permite romper con las limitaciones estructurales y expresarse de forma más libre y personal. Además, el free jazz fomenta la colaboración y la interacción en el escenario, ya que los músicos deben escuchar y responder a las ideas de los demás en tiempo real.

Si estás interesado en explorar el free jazz , aquí tienes algunos álbumes clásicos para comenzar tu viaje:

• «The Shape of Jazz to Come» de Ornette Coleman
• «Ascension» de John Coltrane
• «Unit Structures» de Cecil Taylor
• «Spiritual Unity» de Albert Ayler

Además de estos álbumes, también te recomiendo asistir a conciertos en vivo de free jazz . La experiencia en vivo es única y te permite apreciar la improvisación y la interacción entre los músicos de una manera más profunda.

El free jazz representa una revolución en el género del jazz, permitiendo a los músicos explorar nuevas formas de expresión y romper con las convenciones establecidas. Es un subgénero emocionante y desafiante que ha dejado una huella duradera en la historia de la música.

El jazz contemporáneo: fusiones y nuevos horizontes sonoros

El jazz contemporáneo ha experimentado una evolución constante desde sus inicios en el siglo XX. Se ha convertido en un género musical vibrante y diverso , que ha sabido adaptarse a los cambios culturales y tecnológicos de nuestra sociedad. En esta sección, exploraremos las fusiones y los nuevos horizontes sonoros que han marcado la evolución del jazz en las últimas décadas.

Fusiones y mezclas de estilos

Una de las características más destacadas del jazz contemporáneo es su capacidad para fusionarse con otros géneros musicales. El jazz ha abierto sus puertas a influencias tan diversas como el rock, el funk, el hip hop, la música electrónica e incluso la música clásica. Estas fusiones han dado lugar a nuevos estilos y subgéneros, como el jazz-rock, el acid jazz, el jazz fusion y el nu jazz.

Un ejemplo de esta fusión de estilos es el jazz-rock, que emergió en la década de 1960 con bandas como Weather Report y Miles Davis. Este género combinaba elementos del jazz improvisado con el poder y la energía del rock, creando una nueva y emocionante propuesta musical.

Otro ejemplo es el nu jazz, que surgió en la década de 1990 y fusiona elementos del jazz con la música electrónica y el hip hop. Artistas como St Germain y The Cinematic Orchestra exploraron nuevas sonoridades, incorporando samplers, ritmos electrónicos y elementos de la música urbana.

Explorando nuevos horizontes sonoros

El jazz contemporáneo también ha explorado nuevos horizontes sonoros, rompiendo barreras y expandiendo los límites del género. Los músicos de jazz han experimentado con nuevas técnicas de improvisación, han incorporado instrumentos poco convencionales y han explorado diferentes escalas y armonías.

Un ejemplo de esta exploración sonora es el free jazz, un estilo que surgió en la década de 1950 y que rompió con las estructuras tradicionales del jazz. Los músicos de free jazz buscaban la total libertad de expresión, improvisando sin restricciones y explorando nuevos sonidos y texturas.

Otro ejemplo es el jazz modal, que se popularizó en la década de 1960 de la mano de artistas como John Coltrane y Miles Davis. En el jazz modal, se utilizan escalas modales en lugar de acordes tradicionales, lo que permite una mayor libertad melódica y armónica.

La influencia de la tecnología

La tecnología también ha jugado un papel fundamental en la evolución del jazz contemporáneo. La introducción de instrumentos electrónicos, como el sintetizador y la guitarra eléctrica, ha permitido a los músicos de jazz explorar nuevos sonidos y texturas.

Además, la grabación y la producción musical han experimentado avances significativos en las últimas décadas. La utilización de técnicas de grabación en estudio y la posibilidad de editar y mezclar las grabaciones han permitido a los músicos de jazz experimentar con nuevas formas de composición y producción.

Recomendaciones para explorar el jazz contemporáneo

Si estás interesado en adentrarte en el mundo del jazz contemporáneo, aquí te dejamos algunas recomendaciones:

• Escucha álbumes emblemáticos de artistas como Kamasi Washington, Snarky Puppy y Robert Glasper.
• Asiste a conciertos de jazz en vivo para disfrutar de la energía y la improvisación que caracterizan a este género.
• Explora festivales de jazz que presenten una variedad de estilos y artistas.
• Investiga sobre la historia del jazz contemporáneo y sus principales exponentes para entender mejor su evolución.
• Experimenta con la creación de música jazz utilizando herramientas digitales y tecnológicas.

El jazz contemporáneo es un género en constante evolución, que sigue explorando nuevos caminos y fusionando estilos. Atrévete a sumergirte en este apasionante mundo y descubre la riqueza y la diversidad del jazz de hoy en día.

Preguntas frecuentes

¿qué es el jazz.

El jazz es un género musical originado en Estados Unidos a finales del siglo XIX, que combina elementos de la música africana, la música europea y la improvisación.

¿Cuáles son los instrumentos típicos del jazz?

Los instrumentos más comunes en el jazz son el piano , el contrabajo , la batería , la trompeta , el saxofón y el clarinete .

¿Cuál es la diferencia entre el jazz tradicional y el jazz moderno?

El jazz tradicional se caracteriza por su enfoque en la improvisación colectiva y el uso de melodías conocidas, mientras que el jazz moderno experimenta con nuevas estructuras y fusiona diferentes estilos musicales.

¿Cuáles son los subgéneros del jazz?

Algunos subgéneros del jazz son el bebop , el cool jazz , el hard bop , el free jazz , el jazz fusión y el smooth jazz , entre otros.

¿Quiénes son algunos de los músicos más influyentes en la historia del jazz?

Algunos de los músicos más influyentes en la historia del jazz son Louis Armstrong , Miles Davis , Duke Ellington , Charlie Parker y John Coltrane , entre otros.

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The Origins of Jazz

Jazz is a music genre with district roots and an intriguing history, mixing a range of international styles to create a sound unlike what was ever experienced before. If you’re asking questions like, “Who created jazz?” “What are the origins of jazz in America?” and “When did jazz music start?” here’s what you need to know about the history of jazz.

When Was Jazz Invented?

“When was jazz music created?” is a question many jazz fans and people new to the genre ask. The beginnings of jazz actually date back to the 19th century. New Orleans was home to Congo Square, a space where slaves would gather and play music. That tradition started a bit before 1820, and it brought together people from a wide array of countries, each introducing a bit of their nation’s unique sound to the mix.

Over time, the blending of African music and Caribbean music was joined by marching band instruments. Marching bands were highly prevalent during the Civil War. They introduced many people to various brass instruments, and the united sound eventually formed the genre known as ragtime. The influence of New Orleans music, with its rich cultural exchange and ethnic diversity, played a crucial role in the development of jazz.

Spiritual music was also popular during the era and made its way into what ultimately became the jazz sound. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people from throughout the American south brought blues to Louisiana. In time, all of these sounds melded together, leading to the genre that became jazz. New Orleans brass bands also significantly shaped early jazz with their lasting impact and contributions from horn players.

Ultimately, exactly when the genre known as jazz began is a bit debated. Most feel it started in the late 1800s or early 1900s. However, it ultimately rose to fame in the 1920s.

Where Did Jazz Originate and Why?

Jazz is often thought to have been founded on the musical traditions of West Africa (rhythm, “feel,” blues) and Europe (harmonic chords, variety of instruments). Early jazz also incorporated church hymns, slave songs, field chants, and Cuban-style rhythm.

Jazz originated in New Orleans, primarily as it served as a melting pot for the music that ultimately led to the jazz genre. One of the main reasons it formed there was that slaves from a wide variety of nations could come together and play music, something that wasn’t always permitted in other cities or states.

The Louisiana Territory had “ Le Code Noir ,” a set of rules outlining the treatment of slaves. While many of the requirements were harsh and strict, providing slaves with few rights or freedoms, a few clauses gave slaves some rights. Some of the tenants barred slave owners from making the slaves work on Sundays or Catholic holidays. As a result, slaves had a day of rest during the week, and many near New Orleans used that time to gather at Congo Square.

Essentially, that answers the question, “Why is New Orleans the birthplace of jazz?” it was the required Sundays off that created conditions that weren’t present in many other parts of the American south. Through the weekly gatherings, music was a way to find joy and served as the foundation for what eventually became jazz.

Who First Invented Jazz Music?

When it comes to who invented jazz music, most historians consider Buddy Bolden – a cornet player –the first jazz musician. He was an African-American bandleader, and he was even once dubbed the “first man of jazz,” cementing his place in jazz history.

At a minimum, Buddy Bolden was a musician that spearheaded the genre, often playing in Storyville at night. While there aren’t any known recordings of his playing, his sound was said to feature the improvisation traditionally associated with the genre.

However, Buddy Bolden wasn’t the only musician associated with the birth of jazz. Some other early jazz African-American musicians of the time included Mutt Carey, Bunk Johnson, and Joe Oliver. Creole jazz musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard, and Sidney Bechet also shaped the genre.

As one would expect, many of those musicians blended various musical traditions, featuring beats from West Africa and the Caribbean, European classical music instruments, and many other sounds and influences.

How Was Jazz Sound Created?

As mentioned above, jazz music is an amalgamation of several different genres, featuring sounds from a wide array of international music styles. However, its foundations are largely based on three specific types of music. Here’s a closer look at the jazz music origins and the genre’s key characteristics.

What Are the Three Musical Roots of Jazz?

The roots of jazz are primarily ragtime, marching bands, and blues. Ragtime developed naturally in the American south, featuring African-American rhythms and styling combined with more traditional European music. It became a part of minstrel shows, allowing it to spread through many regions within the American south.

Marching bands were a form of support during the Civil War. Primarily, they aimed to keep morale high, but they also accompanied some drills. These sounds became widespread during that era and were viewed as uplifting, even if they were mainly associated with a challenging period in history.

The blues also developed as a genre during the Civil War. Word songs, minstrel shows, and spiritual music influenced that genre. Folk music and other popular sounds of the era also made their way into the blues genre, further diversifying the sound stable blues itself.

Generally, jazz is viewed as a blending of those styles, incorporating their musical elements and many of the sounds and emotions present in them. But jazz also brought something new to the table, particularly when it came to improvisation.

What Are the Music Characteristics of Jazz?

Jazz has many characteristics, some that it shares with other genres and others that are generally unique to the genre, at least during the origins of jazz. Improvisation is one of the most classically defining traits. However, syncopation, polyrhythms, and irregular rhythms are potential hallmarks, too.

Solos are also a traditional part of the jazz genre. Most early jazz also featured calls and responses, where one musician in a band would offer a phrase, and another would essentially reply to it.

Generally, jazz is a genre that seems to embody musical freedom. While some subgenres do have a distinct sense of melody, harmony, and rhythm, many others include unexpected elements as a form of expression. Often, it’s those unanticipated moments that make the genre highly unique, setting it apart from many other types of music.

How Did Jazz Evolve?

While the origins of jazz date back to the pre-Civil War era, like most types of music, it also changed over time. New sounds were incorporated as musicians began embracing jazz concepts. Additionally, various jazz musicians began honing their unique sounds, some of which led to the creation of new subgenres.

As mentioned above, jazz as a separate, official genre may date back to the late 1800s or early 1900s. However, jazz didn’t come into its own until the 1920s.

Many consider the 1920s the start of the jazz age since that’s when it first became broadly popular in the US and Europe. The “Roaring Twenties,” with prohibition, speakeasies, flappers, and music, drove jazz into the mainstream and made overnight success stories of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.

The age of jazz culminated in the historic 1938 Benny Goodman concert at Carnegie Hall, bringing together musicians from various ethnicities to perform jazz inside this hallowed hall. At this point, the jazz of the 1920s and 30s was already starting to give way to the Big Band era, although jazz musicians such as Ellington and Armstrong would continue to develop jazz until their deaths.

Despite the dominance of jazz ending with the Great Depression, the music has continued to evolve with new styles and sub-genres forming as its influence on pop culture continues to echo through time, along with many new up-and-coming jazz musicians .  Did you know April 30th is International Jazz Day ?  It was created in 2011 by UNESCO to help highlight how jazz is able to bring unity across the world.

What Are the Origins of the Different Types of Jazz?

Over time, jazz evolved to include a wide array of subgenres, each with its own unique sounds and characteristics. While they all have jazz foundations, their differences cause them to stand apart from one another. Some feature cultural influences from nations that weren’t necessarily part of the foundation of jazz. Others embrace or shirk key traits like improvisation to varying degrees.

Here’s a quick overview of the origins of the different types of jazz.

Modern Jazz

Modern jazz essentially began in the 1940s, and it aimed for more freedom for improvisation. It stepped away from chord progressions, giving solo musicians more space to create unique melodies, using nearly any scale or note they wanted. As a result, it more often features unexpected elements and can be offbeat or challenging to follow.

Free jazz is an incredibly avant-garde subgenre, providing the highest degree of freedom one typically finds in jazz. It largely originated in the late 1950s, when Ornette Coleman began moving away from traditional notions and limitations associated with jazz, functionally rejecting all conventions. As a result, this type of jazz is one of the most challenging to define, as the lack of constraints is what is typically the basis for the genre.

Bebop Style

Bebop primarily began in the early 1940s and is incredibly fast-paced and experimental. Many of its roots come from the integration of swing music, and scat singers were commonly part of the songs. Those scat musicians led to the genre’s name; a “bebop” was functionally a nod to the nonsensical syllables that come with scat.

Latin jazz is a fusion style that brought Latin sounds into the jazz genre. Usually, it features Cuban and Spanish Caribbean rhythms coupled with traditional jazz instruments and music compositions. Its origins also date back to the 1940s, formed initially by Afro-Cuban musicians in Spanish Harlem that collaborated with African-American jazz musicians.

Cool jazz arose during the 1940s as a counterpoint to faster and more chaotic or upbeat forms of jazz like bebop and hard bop. This genre brought in more classical elements, essentially moving away from blues and swing elements present in many other subgenres. Comparatively, it’s more restrained, though that can also make it more accessible to those who find certain types of jazz overwhelming.

Jazz Manouche

Jazz Manouche originated in Paris in the 1930s. Usually, it features smaller bands and favors an acoustic sound. Drums aren’t usually a part of the genre, leaning instead on rhythm guitarists to maintain the beat. Its origins are attributed to Jean “Django” Reinhardt, a Romani guitarist, and Stephane Grappelli, a French violinist. Due to Reinhardt’s background, the genre was once referred to as “gypsy jazz,” though that has since fallen out of favor due to the negative connotations of the term “gypsy.”‘

Jazz Fusion

Jazz fusion began developing in the 1960s. During that era, jazz musicians started integrating sounds more widely associated with rock music and R&B. Most who began developing this genre had collaborated with Miles Davis at one point. While Davis mainly rose to fame in the bebop genre, he was highly experimental in his later career, playing a critical role in a variety of subgenres, including jazz fusion.

Smooth Jazz

Smooth jazz began in the 1970s, emerging as a form of crossover jazz designed to have broad commercial appeal. Comparatively speaking, it’s an easy-listening version of jazz, incorporating more predictability and gentleness than you find in many other types of jazz. Essentially, the goal was to reach a wider audience, so the genre added pop-inspired elements and features commonly associated with R&B ballads.

Modal jazz emerged in the mid-1950s. It’s named for the fact that it relies on musical modes. Organizationally, it’s more scalar than chordal. As a result, it provides more space for unique improvisations that would otherwise be challenging with more chordal versions of jazz. Both Miles Davis and John Coltrane are credited with popularizing modal jazz, allowing them to step away from the more rigid structures associated with some other approaches to jazz composition.

Swing started in the late 1920s, becoming broadly popular by the mid-1930s and remaining so until the mid-1940s. Most consider the years between 1930 and 1945 as the Swing Era, a time when big bands led by legends like Duke Ellington and Count Basie were making waves. The genre has a distinct rhythm, accentuating specific beats to create its unique feel.

Hard bop emerged in the mid-1950s, incorporating more features that you usually find in gospel music, R&B, and blues. It favored medium tempos over quicker ones, as it worked to bring soul sounds back into the genre, something some felt was lacking in cool jazz and some other emerging subgenres. It also maintained enough space for free expression but balanced that with a sense of groove, making it more danceable than subgenres like bebop.

Jazz legend Louis Armstrong once said: “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.”

Related Posts

Swing vs. Bebop Jazz

What Is Smooth Jazz?

What Is Jazz Manouche?

Great information. Real Music, Great Musicians and a Tribute to Real Art!

Thank you for informing The Great Melting Pot that Jazz was a creation from the people America enslaved for over 200 years – West Africans. Yes, indeed the art of jazz like most of “American” or “Southern” music and style actually has its origins in West Africa. Not Europe or even Japan .Yes, Japan has followed in the footsteps of the White Western World and have also tried to remove Africans from their artistic and creative contributions that have changed humanity in some very significant and lovely ways. Not to mention of course these Enslaved Africans and descendants of Enslaved Africans made so many Western Corporations trillions of dollars over centuries of time. And this is what USA calls Meritocracy.

jaz est coolieo

Jazz est tres coolieo

A fantastic read, as a avid watcher of Stingray djazz and loving the talent of especially yesteryear, this write-up has given me more of an insight as to how, where and when Jazz came into being.. thank you.

This a lucid commentary that cuts to the chase regarding jazz’s social and musical origins. The devil is in the details and the details are what I like about this piece, and its incisive presentation. Black slaves were the instrument, no pun intended, by which the music emerged, evolved, and took wing. The originators came from plantations to the city to the world. It’s truly a folk music to use a term. It came from everyday people, thus its feeling of universality, joy and sadness, and like all good things it morphed into the public’s heart, influencing every genre of popular music as well as a good part of classical music of which it gained structure and got written down. In the end, like all the great arts, the end product is feeling, a sense of connection with the heart and soul of its listeners. It’s one of the few things in life I cherish and that has set me free in the best sense of the word to relive the primordial spirit inside my mind and body. We should have a monument the likes of the Eiffel Tower on the river shore of New Orleans, lit every day with the colors of wonder and the knowledge of its historic roots. Below it should be the most elaborate museum and library of jazz literature and recordings in the world.

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• Introduction

West Africa in the American South: gathering the musical elements of jazz

• Field hollers and funeral processions: forming the matrix
• Ragtime into jazz: the birth of jazz in New Orleans
• Variations on a theme: jazz elsewhere in the United States
• The cornetist breaks away: Louis Armstrong and the invention of swing
• Fletcher Henderson, the originator
• Duke Ellington, the master composer
• Other notables of the 1920s
• Bennie Moten, Casa Loma Orchestra, and Benny Goodman
• Count Basie’s band and the composer-arrangers
• The swing soloists
• The return of the combo and the influence of the territory bands
• Bebop takes hold
• Swing hangs on, soloists take off
• Chamber jazz and the Modern Jazz Quartet
• Jazz meets classical and the “third stream” begins
• The mainstream enlarged: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and others
• Free jazz: the explorations of Ornette Coleman
• Jazz at the end of the 20th century

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• CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas - Jazz Music
• Tri-State Jazz Society - A Brief History of Jazz
• BBC - Culture - The mysterious origins of jazz
• Humanities LibreTexts - Jazz
• Smithsonian - The National Museum of American History - What is Jazz?
• PBS LearningMedia - For Teachers - Harlem in the 1920s | The African Americans
• jazz - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• jazz - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

jazz , musical form , often improvisational, developed by African Americans and influenced by both European harmonic structure and African rhythms. It was developed partially from ragtime and blues and is often characterized by syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, often deliberate deviations of pitch, and the use of original timbres.

Any attempt to arrive at a precise, all-encompassing definition of jazz is probably futile . Jazz has been, from its very beginnings at the turn of the 20th century, a constantly evolving, expanding, changing music, passing through several distinctive phases of development; a definition that might apply to one phase—for instance, to New Orleans style or swing —becomes inappropriate when applied to another segment of its history, say, to free jazz . Early attempts to define jazz as a music whose chief characteristic was improvisation , for example, turned out to be too restrictive and largely untrue, since composition , arrangement , and ensemble have also been essential components of jazz for most of its history. Similarly, syncopation and swing, often considered essential and unique to jazz, are in fact lacking in much authentic jazz, whether of the 1920s or of later decades. Again, the long-held notion that swing could not occur without syncopation was roundly disproved when trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Bunny Berigan (among others) frequently generated enormous swing while playing repeated, unsyncopated quarter notes.

Jazz, in fact, is not—and never has been—an entirely composed, predetermined music, nor is it an entirely extemporized one. For almost all of its history it has employed both creative approaches in varying degrees and endless permutations. And yet, despite these diverse terminological confusions, jazz seems to be instantly recognized and distinguished as something separate from all other forms of musical expression . To repeat Armstrong’s famous reply when asked what swing meant: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” To add to the confusion, there often have been seemingly unbridgeable perceptual differences between the producers of jazz (performers, composers, and arrangers) and its audiences. For example, with the arrival of free jazz and other latter-day avant-garde manifestations , many senior musicians maintained that music that didn’t swing was not jazz.

Most early classical composers (such as Aaron Copland , John Alden Carpenter —and even Igor Stravinsky , who became smitten with jazz) were drawn to its instrumental sounds and timbres, the unusual effects and inflections of jazz playing (brass mutes, glissandos, scoops, bends, and stringless ensembles), and its syncopations, completely ignoring, or at least underappreciating, the extemporized aspects of jazz. Indeed, the sounds that jazz musicians make on their instruments—the way they attack, inflect, release, embellish, and colour notes—characterize jazz playing to such an extent that if a classical piece were played by jazz musicians in their idiomatic phrasings, it would in all likelihood be called jazz.

Nonetheless, one important aspect of jazz clearly does distinguish it from other traditional musical areas, especially from classical music: the jazz performer is primarily or wholly a creative, improvising composer—his own composer, as it were—whereas in classical music the performer typically expresses and interprets someone else’s composition .

The elements that make jazz distinctive derive primarily from West African musical sources as taken to the North American continent by slaves , who partially preserved them against all odds in the plantation culture of the American South. These elements are not precisely identifiable because they were not documented—at least not until the mid- to late 19th century, and then only sparsely. Furthermore, Black slaves came from diverse West African tribal cultures with distinct musical traditions. Thus, a great variety of Black musical sensibilities were assembled on American soil. These in turn rather quickly encountered European musical elements—for example, simple dance and entertainment musics and shape-note hymn tunes , such as were prevalent in early 19th-century North America .

The music that eventually became jazz evolved out of a wide-ranging, gradually assimilated mixture of Black and white folk musics and popular styles, with roots in both West Africa and Europe. It is only a slight oversimplification to assert that the rhythmic and structural elements of jazz, as well as some aspects of its customary instrumentation (e.g., banjo or guitar and percussion ), derive primarily from West African traditions, whereas the European influences can be heard not only in the harmonic language of jazz but in its use of such conventional instruments as trumpet , trombone , saxophone , string bass , and piano .

The syncopations of jazz were not entirely new—they had been the central attraction of one of its forerunners, ragtime , and could be heard even earlier in minstrel music and in the work of Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk ( Bamboula, subtitled Danse des Nègres, 1844–45, and Ojos Criollos , 1859, among others). Nevertheless, jazz syncopation struck nonblack listeners as fascinating and novel, because that particular type of syncopation was not present in European classical music. The syncopations in ragtime and jazz were, in fact, the result of reducing and simplifying (over a period of at least a century) the complex, multilayered, polyrhythmic, and polymetric designs indigenous to all kinds of West African ritual dance and ensemble music. In other words, the former accentuations of multiple vertically competing metres were drastically simplified to syncopated accents.

The provenance of melody (tune, theme, motive, riff) in jazz is more obscure. In all likelihood, jazz melody evolved out of a simplified residue and mixture of African and European vocal materials intuitively developed by slaves in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s—for example, unaccompanied field hollers and work songs associated with the changed social conditions of Blacks. The widely prevalent emphasis on pentatonic formations came primarily from West Africa, whereas the diatonic (and later more chromatic) melodic lines of jazz grew from late 19th- and early 20th-century European antecedents .

Harmony was probably the last aspect of European music to be absorbed by Blacks. But once acquired, harmony was applied as an additional musical resource to religious texts; one result was the gradual development of spirituals , borrowing from the white religious revival meetings that African Americans in many parts of the South were urged to attend. One crucial outcome of these musical acculturations was the development by Blacks of the so-called blues scale , with its “ blue notes”—the flatted third and seventh degrees. This scale is neither particularly African nor particularly European but acquired its peculiar modality from pitch inflections common to any number of West African languages and musical forms. In effect these highly expressive—and in African terms very meaningful—pitch deviations were superimposed on the diatonic scale common to almost all European classical and vernacular music.

That jazz developed uniquely in the United States, not in the Caribbean or in South America (or any other realm to which thousands of African Blacks were also transported) is historically fascinating. Many Blacks in those other regions were very often emancipated by the early 1800s and thus were free individuals who actively participated in the cultural development of their own countries. In the case of Brazil, Blacks were so geographically and socially isolated from the white establishment that they simply were able to retain their own African musical traditions in a virtually pure form. It is thus ironic that jazz would probably never have evolved had it not been for the slave trade as it was practiced specifically in the United States.

Jazz grew from the African American slaves who were prevented from maintaining their native musical traditions and felt the need to substitute some homegrown form of musical expression. Such composers as the Brazilian mulatto José Maurício Nunes Garcia were fully in touch with the musical advances of their time that were developing in Europe and wrote music in those styles and traditions. American slaves, by contrast, were restricted not only in their work conditions and religious observances but in leisure activities, including music making. Although slaves who played such instruments as the violin , horn , and oboe were exploited for their musical talents in such cities as Charleston, South Carolina , these were exceptional situations. By and large the slaves were relegated to picking up whatever little scraps of music were allowed them.

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Music Interviews

Re-revising 'the history of jazz'.

Natalie Weiner

Alice Coltrane, widow of jazz great John Coltrane, playing the piano in her California home, in front of a portrait of her late husband. Despite having practiced music since a very early age, Alice Coltrane's work only somewhat recently began to be recognized. J.Emilio Flores/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

Alice Coltrane, widow of jazz great John Coltrane, playing the piano in her California home, in front of a portrait of her late husband. Despite having practiced music since a very early age, Alice Coltrane's work only somewhat recently began to be recognized.

For most contemporary music consumers, listening to jazz is a historical exercise. Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue is, at the time of writing, still No. 3 on Billboard's Jazz Albums chart 61 years after it was released, much to the chagrin of the artists making music in the same tradition today.

Ted Gioia, whose third edition of The History of Jazz was released in March, won't tell you to avoid Kind Of Blue . The esteemed music writer and historian has as much reverence for the classics as anyone, as is evidenced by the effusive, electric way he writes about them: "Is it going too far to see this Davis unit as the most impressive working combo in the history of modern jazz?" Gioia writes of Kind Of Blue 's sextet, before a detailed description of each player's contributions.

But Gioia won't let you stop with jazz's highlight reel, captivating as it might be. His own version can be found in the 15 pages of recommended tracks at the back of the book, updated with this latest edition to reflect the past decade in jazz. Insisting on jazz's current vibrancy was one of the primary reasons Gioia wanted to revisit the book, originally published in 1997 and last revised in 2011. "I've always felt that the best way to look at music history is in the way that embraces its vibrancy and accordance for people living right now," he says.

The History of Jazz is an ambitious survey of the genre that was almost immediately recognized by critics from Terry Teachout to Greg Tate as among the most authoritative and thorough books of its kind. Since it was first published, Gioia's History has sold more than 100,000 copies to an audience that ranges from jazz history students to newcomers to the genre to aficionados; as a result, his impact on shaping jazz's narrative and canon can't be overstated.

Gioia spoke with NPR about what he's learned about jazz in the 24 years since he first published his exhaustive history, what's surprised him about the music's development, and what he thinks will never change.

Natalie Weiner, NPR Music: What is your process for writing a book like The History of Jazz ?

Ted Gioia: The first rule I have is: you must control the narrative or it will control you. Before I write anything in a historical survey, I have to have a crystal clear idea in my head of what the structure is and where all the pieces are going to fit. If you start with just the empirical evidence, you'll never get from there to the finished book. I had to start with big picture questions: What is this music all about? What have been the profound changes in it? How has it impacted people's lives, and society and culture? When I start with the big questions, then I can structure it and bring in all those characters and songs. But that structure should be hidden from the reader. It should feel natural and obvious.

How do you start revising a book that covers such a vast topic? Did you have a specific idea of what you were going to add, or were you planning broader edits?

Whenever I do a revised edition, I go through the whole book and say, "Can I make this sentence better? Do we know more facts about this subject?" But a number of things were happening in the jazz world that really needed to be added. All of them were in embryonic form in earlier editions, but they're clearly more important now.

First of all, the expansion of jazz globally. It's always been the case to some degree, but right now the vibrancy and excitement of jazz scenes all around the world is remarkable. They've become very self-sufficient. I have some experience with England, for example, because I lived there for two years when I was younger, so I know what jazz musicians in England are like — or at least, I thought I did. When I was living in England, the jazz musicians were always very focused on what was happening in America. When I talk to jazz musicians in England now, they're so focused on the excitement of their local scene that they don't even need to worry about what's happening in New York.

Also, the growing role of women in jazz is one of the most significant trends we're seeing. It's a dramatic change from when I was coming up, and this requires me to not only pay attention to what's happening right now with women in jazz, but to look back at the history of the music and see what the antecedents were that prepared us for this shift. I had to make changes [to that effect] at several junctures in the book.

I saw a third trend that I thought was absolutely critical: Jazz seems to be returning to a dialogue with popular culture, to a degree that I had hardly believed possible when I wrote the previous edition of the History of Jazz . Look at all the popular musicians who have embraced jazz: David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar. Everywhere you look in the popular music scene, there's this dialogue, and to me that's tremendously exciting. Some of it might seem superficial, like with these Hollywood movies about jazz. I know jazz people make fun of Whiplash and La La Land , but with the Miles Davis movie, the Chet Baker movie, the Ma Rainey movie, Soul — everywhere you look in pop culture, jazz is used as a touchstone for excellence. We, as jazz musicians and jazz people, should be proud of that.

With jazz's re-engagement with popular culture, are there any noxious narratives about the music that you see being perpetuated?

Probably the thing that irritated me most was this idea that jazz was dead. But actually, as I dig into the music day after day and week after week, I see the exact opposite. My sense is that things are changing and evolving, and that there are new artists and things happening all the time. In revising a history of jazz, I want to do justice to that. The funny thing is, as I was working on the revised edition, more and more people started seeing this. All of a sudden, the same magazine that had written an article called "Jazz Is Dead" five years ago now comes with an article saying, "Jazz Is Coming Back."

I also wanted to deal with a myth about jazz that I've heard often. There's a view that the new generation of jazz musicians are all cold and lifeless — students who have learned to play jazz in a college classroom, and because they didn't pay their dues the way the old-timers did, their music falls short in some undefinable way. I don't think that's fair. The more I looked into this, the more it became clear to me that jazz musicians are getting jobs at universities and grants, but that's not changing how they play at all. They've adapted very little to the bureaucracy and strictures of academia and institutionalization, and they deserve credit for this.

In many ways, I think classical music is loosening up because of the entry of jazz into these institutions — the rest of the music ecosystem is adapting to jazz, the same way these pop stars are adapting to jazz. Jazz is a catalyst; it's a change agent.

There was a part about that in the book that I was surprised hadn't really changed from the first edition. You addressed that concern about conservatories, and even the risks that come from trying to document a history: "The only danger, and a very real one, is that our respect for the past comes to blind us to the demands of the future ... all agendas become suspect, and even the concept of a history of the music, with the sort of stately chronological unfolding that we associate with such narratives, is not beyond debate." How do those sorts of ideas inform your approach to creating a history like this one?

As a historian of jazz, it's tempting to buy into this model of the music progressing in an eternal Hegelian motion towards progress and greater and greater things. It's an easy way to write a book on the history of music, to say, "Each generation takes what the previous generation did and pushes it two steps forward." But that narrative doesn't do justice to the real life activities of jazz musicians. Jazz music is messy; the trends are complex and often go back and forth in surprising ways. Even in the midst of writing a history of jazz, I wanted to make sure people knew that fitting this thing into a historical progression could mislead them.

It also could have a negative effect on the music. If I form a student jazz band, and I view our job as to play the masterpieces of the past, I will teach those musicians in a very different way than if I believe I am teaching them to play music of the present moment.

Wynton Marsalis, performing during Jazz At Lincoln Center's 30th Anniversary Gala on April 18, 2018 in New York. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Jazz At Lincoln hide caption

Wynton Marsalis, performing during Jazz At Lincoln Center's 30th Anniversary Gala on April 18, 2018 in New York.

That kind of begs the question of how you think the institutionalization of jazz — epitomized in some ways by how Wynton Marsalis has developed Jazz At Lincoln Center — and some of those institutions' insistence on the creation of a canon has impacted the music.

I view myself as a defender of Wynton Marsalis. He's attacked a lot, but often he's attacked for things that are beyond his control. He arrived on the scene at a moment when the jazz world wanted to dig into its history, wanted institutional support, wanted respect. He helped us do that. He deserves praise for that. On the other hand, if the only role of an institution in jazz is a historical one, turning it into a museum piece would do more harm than good. I tend to think that Wynton understands these tradeoffs, and that overall his impact is mostly positive on the art form.

The worst thing that could happen is for jazz to end up like the symphony orchestra, where you go to a concert and almost everything they play is 100 years old. I view it as part of my mission to deal with the history of the music in a way that prevents that from happening. My respect for the history must always be tempered with an understanding of how we use these songs and sounds to revitalize the music ecosystem we currently live in.

Returning to your point about the expanding role of women in jazz, as you went through your revision, was there a little bit of realizing, "Hey, maybe I missed something here"?

To some degree, I was sensitive to this issue even in the early stages of writing the book in the 1990s. But clearly, there was a need to dig deeper and to broaden what I did both for historical accuracy and also to understand the traditions and experiences that set a platform for what women are doing in the current day in jazz. To give one example, in the previous editions of the book I talk about John Coltrane but I don't talk about Alice Coltrane. In this edition, I was given the opportunity to do that. Part of the validation for this is that Alice Coltrane is having an influence now to a degree she didn't have 20 years ago. Part of it is Ted's getting wiser about how to write the history of the music, but the needs of the present day also change how we look at the past.

Is there anything that you cut?

There's very little that I cut — occasionally I would read a sentence I didn't like. It's rare for me to remove somebody from the history of the music. Mostly, I'm trying to expand my coverage rather than narrow it. That said, if the book becomes too bulky, it's no longer readable. If I ever do a fourth edition, I might set myself a rule not to expand it any longer. I don't want this to be a reference book that people just put on the shelf, I want them to be able to read it from cover to cover.

I mean, it took me a while to read it, but it was really easy to read — I was surprised by that.

The biggest challenge in writing a book of this sort is taking a complex historical situation involving thousands of musicians and recordings, and having it read smoothly like a story. My goal has always been to achieve that. Anything I can do to make the experience of jazz and music in general fun and exciting is a high priority for me. That may seem frivolous to some people, for a music historian. But to me, it should always be part of the equation.

As I get older, my attitude towards music and my vocation as a music writer has gotten stranger. I've become more mystical, more spiritual, more metaphysical. This presents a challenge to me, because I want to be a thorough, scholarly writer. I'm constantly battling with my instinctive feel that the music is magical, and needing to present this in a way that's analytical and suitable for a university press. Much of the battle in my advanced years is to rein in my own mystical tendencies and anchor myself in empirical reality. But still, anyone who reads my books will understand that for me, music is a strange and wonderful experience.

One of the most important things I did in my life was writing a book called Healing Songs , where I looked at whether music can enhance our health and well-being. I started that book with no predetermined notion of whether that was true, and the more I researched it the more I found that music is capable of doing things beyond our ability to explain them; as a music writer, that's sobering — but it needs to inform my practice.

The only time that I felt a little befuddled as I was reading was when I came to where it seemed jazz-funk and jazz-R&B fusion would fit. How do you go about determining what to include and exclude?

That's a fair criticism. Most of my books have been broad surveys. Every time, I realize that some people are going to get a whole section or chapter, some people are going to get just a paragraph, some in a sentence or part of a sentence, and some will be eliminated entirely from the narrative. I take that responsibility seriously, and work hard to do what is fair. But I can't promise that what I do is flawless, or that other people wouldn't have different priorities. When people come to me and say, "You left out such-and-such artist," I usually just nod my head, because I know more than anyone what I've left out.

Now, probably more than in 1997 when the first edition was published, it feels like the word "jazz" is increasingly fraught. As you were revising this, did you have any reservations about continuing to use it? Is it still a useful term?

I know people who dislike the word jazz because they feel it casts a negative light on the music. Frankly, I'm mystified. Even at the start, the word "jazz" was applied to the music with a positive intention. The first uses of the word jazz, more than 100 years ago, were in the context of describing something exciting, different, out of the norm, invigorating, exhilarating ... and people used it to describe the things in their life that were most transformative. It made sense to apply it to this music. I don't believe it's ever been applied negatively, and to those who want to abandon it, I caution them that it will be taken up by other people who will not respect it the way we do.

To that point, though, do you think there's a way in which the term has become so broad — even within the expansion of the music, and how it describes so many different sounds — that it becomes meaningless?

It's always hard describing things that are vibrant, alive and evolving. Something that's dead and never changes is easy to define. The fact that it's hard to define jazz and people will debate its meaning is a positive thing. The London scene has music that some might argue isn't jazz — but the fact that that argument is taking place is the healthiest thing you can imagine. Same thing in the 1940s when people were saying Charlie Parker wasn't jazz. That was great for the music. The day may come when people no longer argue about jazz and they're all in agreement; I fear that day, because it will mean that we're a fossil.

Do you feel like there's been a substantive shift in the way you look at documenting history, in your approach, since you published the first edition?

Absolutely. My process as a historian has changed dramatically since the '90s. I'm more interested now in how music changes the life of the listener than I was before. Previously, I had been fascinated with the performer. Nowadays I'm very concerned with what music is like for a listener or student or community or other stakeholders. My writing style has changed, and I'd like to think it has gotten freer and fresher. It's still going to be more of a historical survey than Ted Tellin' Tales, but my whole approach to writing about music has become livelier. Finally, my faith in music as a source of enchantment and catalyst for change in human life has grown dramatically since I did that first edition. That informs everything I do.

If I could truly understand what created something as amazing as Kind of Blue , or Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives, or made Buddy Bolden decide to start playing jazz, if I could really get to the heart of that and put it in a bottle, people would want to buy that right now. If instead I can make my history book that bottle, that would be my dream.

Natalie Weiner is a freelance writer living in Dallas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times , Washington Post , Billboard and Pitchfork .

• Miles Davis
• Alice Coltrane
• Wynton Marsalis

Origen e historia del jazz

El jazz es mucho más que un género musical; es una expresión cultural que ha influenciado y reflejado la evolución de la sociedad a lo largo del tiempo. Para entender este fenómeno musical en toda su profundidad, es necesario explorar su origen, sus raíces y su evolución histórica.

El origen del jazz se remonta a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX en los Estados Unidos, particularmente en la ciudad de Nueva Orleans. Este género musical emergió como una fusión de diferentes tradiciones musicales, incluyendo el blues, el ragtime y la música africana. En sus primeros días, el jazz era una mezcla vibrante y ecléctica de ritmos y sonidos que resonaban en los barrios de Nueva Orleans, una ciudad conocida por su diversidad cultural y su vida nocturna animada.

Indice del Artículo

Las raíces africanas del jazz

El jazz no podría entenderse sin considerar la profunda influencia de la música africana. Los esclavos africanos traídos a América llevaron consigo sus tradiciones musicales, que incluían ritmos complejos, llamados y respuestas vocales, y una fuerte conexión con la danza. Estos elementos sobrevivieron a pesar de las duras condiciones de la esclavitud y se fusionaron con las tradiciones musicales occidentales.

La música africana se caracterizaba por su ritmo sincopado y su uso extensivo de la improvisación. Estos dos componentes son esenciales en el jazz. Por ejemplo, el uso de tambores y otros instrumentos de percusión en la música africana influyó directamente en los ritmos del jazz. Además, la tradición de la improvisación permitió a los músicos de jazz desarrollar un estilo único y personal, que es uno de los sellos distintivos del género.

Para aprender más sobre la influencia africana en el jazz, puedes visitar [este artículo](https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/african-american-musicians) que detalla la historia de los músicos afroamericanos.

El blues y el ragtime como precursores del jazz

El blues y el ragtime son dos géneros musicales que jugaron un papel crucial en el desarrollo del jazz. El blues, originado en las comunidades afroamericanas del sur de los Estados Unidos, se caracteriza por su estructura de doce compases y su temática melancólica. Las canciones de blues a menudo hablaban de las dificultades y las penas de la vida, y esta emotividad se trasladó al jazz.

Por otro lado, el ragtime, que surgió en la década de 1890, es conocido por su ritmo sincopado y su alegre melodía. Compositores como Scott Joplin popularizaron el ragtime, y su influencia se puede escuchar claramente en los primeros estilos de jazz. El ragtime aportó una estructura rítmica que se convirtió en la base para la improvisación y la experimentación en el jazz.

Para profundizar en la historia del blues y su impacto en el jazz, te recomiendo [este recurso](https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-blues-and-jazz-a-musical-marriage).

Nueva Orleans: la cuna del jazz

Nueva Orleans es ampliamente reconocida como la cuna del jazz. A principios del siglo XX, esta ciudad portuaria era un crisol de culturas, con influencias francesas, españolas, africanas y caribeñas. Este entorno multicultural proporcionó el caldo de cultivo perfecto para la creación de un nuevo género musical.

Los músicos de Nueva Orleans comenzaron a mezclar elementos de blues, ragtime y música africana, y así nació el jazz. Las bandas de jazz tocaban en clubes nocturnos, bodas, funerales y desfiles, llevando su música a todos los rincones de la ciudad. La improvisación, la polirritmia y la interacción entre los músicos eran características esenciales del estilo de Nueva Orleans.

Uno de los primeros y más influyentes músicos de jazz de Nueva Orleans fue Louis Armstrong. Su virtuosismo en la trompeta y su capacidad para la improvisación lo convirtieron en una figura central en la historia del jazz. Para conocer más sobre la vida y la obra de Louis Armstrong, puedes visitar [este enlace](https://www.biography.com/musician/louis-armstrong).

La Era del Swing

La década de 1930 marcó el comienzo de la Era del Swing, una época en la que el jazz se convirtió en la música popular de los Estados Unidos. Las grandes bandas, lideradas por músicos como Duke Ellington, Count Basie y Benny Goodman, dominaban las salas de baile y las ondas de radio. El swing se caracterizaba por su ritmo bailable, sus arreglos elaborados y sus secciones de instrumentos de viento y cuerda.

El swing no solo fue una forma de entretenimiento, sino también un símbolo de esperanza y resistencia durante la Gran Depresión y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Las letras optimistas y los ritmos enérgicos proporcionaban un escape de las dificultades diarias y fomentaban un sentido de comunidad.

Para explorar más sobre la Era del Swing y sus principales figuras, puedes consultar [este artículo](https://www.pbs.org/jazz/time/time_swing.htm).

El Bebop y la Revolución del Jazz

En la década de 1940, el jazz experimentó una revolución con la llegada del bebop. Este nuevo estilo fue una reacción contra el comercialismo del swing y buscaba devolver el jazz a sus raíces de improvisación y experimentación. Músicos como Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie y Thelonious Monk fueron los pioneros del bebop, que se caracterizaba por tempos rápidos, armonías complejas y solos improvisados.

El bebop no era música de baile; era música para escuchar y apreciar. Los músicos de bebop a menudo tocaban en clubes pequeños y se dirigían a un público más intelectual y conocedor del jazz. Esta revolución no solo cambió la música, sino también la percepción del jazz como una forma de arte seria y sofisticada.

Para aprender más sobre el bebop y sus innovadores músicos, puedes visitar [este recurso](https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/birth-of-bebop/).

El Jazz Modal y el Free Jazz

En los años 50 y 60, el jazz continuó evolucionando con la introducción del jazz modal y el free jazz. El jazz modal, popularizado por músicos como Miles Davis y John Coltrane, se basaba en escalas modales en lugar de progresiones de acordes tradicionales. Este enfoque permitió una mayor libertad en la improvisación y llevó a la creación de álbumes icónicos como “Kind of Blue” de Miles Davis.

El free jazz, liderado por músicos como Ornette Coleman y John Coltrane, rechazaba las estructuras y convenciones tradicionales del jazz. Este estilo buscaba una mayor libertad de expresión y a menudo incluía improvisaciones colectivas y atonales. El free jazz fue controvertido y no siempre comprendido, pero abrió nuevas posibilidades para la creatividad musical.

Para profundizar en el jazz modal y el free jazz, puedes consultar [este artículo](https://www.allaboutjazz.com/modal-and-free-jazz).

El jazz en la actualidad

El jazz ha seguido evolucionando y diversificándose en las últimas décadas. Hoy en día, el jazz incorpora una amplia gama de estilos y influencias, desde el jazz latino y el jazz fusion hasta el nu-jazz y el jazz electrónico. Músicos contemporáneos como Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis y Esperanza Spalding continúan innovando y llevando el jazz a nuevas generaciones.

El jazz también ha tenido un impacto significativo en otros géneros musicales, incluyendo el rock, el hip-hop y la música electrónica. La improvisación y la libertad creativa que son fundamentales en el jazz han influenciado a músicos y compositores de todo el mundo.

Para explorar el jazz contemporáneo y sus artistas, te recomiendo [este recurso](https://www.jazz.org/whos-who-in-jazz/).

El jazz es una forma de arte viva y en constante evolución que sigue inspirando y conectando a personas de diferentes culturas y generaciones. Si deseas seguir aprendiendo sobre el jazz y otros temas relacionados con la música, te invito a visitar el Blog de la Academia Solfeando en [https://www.academiasolfeando.com/articulos/](https://www.academiasolfeando.com/articulos/) para obtener más contenido enriquecedor.

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Henry Cowell (1897–1965) believed that contemporary composers must learn “to live and to create” in the “whole world of music.” With this goal in mind, Cowell challenged the hegemony of the Western musical canon and explored a wide variety of "new musical resources"—the title of his well-known treatise on twentieth century compositional techniques. After studies with the German ethnomusicologist Erich von Hornbostel in Berlin while on a Guggenheim fellowship in 1931–32, he wrote and taught extensively about the “Music of the Peoples of the World.”  Cowell had close ties to Moses Asch , the founder of Folkways Records. Under Asch’s visionary leadership, Folkways sought to record and to document the entire world of sound. Its catalogue offers a wide range of World Music, including a series titled “ Music of the World’s Peoples” assembled from recordings that Cowell obtained in Berlin. Given Cowell’s influence as well as Asch’s open-minded aesthetic pluralism, it is not surprising that Folkways also has an impressive collection of experimental music.

John Cage (1912–92) used the term “experimental” to describe a specific repertory of contemporary music. “An experiment,” he said, “is an act, the outcome of which is unknown.” For some, defining a musical work as an experiment may seem puzzling or perhaps even objectionable, since it implies an emphasis upon the process of composing rather than its final result. Shouldn’t a composer have the end clearly in sight? Yet working without preconceived notions about how music should sound creates an inclusive, rather than an exclusive aesthetic attitude allowing for virtually unlimited possibilities. This openness to new sounds allowed composers to forge a unique musical identity recognized today as the experimentalist tradition.

Folkways offers several seminal recordings of music by Cage and Cowell. In 1963 it released a recording of Cowell performing a selection of his tone-cluster pieces and several pieces for the “string piano” (playing inside the piano). Originally issued on the Circle label in 1956, Piano Music includes a track in which Cowell discusses the pieces in the order in which they appear. Cowell was a formidable virtuoso; although he was near the end of his career (some of the tracks were taken from an earlier recording) the performances are as good as it gets.

The Folkways box set featuring John Cage and David Tudor titled Indeterminacy: New Aspects of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music first appeared in 1959. The recording consists of Cage reading ninety one-minute stories accompanied by Tudor performing music form Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58) on the piano, whistles, and an amplified slinky, along with tracks from tapes containing Cage’s Fontana Mix (1958). The number of words in each of the stories varied, so Cage had to read them at different speeds in order to insure a one-minute duration. The order of the stories was not planned, nor was the music coordinated with the text, save for its identical duration. In the liner notes , Cage eloquently explained that his intentions for putting these materials together in an unplanned way was “to suggest that all things, sounds, stories (and by extension beginnings) are related, and that this complexity is more evident when it is not over-simplified by an idea of relationship in one person’s mind.”

The Folkways collection includes several important recordings of music by Charles Ives , who arguably was the “father” of American Experimentalism. Two volumes of his songs released in 1965 feature tenor Ted Puffer accompanied by James Tenney and Philip Corner. Tenney, who at the time was working at Bell Labs developing the first computer music, was a staunch advocate of Ives’s music and a virtuoso pianist known for his legendary performances of the Ives “Concord Sonata.” He draws our attention to the significance of Ives’ work in the liner notes :

In the face of such an expansive and inclusive approach to music, the very word “style” begins to take on new meaning. His material was virtually the whole world of sound—all aspects of aural experience—and he worked with this broader range of materials in ways that not only anticipated but helped make possible many of the more recent extensions of the medium, such as those that have become possible in electronic music.

Folkways published an interesting collection of historical recordings of electronic music. For example, Highlights of Vortex: Electronic Experiments and Music contains tape music compositions featured at the Vortex concerts held at San Francisco's Morrison planetarium in the late 1950s. Created by Jordan Belson, a painter and filmmaker, and Henry Jacobs , a radio engineer and a composer of musique concrète, Vortex featured a light show projected up onto the planetarium's dome, accompanied by tape music disseminated spatially through more than three dozen speakers. The objective was to immerse the audience in a virtual whirlwind, a "vortex" of sound and light, a polysensorial environment, which anticipated the light shows and rock concerts during the 1960s.

Another historically noteworthy recording includes electronic music from the University of Toronto’s Electronic Music Studio (UTEMS) .  Established by Arnold Walter and Hugh Le Caine, UTEMS was among the first electronic music studios in North America. Originally trained as a physicist, Le Caine was a gifted instrument builder who invented an “electronic sackbut,” the first voltage-controlled synthesizer. The recording includes Le Caine’s “ Dripsody ”(1955), a tape piece made from a half inch of tape containing the sound a single drip of water, which he copied and spliced, and played at various speeds, creating interesting rhythmic and contrapuntal combinations.  The collection also features a piece titled “ Pinball ” (1965) by Jean Eichelberger Ivey (who founded the Peabody Electronic Music Studio in 1967) made from recordings of pinball machines. In addition to splicing and changing tape speeds, Eichenberger employs filters, reverberation, and ring modulation. The results are stunning.

Although New York City experienced a difficult economic downturn during the 1970s, there existed a vibrant experimental music scene during the same period. Folkways’ four-volume set titled New American Music: The New York Section Composers in the 1970s demonstrates the diversity of music created during that period. The first volume contains works by composer/performers active in the New York free jazz scene. Free jazz—experimental music with roots in African American culture—embraces spontaneous improvisation and focuses on exploring the unknown. Until recently, it has been largely overlooked in histories of experimental music. It is now the focus of more inclusive scholarship, such as George Lewis’s path-breaking history on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM). This Folkways recording was way ahead of its time. It features music by Mary Lou Williams, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray, Milford Graves, and Gil Evans, now acknowledged leaders in the free jazz movement.

The four-volume set also includes Lucia Dlugoszewski’s “ Angels of the Inmost Heaven ” written for two trumpets, two trombone’s, and two French horns. Dlugoszewski studied composition with Felix Salzer and Edgard Varèse and was an instrument builder, who also developed new techniques for playing inside the piano, her so-called “timbre piano.”  She had a keen sense of timbre. As Virgil Thomson observed, Dlugoszewski wrote “far-out music of great delicacy, originality, and beauty of sound.” Volume three features three political songs by Frederic Rzewski, sung by baritone David Holloway. The first song, titled “ Struggle ”, is a setting of a text from a letter written by Langston Hughes accompanied by an ensemble with Anthony Braxton (alto sax), Karol Berger (vibraphone), and members of the Musicians’ Action Collective. This group was comprised of forty New York musicians who sought to to establish connections between their music and politics through benefit concerts that supported, for example, the Attica Defense Committee and the United Farm Workers . Another track with text setting by Hughes, “ Lullaby ”, is accompanied by Karol Berger on vibraphone and Anthony Braxton on clarinet. The third song, with Rzewski as piano accompanist, uses a poem titled “ Apolitical Intellectuals ” by the Guatemalan revolutionary poet Otto Castillo who died at the age of thirty-one after he was captured and tortured for four days by the Guatemalan authorities. The fourth volume of the New American Music set includes Gordon Mumma’s “ Cybersonic Cantilevers ” (1973), a work that employs electronic circuitry designed and built by the composer for live electronic processing of acoustic sounds that are fed back into the system and modified. In “ Cybersonic Cantilevers ” audience members participate in this interactivity. As Mumma explained, “the participants are audience members, who can bring their own primary sounds (on cassettes, or live through microphones) and have access to the system at control-stations.”

Two volumes of recordings titled Gamelan in the New World by the Gamelan Son of Lion demonstrate that combining musical traditions from opposite sides of the world can result in extraordinary music. The Gamelan Son of Lion is a chamber ensemble/collective that was founded by Barbara Benary (who built the Son of Lion instruments), Philip Corner, and Daniel Goode. It's devoted to both traditional Javanese repertory and experimental music. Barbara Benary’s elegant piece titled “ Sleeping Braid ” employs a fourteen note “tone row” in counterpoint with a permutation of the row (emulating a technique used in traditional Javanese music). In Dika Newlin’s “ Machine Shop ”, the performers play gamelan instruments or other metallic instruments and are instructed to “feel like a worker in a machine shop concentrating only on the regular rhythm of your own machine. Tone quality is not important; a ‘clunky’ sound is permitted, even encouraged.” Daniel Goode’s “ 40 Random Numbered Clangs ” is based on random number sequences. Each chord (clang) in the series is elaborated by a rhythmic improvisation followed by an arpeggio.  

The recordings discussed here are only a small handful from Folkways’ wonderful collection of experimental music. As John Cage once wrote, in describing his mentor Henry Cowell, Folkways is an “open sesame for new music in America.” I enthusiastically urge readers to explore the riches of this amazing resource and to “live in the whole world of music.” It is an invaluable cultural resource worthy of the vision and aspirations of its founders.

David W. Bernstein is a professor of music at Mills College. His publications include The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde and Writings through John Cage’s Music, Poetry, and Art . His essays have appeared in numerous edited volumes, including Cage & Consequences and The Cambridge Companion to John Cage , among others. He is presently writing a book on Pauline Oliveros for the University of Illinois Press.

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Los 50 mejores pianistas de jazz de todos los tiempos

Desde directores de orquesta icónicos hasta talentos únicos, los mejores pianistas de jazz dieron forma al género y revolucionaron el papel del piano en la música.

Publicado el

En el jazz, los metales los saxofones y las trompetas–  han sido tradicionalmente los instrumentos de glamour de la música y su enfoque principal. Pero el piano ha jugado un papel importante en el desarrollo del género, tanto como un instrumento solista destacado como por su papel en la sección rítmica, y los mejores pianistas de jazz del mundo lo han elevado a un elemento crucial de cualquier conjunto de jazz.

Mientras lee, escuche nuestra lista de reproducción Jazz Piano Classics aquí .

‘El concepto está ahí’: Pete Townshend sobre la caja ‘Life House’ de The Who

El fenómeno de la música alternativa mexicana iván cornejo comparte ‘dónde estás’, fans recuerdan los días alegres de inxs en nuevo libro ‘calling all nations’.

La importancia del piano en el jazz se remonta a la época de Scott Joplin, a principios del siglo XIX, cuando el ragtime – con sus alegres ritmos de percusión –  demostró ser un elemento importante en la evolución de la música jazz.

Del piano del ragtime vino el estilo “stride” más sofisticado y virtuoso de James P Johnson y Willie “The Lion” Smith –con su locomoción, dos pasos, acompañamiento de la mano izquierda– en los años 20 y 30, que a su vez condujo a Fats Waller y finalmente culminó con Art Tatum. Sin lugar a dudas, uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz de la historia, Tatum fue un genio ciego que posiblemente creó el estilo de piano pre-bebop más densamente polifónico y sofisticado de todos, fusionando el stride con el swing.

A mediados de los años 40, la revolución del bebop, instigada por los trompetistas Charlie Parker y Dizzy Gillespie, dio como resultado una generación de artistas (encabezada por Bud Powell) que entraría en las filas de los mejores pianistas de jazz con un enfoque que trataba al instrumento como una trompeta o un saxofón, seleccionando melodías sincopadas de la mano derecha con frases estilo trompeta. Cuando llegaron los años 50, hubo otros, como Bill Evans, que fusionaron la estética del bop con una sensibilidad nutrida de la música clásica y romántica, produciendo un estilo de piano densamente armonizado, supremamente lírico y ricamente expresivo. La influencia de Evans –como la de Bud Powell antes que él– fue omnipresente y muchas futuras estrellas del piano de jazz (desde Herbie Hancock y Chick Corea a Keith Jarrett y, más recientemente, a Brad Mehldau) están en deuda con él.

El mundo del jazz ha producido una gran cantidad de maestros del piano súper talentosos en los últimos 100 años, muchos más de los que se pueden acomodar en esta lista de los 50 mejores pianistas de jazz de todos los tiempos. De hecho, reducirlo no fue una tarea fácil, pero hemos perseverado y hemos elaborado una lista de nombres que creemos que representan los más importantes “acariciadores de los marfiles” del género.

En nuestra estimación, los 50 mejores pianistas de jazz de todos los tiempos son…

50: Lennie Tristano (1919-1978) Las opiniones difieren sobre la importancia de este pianista ciego nacido en Chicago que tocó con Charlie Parker a finales de los 40 y se estableció como un músico con un sonido y un estilo únicos. Lo cierto es que Tristano fue un innovador intransigente cuya concepción poco ortodoxa de la melodía y la armonía presagiaba el nacimiento del free jazz. También experimentó con la grabación de pistas múltiples a principios de los años 5, –que la mayoría de los músicos de jazz consideraban anatema– sobre-grabando partes de piano improvisadas. Tristano también fue un destacado profesor de jazz y se afirma que su influencia afectó a Miles Davis (en Birth Of The Cool ), así como a Dave Brubeck y Gerry Mulligan.

49: Kenny Kirkland (1954-1998) Desde Brooklyn, Nueva York, Kirkland tuvo una fructífera asociación con los hermanos Marsalis, Wynton y Branford, en los años 80 y 90, apareciendo como acompañante en muchos de sus discos. Kirkland también tocó con los grandes del jazz, el trompetista Dizzy Gillespie y el baterista Elvin Jones, en los años 80, y apareció en cinco álbumes del ex líder de Police, Sting. Su propia discografía contiene solo un álbum en solitario, Kenny Kirkland de 1991, para el sello GRP, aunque es probable que, si no hubiera muerto prematuramente, a los 43 años, por insuficiencia cardíaca congestiva, Kirkland habría grabado muchos más álbumes como solista.

48: Dave Grusin (nacido en 1934) Como padre fundador de una forma accesible de música instrumental con influencias de R&B llamada smooth jazz, Grusin es raro entre los mejores pianistas de jazz por haber creado su propio sello discográfico, GRP, en 1978. Originario de Colorado, Grusin comenzó a lanzar álbumes dirigidos por el piano bajo su propio nombre a principios de los años 60, década que también le vio irrumpir en el mundo de la música de televisión, donde escribió temas para numerosos programas de televisión de Estados Unidos. Grusin se convirtió en un prolífico compositor de bandas sonoras de películas (entre ellas En la Laguna Dorada y Los Fabulosos Baker Boys ) y también ha lanzado una serie de álbumes de estudio orientados al teclado.

47: Duke Pearson (1932-1980) Nacido como Columbus Calvin Pearson en Atlanta, Georgia, la carrera de Pearson despegó cuando se mudó a la ciudad de Nueva York en 1959. Ese fue el año en que grabó su álbum debut para Blue Note, y se convirtió en uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz contratado por el icónico sello. Disfrutando de una larga asociación con Alfred Lion y el equipo de Frank Wolff, no solo grabó su propia música, sino que también trabajó como arreglista interno y hombre de A&R. Un pianista capaz y versátil, los propios discos de Pearson viraron más hacia el estilo soul jazz.

46: Elmo Hope (1923-1967) Acompañante de los destacados saxofonistas Lou Donaldson, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean y Harold Land en los años 50, el neoyorquino Hope (de nombre real St Elmo Sylvester Hope) fue un pianista de bebop con un sonido brillante, un toque dinámico y, al igual que Thelonious Monk, tenía un inclinación por la disonancia. Grabó para Blue Note, Prestige y Pacific Jazz en los años 50. Lamentablemente, su vida se vio arruinada por la adicción a las drogas, lo que aceleró su muerte prematura a la edad de 43 años.

45: Kenny Barron (nacido en 1943) Como maestro, este hábil pianista de Filadelfia puede contar con el pianista de Maynard Ferguson, Earl MacDonald, y con el reciente fichaje de Blue Note, Aaron Parks, como sus alumnos estrella. La propia carrera de Barron comenzó con temporadas como acompañante con Dizzy Gillespie y Stan Getz. Nueve veces nominado al Grammy, Barron ha estado grabando desde finales de los años 60 y sus muchos colaboradores incluyen a los pianistas Tommy Flanagan y Barry Harris. Un maestro que domina los estilos bebop y post-bop, Barron es uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz vivos en la actualidad.

44: John Lewis (1920-2001) Como uno de los miembros fundadores de The Modern Jazz Quartet, un grupo pionero que fusionó el bebop con la estética de la música clásica, Lewis fue un músico influyente cuyo brillante estilo de piano staccato estaba en deuda con Count Basie y el saxofonista Lester Young. Antes del MJQ, fue acompañante de Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie y Miles Davis. Fuera de su banda, Lewis hizo muchos álbumes bajo su propio nombre, el primero en 1955.

43: Harold Mabern (1936-2019) Originario de Memphis, Tennessee, Mabern es único entre los mejores pianistas de jazz por haber comenzado como baterista antes de pasarse al piano. Al mudarse a Chicago, y luego a Nueva York, fue considerado un músico de acompañamiento de referencia a finales de los 50 y principios de los 60 (tocando con artistas como Cannonball Adderley, Jackie McLean, Roland Kirk y Wes Montgomery) antes de comenzar su propia carrera discográfica que comenzó en Prestige Records en 1968. Un virtuoso que domina completamente los estilos de jazz bebop, modal y post-bop, Mabern todavía graba y actúa activamente hoy en día a la edad de 81 años.

42: Kenny Drew (1928-1993) Drew, nacido en la ciudad de Nueva York –quien realizó su aprendizaje musical como acompañante de Buddy DeFranco, Coleman Hawkins , Lester Young y Charlie Parker– fue un pianista y compositor de bebop muy respetado que disfrutó de una larga y fructífera asociación con el saxofonista tenor Dexter Gordon cuando ambos músicos vivieron en Dinamarca durante los años 60 y 70. Grabando su primer LP en solitario en 1953, Drew lo hizo regularmente para una variedad de sellos diferentes hasta su muerte. Murió y fue enterrado en Copenhague.

41: Jaki Byard (1922-1999) Pianista ecléctico y versátil que también tocaba el saxofón, la música de Byard, nativo de Massachusetts, se basó en todo, desde el ragtime hasta el free jazz, y también cubrió todos los estilos intermedios. Tocó con el trompetista Maynard Ferguson a finales de los años 50, pero su carrera realmente despegó cuando se mudó a la ciudad de Nueva York en los años 60. Pasó dos años con Charles Mingus, además de trabajar con Eric Dolphy y Roland Kirk. Aunque venerado por la crítica, el sonido único de Byard fue menos bien recibido por el público, pero sigue siendo uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz de la historia, no solo por su impacto en el jazz en general, sino también en relación con su papel en la evolución del propio piano.

40: Cedar Walton (1934-2013) Desde Dallas, Texas, cuando era niño, este gigante del piano del hard bop se crió con una dieta de Art Tatum, Nat “King” Cole, Bud Powell y Thelonious Monk. Aunque su música infundió el estilo propio de Walton, encontró su propia voz en el piano y, después de una temporada con Kenny Dorham, John Coltrane y The Jazztet, se unió a los Jazz Messengers de Art Blakey en 1961, grabando nueve álbumes con el grupo. La propia carrera de Walton como líder comenzó en 1967 y, en los años 70, incursionó en el jazz-funk y la fusión. Además de ser un pianista talentoso, Walton también fue un destacado compositor, contribuyendo con “Bolivia” y “Mode For Joe” al repertorio de los clásicos del jazz.

39: Barry Harris (nacido en 1929) Nacido y criado en Detroit, Harris, cuya madre tocaba el piano en la iglesia, fue uno de los primeros en empezar, tomando su instrumento elegido a la edad de cuatro años. Cuando fue mayor, se enamoró del jazz y cayó bajo el hechizo de los modernistas Bud Powell y Thelonious Monk. En los años 50, Harris trabajaba como pianista y trabajó con Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt y Gene Ammons; en los años 60 tocó con Cannonball Adderley. Estilísticamente, Harris es un discípulo acérrimo del hard bop, lo que se refleja en el fraseo parecido a los metales de sus melodías de la mano derecha, las síncopas rítmicas complejas y la armonización densa. Uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz que aún nos acompañan de la era del bebop.

38: Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) Nacida bajo el nombre de Mary Elfrieda Scruggs en Atlanta, Georgia, y criada en Pittsburgh, Williams fue una pianista autodidacta que saltó a la fama como un prodigio adolescente en los años 20. En la década de los 30, trabajó como arreglista independiente, escribiendo para Earl Hines, Benny Goodman y, más tarde, Duke Ellington. Cuando llegó el bebop, a mediados de los 40, tuvo afinidad por el nuevo estilo revolucionario y fue mentora de Thelonious Monk y Dizzy Gillespie. Williams, una música prodigiosamente talentosa, fue una figura inspiradora y allanó el camino para destacadas pianistas contemporáneas como Tania Maria, la fallecida Geri Allen, Eliane Elias y Diana Krall.

37: Bobby Timmons (1935-1974) Uno de una multitud de músicos que llegaron a través de la “Academia Hard Bop” de The Jazz Messengers, de Art Blakey, este músico de Filadelfia era hijo de un predicador y creció tocando en la iglesia. La música góspel dejó una marca indeleble en Timmons y su ADN se puede detectar en su forma de tocar y en gran parte de la música que escribió, que incluía las melodías clásicas “Moanin'”, “This Here” y “Dat Dere”, que le valieron su lugar entre los mejores pianistas de jazz por sentar las bases de lo que se conoció como soul jazz a finales de los 50 y principios de los 60. Lamentablemente, la carrera de Timmons se vio truncada a los 38 años por su alcoholismo crónico.

36: Andrew Hill (1931-2007) Proveniente de Chicago, cuando era niño, Hill ganaba poco dinero tocando el acordeón en las calles de la Ciudad de los Vientos. Trabajó principalmente como acompañante en los años 50, pero en 1963, después de mudarse a Nueva York, Hill comenzó una larga asociación con Blue Note Records que resultó en 16 álbumes. Aunque influenciado por Thelonious Monk y Art Tatum, Hill forjó su propio estilo distintivo y complejo, tanto como pianista como compositor. Su música tendía a ser cromática y angulosa, y aunque traspasaba las barreras, también permanecía enraizada en la tradición del jazz.

35: Brad Mehldau (nacido en 1970) De Jacksonville, Florida, Mehldau es sin duda uno de los pianistas más destacados del jazz contemporáneo. Aunque, en comparación con muchos de los mejores pianistas de jazz, sus influencias son amplias y variadas, desde pop, rock, folk y música clásica hasta bebop, country e incluso música electrónica, las ha destilado todas en un estilo único que está inspirado en el lirismo de Bill Evans y la fascinante improvisación virtuosa de Keith Jarrett. El trío de piano de larga data de Mehldau también ha abierto nuevos caminos continuamente con su improvisación colectiva casi telepática y su repertorio ecléctico.

34: Cecil Taylor (1929-2018) Poeta además de pianista/compositor, este neoyorquino fue un referente del movimiento de vanguardia a finales de los años 50 y principios de los 60. No apto para pusilánimes, el estilo enérgico de Taylor suele ser ferozmente atonal, empleando acordes de racimo discordantes y una complejidad densa y poli rítmica. Lanzó su LP debut en 1956 y grabó regularmente para varios sellos diferentes hasta 2009.

33: Nat “King” Cole (1919-1965) Dada su fama en los años 50 como cantante pop con un estilo sedoso, tal vez no sea sorprendente que muchos olviden que Cole, nacido en Alabama, también fue uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz de su tiempo. Comenzó a tocar música gospel en el órgano antes de ser instruido formalmente en piano, Cole fue educado en música clásica pero rápidamente se inclinó por el jazz. Fue especialmente influenciado por Earl Hines, cuyo enfoque vistoso y muy adornado fue la base del propio estilo de Cole, que se desarrolló dentro de los límites de su propio trío en los años 30 y 40. Sin embargo, a partir de 1943, fue la voz de Cole la que recibió más elogios, y su éxito como cantante eclipsó su forma de tocar el piano.

32: Sonny Clark (1931-1963) Nacido bajo el nombre de Conrad Clark, este exponente del piano de hard bop nativo de Herminie, Pensilvania, disfrutó de un breve período bajo la luz de las candilejas del jazz entre 1955 y 1961. Influenciado por Bud Powell y conocido por sus melodías con la mano derecha parecidas a las de los metales, Clark fue un músico acompañante de Dinah Washington, Sonny Rollins y Charles Mingus, y también disfrutó de un período fecundo de cinco años en Blue Note Records, donde presentó nueve álbumes, incluido el clásico manifiesto del hard bop Cool Struttin’ . Lamentablemente, Clark era un adicto a la heroína y murió, a los 31 años, de una supuesta (pero nunca comprobada) sobredosis.

31: Michel Petrucciani (1962-1999) A pesar de sufrir una enfermedad genética que atrofió su crecimiento, originó huesos quebradizos y le provocó un dolor perpetuo en el brazo, Petrucciani, nacido en Francia, desafió las probabilidades para convertirse en uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz del mundo, y se inspiró para aprender a tocar el instrumento después de ver Duke Ellington en la televisión. A los 13 ya tocaba profesionalmente y a los 18 grabó el primero de muchos LP. Aunque su enfoque lírico del piano estaba indudablemente en deuda con Bill Evans y Keith Jarrett, Petrucciani, que murió a los 36 años, tenía un sonido y un estilo propios.

30: Hank Jones (1918-2010) Jones, hermano mayor del trompetista Thad y el baterista Elvin, este pianista nacido en Mississippi y criado en Michigan fue inicialmente influenciado por Earl Hines y Fats Waller, pero luego cayó bajo el hechizo del bebop. Grabó con Ella Fitzgerald y Charlie Parker antes de embarcarse en una estelar carrera en solitario que floreció en los años 50. Contratado por su impecable gusto musical y elocuencia sonora, los innumerables créditos de Jones como acompañante iban desde Dizzy Gillespie y Dexter Gordon hasta Anita O’Day y Marilyn Monroe.

29: Scott Joplin (1868-1917) La música de este pianista de Texas quedó en gran parte olvidada hasta que su melodía, “The Entertainer”, que se utilizó en la banda sonora de la película taquillera de 1973 El Golpe , protagonizada por Robert Redford y Paul Newman, reavivó el interés por su trabajo. En su apogeo, en los primeros años del siglo XX, Joplin fue coronado como El Rey del Ragtime, un estilo de música alegre y sincopado que era una amalgama de música afroamericana y europea occidental. Aunque no existen grabaciones de Joplin, su estatus como uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz de la historia está asegurado, gracias en parte a los rollos de piano y las partituras de la época, que ilustran su estilo único, que influyó en James P Johnson.

28: Ramsey Lewis (nacido en 1935) Surgiendo en Chess Records en los años 50 al frente de un trío de piano, Lewis, nacido en Chicago, acumuló tres éxitos pop crossover para chasquear los dedos a mediados de los 60 (el más grande fue “The In Crowd” de 1965) antes de conectar su piano al contacto de la red eléctrica y seguir el camino del funk y la fusión en los años 70. Lewis, un pianista de formación clásica, fusionó el jazz con el rhythm’n’blues y la música góspel para forjar un estilo distintivo de soul jazz que generó una gran cantidad de imitadores.

27: Wynton Kelly (1931-1977) Influenciado por Teddy Wilson y Bud Powell, Kelly, nativo de Brooklyn, es mejor recordado por su asociación con Miles Davis entre 1959 y 1961 (tocó en el icónico LP Kind Of Blue de 1959). También grabó una gran cantidad de álbumes como solista, todos los cuales destacaron por sus brillantes melodías de mano derecha similares a los metales y su inclinación por el acompañamiento de acordes en bloque. Los pianistas contemporáneos que afirman haber sido influenciados por él incluyen a Chick Corea y Brad Mehldau.

26: Willie “The Lion” Smith (1897-1973) Junto con James P Johnson y Fats Waller, William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff Smith (para dar su nombre completo) fue un destacado practicante del estilo de ejecución stride. Nacido en Nueva York, saltó a la fama en los años 20 como acompañante de cantantes de blues. Su estilo propulsor y dinámico, con su deslumbrante trabajo con los dedos, ejerció una profunda influencia en el enfoque del piano tanto de Duke Ellington como de George Gershwin.

25: James P. Johnson (1894-1955) Este pianista de Nueva Jersey ayudó a tender un puente en la transición del ragtime al jazz con su técnica de piano stride, que se basó en la locomoción del ragtime, la vivacidad del vaivén, pero agregó armonías más sofisticadas y un elemento de blues más fuerte. Aunque su música está mayormente olvidada ahora, Johnson, quien también fue un destacado acompañante de las cantantes Bessie Smith y Ethel Waters, fue un pionero que se ganó su lugar entre los mejores cantantes de jazz en parte debido a su poderosa influencia sobre Fats Waller, Count Basie, y Art Tatum.

24: Bob James (nacido en 1939) Aunque James, nativo de Missouri, es ampliamente reconocido como uno de los padres fundadores del smooth jazz, irónicamente, comenzó su carrera en la vanguardia de la escena avant-garde de principios de los 60. Sin embargo, en los años 70, la estrella de James estaba en ascenso gracias a que era el arreglista interno del influyente sello CTI del productor Creed Taylor. Hizo cuatro álbumes enormemente populares e idóneos para la radio para CTI, donde se estableció como el decano de una versión más ligera y accesible del jazz-fusión. Aunque es un maestro indudable del teclado eléctrico Fender Rhodes (que dominó sus discos clásicos de los 70), en los últimos años James ha regresado al piano acústico.

23: George Shearing (1919-2011) Ciego de nacimiento, el muy honrado Shearing nacido en Londres (quien, es el único entre los mejores pianistas de jazz que fue un Sir, habiendo sido nombrado caballero en 2007) mostró aptitudes para el piano y el acordeón a una edad temprana. Se ganaba la vida a duras penas como pianista a sueldo hasta que emigró a los Estados Unidos en 1947, donde rápidamente se hizo de un nombre con su síntesis de swing, bebop y elementos extraídos de la música clásica. Pionero de los acordes en bloque, el grupo de Shearing, que incluía el sonido distintivo del vibráfono, se hizo muy popular e influyente en los años 50.

22: Joe Zawinul (1932-2007) Inspirado para dedicarse al jazz después de escuchar “Honeysuckle Rose” de Fats Waller, Zawinul, nacido en Austria, se aventuró a los Estados Unidos en 1959, donde inmediatamente dejó su huella como pianista y compositor en la banda de Cannonball Adderley. Aunque Miles Davis trató de cazarlo furtivamente (Zawinul trabajó en los innovadores álbumes In A Silent Way y Bitches Brew de Miles a finales de los años 60), el pianista se quedó con Cannonball hasta 1970 y luego cofundó los famosos pioneros de la fusión Weather Report.

21: Teddy Wilson (1912-1986) Apodado El Mozart marxista por su adhesión a las causas políticas de izquierda, Theodore Wilson, nativo de Texas, fue un pianista virtuoso que ganó prominencia en la era del swing y trabajó como músico acompañante de algunos de los nombres más importantes del jazz, desde Louis Armstrong y Benny . Goodman a Billie Holiday y Ella Fitzgerald. También realizó muchas grabaciones bajo su propio nombre, pero hoy en día se le recuerda principalmente como acompañante de Billie Holiday.

20: Horace Silver (1928-2014) Nacido en Connecticut, de ascendencia caboverdiana, Horace Silver fue un pianista arquetípico del hard bop cuyo ascenso a la fama comenzó cuando cofundó The Jazz Messengers (que luego asumió Art Blakey) en 1954. Además de un diestro pianista que disfrutó de un largo y fructífero período en Blue Note entre 1952 y 1980, Silver fue un prolífico compositor (entre sus creaciones más famosas se encuentra “Song For My Father”).

19: Red Garland (1923-1984) Para un pianista de jazz que comenzó en la vida como boxeador de peso welter, William “Red” Garland, nacido en Texas, tenía un toque decididamente delicado. Tocó como acompañante de Billy Eckstine y Charlie Parker, y estuvo en la banda del bluesista Eddie Vinson junto a un joven John Coltrane. Su camino volvería a cruzarse con el de Coltrane en los años 50, cuando ambos se unieron al quinteto de Miles Davis y realizaron varios álbumes innovadores para Prestige y Columbia (entre ellos Workin’ y ‘Round About Midnight ). A Davis le gustaba Garland por su ligereza de toque y uso del espacio al estilo de Ahmad Jamal. Otro sello distintivo del estilo singular del tejano fue su uso de acordes de bloque a dos manos.

18: Tommy Flanagan (1930-2001) Para muchos, el nombre del originario de Detroit, Thomas Lee Flanagan es sinónimo del gigante del saxofón John Coltrane. Tocó en la obra maestra totémica de 1960 de Trane, Giant Steps , y como acompañante también apareció en importantes LPs de Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Colossus) y del guitarrista Wes Montgomery ( The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery ). Al describir su enfoque del piano, Flanagan dijo una vez: “ Me gusta tocar como un trompetista, como si estuviera soplando en el piano “. Aunque era un acompañante valioso, también hizo una gran cantidad de álbumes bajo su propio nombre para una serie de sellos diferentes entre 1957 y 1997.

17: Erroll Garner (1923-1977) Con su predilección por tocar en un estilo ornamentado que comprendía acordes exuberantes, ejecuciones fluidas y síncopas complejas, este nativo de Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, fue un niño prodigio del piano que grabó por primera vez en los 40 pero floreció espectacularmente en los 50. Podría decirse que se ganaría su lugar entre los mejores pianistas de jazz únicamente por darle al mundo del jazz el clásico perennemente popular “Misty”, que compuso en 1954 y grabó muchas veces a partir de entonces. Podría decirse que el álbum más convincente que hizo fue el clásico Concert By The Sea de 1955, que captura a Garner en todo su esplendor.

16: Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) Brubeck, uno entre un puñado de artistas de jazz de élite en lograr un gran éxito pop crossover en los años 60 (“Take Five”), fue originario de California, creció en un rancho, estudió para ser veterinario, pero cambió a la música durante la universidad. Un accidente de buceo casi fatal en 1951 causó daños en los nervios de las manos de Brubeck y cambió la forma en que tocaba el piano, donde las líneas de la velocidad de los dedos fueron reemplazadas por acordes de bloques densos. Aun así, Brubeck todavía pudo tocar con imaginación y elegancia, y a menudo componía música utilizando firmas de tiempo inusuales y asimétricas.

15: Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) Dado que una vez afirmó haber inventado el jazz él solo, la modestia ciertamente no era un rasgo reconocible en el carácter de este pianista de Nueva Orleans nacido bajo el nombre de Ferdinand LeMothe – aunque merece reconocimiento entre los mejores pianistas de jazz. Como compositor y arreglista, Morton fue una figura fundamental en el desarrollo del jazz inicial – entre sus grabaciones más famosas se encuentra “Black Bottom Stomp”– y también fue un destacado pianista cuyo estilo propulsor y alegre surgió del ragtime y anticipó el desarrollo del stride.

14: Earl Hines (1903-1983) Originario de Duquesne, Pensilvania, Earl “Fatha” Hines fue una figura clave en la evolución de la interpretación del piano de jazz. Comenzó como un ejecutante de estilo stride ortodoxo, pero pronto introdujo innovaciones. En un intento por ser escuchado en un conjunto de big band, Hines comenzó a articular melodías con octavas (o lo que él llamó “notas de trompeta”), además de usar un efecto de trémolo (una alternancia rápida de dos notas). Aunque comenzó su carrera discográfica en 1923, fue capaz de adaptarse a los estilos cambiantes del jazz y siguió grabando hasta 1981. Un coloso del piano de jazz.

13: Count Basie (1904-1984) Al igual que su compañero aristócrata del jazz, Duke Ellington, la destreza de Count Basie con el piano a menudo se vio eclipsada por su papel como el exitoso líder de una banda. Originario de Red Bank, Nueva Jersey, Bill Basie saltó a la fama durante la época del swing de las grandes bandas con melodías populares como “One O’clock Jump”. Por lo general, dirigía desde el piano, adhiriéndose a una estética minimalista de menos es más y empleando octavas y acentos de percusión contundentes para que sus notas de blues atravesaran el sonido completo de la banda.

12: Fats Waller (1904-1943) El nativo de Nueva York, Thomas “Fats” Waller, no vivió para ver su cumpleaños número 40 (sucumbió a la neumonía a los 39), pero sin embargo demostró ser un pianista influyente, particularmente por su contribución a la evolución del estilo stride altamente rítmico, una importante piedra angular en el piano de jazz. Waller también fue organista y compositor cuyo repertorio incluía las melodías inmortales “Ain’t Misbehavin'” y “Honeysuckle Rose”.

11: Duke Ellington (1899-1974) A menudo se pasa por alto que Edward Kennedy Ellington, nacido en Washington, DC, era un tremendo pianista de jazz con su propio estilo inimitable. Eso se debe a que Ellington ganó mayor fama como líder de banda y compositor popular durante la era del swing de big band de los años 30. Hay algunas entradas de piano solo en la extensa discografía del aristócrata del jazz (sobre todo, quizás, The Duke Plays Ellington de 1953 ) que revelan todo el alcance de las habilidades de Ellington.

10: Ahmad Jamal (nacido en 1930) Jamal, nacido en Pittsburgh, posee un toque delicado y ágil e intuitivamente sabe cómo usar el espacio con buenos resultados. Fue esta última cualidad la que convirtió a Miles Davis en un gran admirador de su música en los años 50, intentando replicar el estilo de piano ligero de Jamal en sus grupos de esa época. Jamal grabó por primera vez para OKeh en 1951, pero fue más tarde en la misma década cuando tomó su posición entre los mejores pianistas de jazz de todos los tiempos, con el álbum en vivo de grandes ventas, At The Pershing , que llevó su música a un público más amplio. Un maestro de la atenuación musical.

9: Chick Corea (1941-2021) Al igual que Keith Jarrett, Armando “Chick” Corea, de Chelsea, Massachusetts, empezó desde una tierna edad —comenzó a tocar el piano a los cuatro años— y luego saltó a la fama como músico acompañante del gran Miles Davis (reemplazando a Herbie Hancock). Aunque influenciado por el romanticismo de Bill Evans, siempre ha habido una inflexión latina palpable en la música de Corea, que va desde el jazz estricto hasta la fusión eléctrica (lideró el gigante del jazz-rock Return To Forever en los años 70).

8: Keith Jarrett (nacido en 1945) De Allentown, Pensilvania, Jarrett comenzó a tocar el piano a la edad de dos años y rápidamente se convirtió en un niño prodigio precozmente dotado e inmerso en la música clásica. Cuando era adolescente, Jarrett fue seducido por el jazz y rápidamente aprendió a hablar su idioma con fluidez. Tocó con los Jazz Messengers de Art Blakey a mediados de los 60 antes de unirse a los grupos de Charles Lloyd y, más tarde, a Miles Davis. En la década de los 70, en ECM Records, Jarrett evitando los instrumentos eléctricos – patentó un estilo lírico y, en la misma década, lanzó un recital improvisado en solitario llamado The Köln Concert , que estableció un nuevo punto de referencia para el piano de jazz sin acompañamiento. Un intrépido improvisador cuya imaginación no conoce límites.

7: Bud Powell (1924-1966) Este músico nacido en Harlem fue el primer pianista en acercarse al piano como si fuera un instrumento de los metales. Aunque aprendió mucho del estilo stride de la mano izquierda de Art Tatum, el saxofonista alto y arquitecto del bebop Charlie Parker fue la principal inspiración de Powell. Como resultado, Powell demostró ser muy influyente, a pesar de que su carrera fue corta (murió a los 41 años, después de años de problemas de salud mental). El eslabón perdido entre Art Tatum y el bebop, su estatus como uno de los mejores pianistas de jazz de todos los tiempos está asegurado para siempre.

6: McCoy Tyner (1938-2020) De Filadelfia, Tyner saltó a la fama como miembro del innovador cuarteto de John Coltrane entre 1960 y 1965, tocando en el icónico álbum de 1965 del saxofonista, A Love Supreme . Exponente del jazz modal con pasión por el blues, la principal seña de identidad de Tyner es el uso de acordes con cuartas destacadas. A menudo también ataca el piano con fuerza bruta, aunque también puede tocar con extrema delicadeza, empleando movimientos staccato con la mano derecha. Después de Coltrane, Tyner se estableció como uno de los pianistas preeminentes del jazz contemporáneo con una serie de álbumes asombrosos para Blue Note y, más tarde, para Milestone.

5: Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) Originario de Quebec, Canadá, Peterson fue un niño prodigio de formación clásica que cayó bajo la influencia de Art Tatum y Nat “King” Cole. Hizo su primera grabación en 1945, pero fue en los años 50, después de unirse al sello Verve del empresario de jazz Norman Granz y dirigir un trío de piano, cuando se convirtió en un nombre familiar. Conocido por sus filigranas ornamentadas y su estilo contundente, Peterson era un hábil improvisador.

4: Herbie Hancock (nacido en 1940) Aunque coqueteó con el funk, incursionó en la música disco e incluso se divirtió con el electro y el hip-hop (ejemplificado por su éxito mundial de 1983, “Rockit”), en el fondo, este camaleón musical nacido en Chicago es un pianista de jazz comprometido. Aunque influenciado por Bill Evans, Hancock forjó su propio estilo en los años 60, tanto como solista, como miembro del pionero quinteto post-bop de Miles Davis. Aunque tiene casi 80 años, Hancock todavía tiene la curiosidad musical de un adolescente.

3: Bill Evans (1929-1980) Un alma atribulada, este pianista de Nueva Jersey estuvo plagado de problemas de adicción a las drogas a lo largo de su vida adulta y carrera profesional, pero eso no le impidió producir una obra notablemente hermosa y consistente. Las baladas románticas reflexivas con acordes exuberantes eran su fuerte indudable –pero Evans, que se inspiró tanto en el bebop como en la música clásica- también podía hacer swing con brío, especialmente en un escenario en vivo. (Comience con sus legendarias grabaciones en trío con Scott LaFaro y Paul Motian, como Sunday at the Village Vanguard o Waltz for Debby como evidencia de ambos). Una multitud de pianistas ha caído bajo el hechizo de Evans, incluidos Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett y, más recientemente, Brad Mehldau.

2: Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) Incomprendido por muchos, este inconformista nacido en Carolina del Norte (al que rara vez se le veía sin sombrero) es el más idiosincrático de los mejores pianistas de jazz del mundo. Surgiendo en el amanecer del bebop de mediados a finales de los 40, siguió su propio camino idiosincrásico, creando un universo musical único donde gobernaban melodías angulosas, pero tarareables, acordes disonantes y un pulso rítmico ligeramente oscilante. Como compositor, Monk contribuyó con varios clásicos al cancionero de jazz, incluidos “‘Round Midnight” y “Straight, No Chaser”, y, como tecladiata, grabó varios álbumes de piano solo, incluido el clásico Thelonious Alone In San Francisco .

1: Art Tatum (1909-1956) En el pináculo de nuestra lista de los 50 mejores pianistas de jazz de todos los tiempos está el hombre considerado como una deidad del teclado. Con discapacidad visual desde la infancia, Tatum, nacido en Ohio, aprendió a tocar el piano de oído cuando era niño y, bendecido con un tono perfecto, rápidamente se destacó en el instrumento. Patentó un estilo técnicamente avanzado y excepcionalmente florido desde una edad temprana que fusionaba elementos del stride, el swing y la música clásica. Aunque enormemente influyente (Oscar Peterson fue uno de sus principales discípulos), la vida de Tatum llegó a su fin poco después de cumplir 47 años.

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Jazz Oral Histories

Welcome .

These transcriptions and recordings of oral histories of NEA Jazz Masters are part of the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

  About the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program

Production, transcription, and Web posting was made possible through major funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters initiative. For more information visit NEA Jazz Masters . For more information on the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program Collection, use the finding aid or visit the museum's Archives Center , where the collection is housed.

Last Names A-E:   Jamey Aebersold ,  Toshiko Akiyoshi ,  Mose Allison ,  George Avakian ,  David Baker ,  Danny Barker ,  Kenny Barron ,  Louie Bellson ,  George Benson ,  Carla Bley , Dave Brubeck , Kenny Burrell , Gary Burton ,  Candido Camero ,  Benny Carter ,  Ron Carter ,  Jimmy Cobb , George Coleman ,  Chick Corea ,  Buddy DeFranco ,  Jack DeJohnette ,  Paquito D'Rivera ,  Lou Donaldson ,  Dorothy Donegan ,  Harry "Sweets" Edison

Last Names F-H:   Art Farmer ,  Frank Foster ,  Von Freeman ,  Curtis Fuller ,  Benny Golson , Lorraine Gordon ,  Jim Hall ,  Chico Hamilton ,  Slide Hampton ,  Barry Harris ,  Roy Haynes ,  Jimmy Heath ,  Percy Heath ,  Luther Henderson ,  Jon Hendricks ,  Nat Hentoff ,  Milt Hinton ,  Bill Holman , Shirley Horn ,  Bobby Hutcherson

Last Names I-M:   J.J. Johnson ,  Elvin Jones ,  Hank Jones ,  Quincy Jones ,  Sheila Jordan ,  Orrin Keepnews ,  Lee Konitz ,  Yusef Lateef ,  Hubert Laws ,  John Levy ,  Ramsey Lewis ,  Dave Liebman , Abbey Lincoln ,  Melba Liston ,  Charles Lloyd ,  Johnny Mandel ,  Branford Marsalis ,  Delfeayo Marsalis ,  Ellis Marsalis ,  Jason Marsalis ,  Tom McIntosh ,  Jackie McLean ,  Marian McPartland , James Moody ,  Dan Morgenstern

Last Names N-Y:   Jimmy Owens , Wendy Oxenhorn ,  Eddie Palmieri ,  Sonny Rollins ,  Annie Ross ,  George Russell , Gunther Schuller ,  Jimmy Scott ,  Joe Segal ,  Artie Shaw ,  Wayne Shorter ,  Dr. Billy Taylor ,  Clark Terry ,  Toots Thielemans ,  McCoy Tyner ,  Rudy Van Gelder ,  Cedar Walton ,  George Wein ,  Frank Wess ,  Randy Weston ,  Joe Wilder ,  Gerald Wilson ,  Nancy Wilson ,  Phil Woods ,  Snooky Young

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The 30 Best Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2023

This is always a difficult list to compile because the word “experimental” so often means music that is difficult to categorize. Or difficult to describe. Or just difficult. But these are some of our favorite unfamiliar, unsettling, provocative, transgressive, spaced-out, psychedelic, surreal, meditative, confrontational, and, sure, difficult albums of the year. This is just a tiny fraction of all the musique concrète, neo-classical, avant-garde, and ambient jazz music that was put out this year. And hopefully, this can be a launching pad to discover artists that didn’t quite fit on this list, or anywhere else for that matter.

Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist .

Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2023 wrap-up coverage here .

(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)

André 3000: New Blue Sun

Think of the qualities we associate with André 3000: his dynamite conviction, eagerness to channel moods around him, and that impish penchant for doodling way outside the lines. Does this not sound precisely like the guy who’d drop 87 minutes of prismatic flute improv, new-age synth washes, and ayahuasca growls? All those times you wigged out to “B.O.B.,” which Three Stacks were you lionizing exactly? No doors are closed but several windows have swung open, and the breeze—accented by floral notes of Yusef Lateef, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Laraaji, and the Leaving Records community he’s spent years trilling with—is blissful. New Blue Sun doesn’t need a single bar to get its message across: that side quests are often the most memorable part of the entire game. –Gabriel Szatan

Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Arooj Aftab / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile

Five years after they first performed an improvised set together, the wildly talented musicians Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily took to the studio for Love in Exile , an LP they recorded in long takes with only light editing. Its six pieces unfold as immersive meditations, with the artists drawing from wells of jazz, Urdu poetry, and spirituality. Aftab’s vocals gesture at themes of love and loss, while Ismaily and Iyer surround her with fluid piano and softly undulating bass. Iyer has described Love in Exile as part of a deeper personal reckoning around South Asian culture and communion, and the trio’s mind-melding chemistry serves as a beacon of unspoken connection. –Allison Hussey

Bill Orcutt: Jump on It

The freewheeling noise-rock guitarist’s first solo acoustic record in a decade finds him in spry picking shape, exploring far corners with earnest curiosity. A win for the finer side of American guitar revivalism. –Allison Hussey

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

Tonal Union

Blue Lake: Sun Arcs

It’s no surprise that Blue Lake’s Sun Arcs started at a cabin in the woods. The latest album by multi-instrumentalist Jason Dungan has the gentle, unbothered pace of a week spent in nature: stirring with the sunrise, hiking in the forest, sleeping with the night air’s chill on your face. With his custom-built 48-string zither and a small mountain of supporting instruments, Dungan uncovers an acoustic-ambient sound that feels hewn from the spruce and pine that surrounded him when he conceived it. His lively playing, inspired equally by the open-ended explorations of free jazz and the homespun intricacy of John Fahey, breathes life into these compositions like wind through branches. –Brad Sanders

International Anthem

Daniel Villarreal: Lados B

Like Bobby Hutcherson did for his 1975 chill-out fusion classic, Linger Lane , Daniel Villarreal recorded his album outside in the California breeze. Percussionist Villarreal, bassist Anna Butterss, and guitarist Jeff Parker may have been forced into the backyard, in part, due to the pandemic, but they also deliver the tight-knit feel of a combo having a little midday potluck: Brazilian funk, dub, soul, and ambient jazz are all on the table. Think of Lados B somewhere between Villarreal’s lively debut, Panamá ’77 , and Parker’s subdued Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, scented with a little more BBQ smoke and jasmine. –Jeremy D. Larson

Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

Feeding Tube

Drazek Fuscaldo: June 22

Trumpeter/guitarist Przemyslaw Krys Drazek and vocalist Brent Fuscaldo have been working in the Chicago avant-garde scene for well over a decade, both as Mako Sica and now as Drazek Fuscaldo. This set for Astral Spirits brings out Tatsu Aoki’s shamisen and Joshua Abrams’ hypnotic double bass and taps into the history of Chicago’s psychedelic past: You can hear this as an early incantatory Thrill Jockey record or a more spiritual-jazz outgrowth of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The music trickles out of the speakers but finds many grooves, electric and acoustic, elemental and ethereal. –Jeremy D. Larson

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Hausu Mountain

Dustin Wong: Perpetual Morphosis

Using his guitar, voice, and an array of electronics, Dustin Wong creates sound worlds that teem with living texture. Listening to Perpetual Morphosis is like watching stop-motion footage of a rainforest floor: notes skittering around like industrious insects in the dirt while others operate on an entirely different timescale, growing and blooming with the patience of plants. Like that rainforest, the music’s surface chaos belies deep and elegant interconnectivity—take away one element and the whole thing might collapse. –Andy Cush

W.25TH / Superior Viaduct

Ellen Arkbro: Sounds While Waiting

Ellen Arkbro builds her walls of harmonic resonance by setting up sustained chords on several organs in one room. These trembling tones feel elongated yet enclosed, stretching out like miles of brightly lit tunnel. As each harmony builds on Sounds While Waiting , you can hear textures rippling, dissolving, and reemerging along the way. –Madison Bloom

Horn of Plenty

Eyes of the Amaryllis: Perceptible to Everyone

On Perceptible to Everyone, Philadelphia’s Eyes of the Amaryllis craft hushed dispatches of warped jazz and ambient murmurs. Never boiling over, their phrases of plucked guitar, papery percussion, and whispered vocals keep at a steady but quietly discomforting simmer. Like Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing , these songs are composed of faint strokes that seem like the ghosts of a brasher canvas. –Madison Bloom

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Gia Margaret: Romantic Piano

Chicago’s Gia Margaret teased “a return to more traditional forms of songwriting” after 2020’s ambient, almost entirely instrumental Mia Gargaret . Nevertheless, on Romantic Piano , the follow-up, Margaret retains her mischievous minimalism through keyboard whimsy, post-rock abstraction, and guitar introspection, opting for lyrics and vocals only once, on “City Song.” The doors of perception aren’t that hard to wrest ajar; Margaret, who’s shifted the meaning of “traditional songwriting,” knows you just have to give them a playful nudge. –Marc Hogan

Gigi Masin / Greg Foat: Dolphin

This is only one of several albums that UK jazz pianist and Venetian electronic artist have put out this year, but Dolphin slides down all the faders in the house and brings out the smoothest in both of them. Masin’s seaside, ambient synth programming and Foat’s ’70s smoky, soul-jazz playing are in quiet but constant conversation, complicating your ill-advised decision to put this record on at a dinner party. If it’s not a too-funky organ line, then it’s too-beautiful modal piano riff—it’ll always find a way to pull focus and draw you in. –Jeremy D. Larson

Greg Foat / Art Themen: Off-Piste

Pianist-producer Greg Foat and saxophonist Art Themen hit the slopes together on their relaxed, dazzling, and loosely ski-themed album. The pair slalom breezily through their long, downtempo, ambient-jazz passages with racks of synths strapped to their back. Spacey and groovy, feels like a blast of icy morning air with the intimate coziness of hunkering down indoors on frigid days. –Allison Hussey

Irreversible Entanglements: Protect Your Light

Since forming at a protest over police brutality in 2015, Irreversible Entanglements have become reliable purveyors of righteous free-jazz fury. Protect Your Light , the East Coast quintet’s first album for the legendary Impulse! label, keeps up the thrilling virtuosity and radiates a newfound warmth. Noise, protest, and polyrhythms remain alongside declarations of love and hope. Capturing it all is drummer Tcheser Holme on “root <=> branch,” calling to mind A Love Supreme as he chants, “We can all be free.” –Marc Hogan

jaimie branch: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))

In a time when hope can feel especially hard to muster, jaimie branch’s Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (​(​world war​)​) is full of it. On her final album as a bandleader, recorded weeks before her sudden death at age 39, the fire-breathing trumpeter, composer, and vocalist blasts the colonialist mindset over rapturous grooves, sings of liberation from drudgery in lilting folk song, and dismantles the segregationist framework of genre by incorporating vernacular sounds both global and homegrown. The album brims with joy and righteous anger, and illuminates the communal ties that underpin both. –Jonathan Williger

Jake Muir: Bathhouse Blues

The Berlin-based sound artist offers a brooding, hazy dive into queer lust. Taking inspiration from furtive, hushed-breath bathhouse cruising between men, Jake Muir drenches his expressionistic mood piece in the sounds of footsteps and dripping water, undulating synths that dissipate into thin air, and tantalizing clips of dialogue lifted from vintage gay porn. It all blends into one pensive, hypnotic brew whose heady vapors linger long after it’s finished. –Eric Torres

Melody as Truth

Jonny Nash: Point of Entry

Jonny Nash, who runs the Amsterdam-based ambient label Melody as Truth, returned this year with Point of Entry , his first album in four years. Recorded at home during the early morning, this soft-focus music simmers at a low temperature: acoustic guitar paint brushstrokes beneath buoyant synths that seem dappled in sunlight. Nash’s gentle, meandering vocals lend the album an ebbing, stream-of-consciousness flow into which you can easily dip at your own meditative pace. –Eric Torres

Mexican Summer

L’Rain: I Killed Your Dog

With L’Rain, Taja Cheek collapses genres into smearing montages that are as alive and unpredictable as a fever dream. Her third album expands into spiky garage rock, lavish psych-folk, and misty dance-pop, turning toward romantic love as its primary subject. The sounds are more immediate and broadly appealing than ever, but Cheek hasn’t lost her restless ingenuity: The creature put to rest on its Auto-Tuned lullaby of a title track may be a cherished pet, or it may be the narrator herself. –Marc Hogan

Laurel Halo: Atlas

On Atlas , her fifth solo album, experimental artist Laurel Halo weaves entire tapestries from scraps of piano, cello, voice, and synth; she tugs at each composition’s loose threads, sometimes unraveling the entire piece, sometimes drawing it tighter. Atlas ’ contradictions are beguiling: It has a complex emotional core, a tender but firm existential pull that can be equally comforting and disquieting. It’s beautiful but not serene, dissonant but never harsh—gentle ambient music that discourages zoning out. –Dash Lewis

Unseen Worlds

Leo Takami: Next Door

You needn’t be a deep jazz head to appreciate Toyko guitarist Leo Takami’s Next Door . Each piece is an evocative and welcoming soundscape: You’ll hear a reverbed-out piano playing single notes in unison with an icy digital chorus on “Road with Cypress and Star,” and synth-like guitar tone on “As If Listening.” It sounds immaculate. Pay close attention to Takami’s playing and you’ll find it full of personality and invention, making him the rare musician who is as deft with melody and harmony as he is with stylish atmosphere. –Andy Cush

American Dreams

Lia Kohl: The Ceiling Reposes

Chicago-based cellist and composer Lia Kohl considers found sounds—like grainy radio transmissions and vibrant birdsong—to be unconscious collaborators. On her latest album, The Ceiling Reposes , Kohl braids these emissions with tendrils of cello, choral passages, concertina, and a wind machine to craft rippling compositions that subtly morph as they intertwine. Kohl, summoning resonant swells on her instrument, acts as a conduit between these sonic clippings, which sound familiar and alien all at once. –Madison Bloom

Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My

Lonnie Holley’s fourth album is like a cosmic mixtape, placing the septuagenarian outsider artist’s ruminations on slavery, mortality, and intergenerational Black trauma in communion with a range of stylistic diversions and high-profile guests. While Michael Stipe’s world-weary croon enriches the title track, and Malian vocalist Rokia Koné’s untethered wail lifts up “If We Get Lost They Will Find Us,” Oh Me Oh My remains centered around Holley and his story of survival in a country that has long conspired to deny his humanity. He finds cathartic liberation in speaking his truth; as he intones on the penultimate track, these reminiscences serve “to pull myself free.” –Zach Schonfeld

Warm Winters Ltd.

Martyna Basta: Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering

Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering is an ode to memory rendered with delicate acoustic phrases and Polish composer Martyna Basta’s personal field recordings. A wind-blown bit of tinfoil, the rim of a wine glass, rustling leaves, and plucked zither are treated with equal reverence because, for Basta, a mundane object, simple as an ice cube, is a portal into the bleary realm of the past. –Madison Bloom

Natural Information Society: Since Time Is Gravity

There’s a reason they’re called Natural Information Society: this long-running Chicago ensemble is less concerned with virtuosic solo showcases than communal rhythm, each voice contributing equally to the hypnotic whole. Still, like any healthy democracy, there is room for individual expression, whether it’s tenor saxophonist Ari Brown weaving long, bluesy, and contemplative melodies above the din or bandleader Joshua Abrams spinning out a new variation with practically every percolating repetition of his basslines. The pieces on Since Time Is Gravity unfold patiently over long stretches, focused on gradual rather than sudden shifts: You might start in one headspace and find yourself somewhere completely different a few minutes later, without ever noticing that anything has changed. –Andy Cush

Modern Recordings

Pat Metheny: Dream Box

Dream Box found Pat Metheny as much as the legendary jazz guitarist made the album of his own free will. He rediscovered some of his older recordings while on tour and liked them enough to compile them for the new release. The album, with its sedate and stirring compositions for electric guitar, captures the same feeling of happenstance, rich in detail and living between familiar and mysterious. –Matthew Strauss

Instant Classic

Raphael Rogiński: Talàn

In the patient hands of Raphael Rogiński, a semi-hollow electric guitar can sound both ancient and futuristic. Drawing from free jazz, freak folk, Hasidic mystical songs, and Delta blues, Talàn takes the sparse, solo guitar meditations of 2015’s exquisite Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes African Mystic Music and stretches out toward eerie new crossroads. In the long pauses between notes, you can almost hear tumbleweeds blowing across Martian soil, but Rogiński’s singular finger-picking conveys a spiritual ache that is deeply, transcendently human. –Marc Hogan

Ruth Anderson / Annea Lockwood: Tête-à-tête

Sound collagists Ruth Anderson and Annea Lockwood first met by chance in the early 1970s when Pauline Oliveros recommended Lockwood to take over Anderson’s post as the director of the electronic music studio she founded at Hunter College in New York while away on sabbatical. They forged an instant connection that grew into a lifelong bond as romantic and artistic partners; the couple composed together and apart, crafting inimitably playful, minimalist works until Anderson’s death in 2019. On Tête-à-tête , a combination of archival material and new work put together by Lockwood, their quiet alchemy comes to light: During “Conversations,” the 18-minute centerpiece, Lockwood stitches together years’ worth of recordings of Anderson’s voice chatting and laughing during phone calls with brief passages from old pop songs, capturing romantic, homespun bliss at its purest. –Eric Torres

Ryuichi Sakamoto: 12

It’s difficult not to consider Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final album through the lens of his death in April. He began recording it a couple of years ago, not long after receiving his second cancer diagnosis; he completed the last piece just two months before announcing that the disease had progressed to stage four. Yet these patient, contemplative, quietly rapturous studies for piano and synthesizer are not mournful—at least, no more than the rest of the composer’s gorgeously melancholy oeuvre, which spans more than four decades. Softly tracing repetitive figures and halting motifs that touch on jazz, Romanticism, and his own back catalog, Sakamoto uncovers moments of joy in changes that seem to move of their own volition, like leaves in the wind. He knew the piano inside and out, but was still finding chords that could surprise and delight. And though his days were numbered, he let these pieces unspool as though he had all the time in the world. –Philip Sherburne

Scree: Jasmine on a Night in July

The Brooklyn trio adds keys, organ, and woodwinds to support the weight of history as received through the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and the legacy of Arabic music in jazz. The mood is reflective and poignantly unresolved, the story never finished so long as it’s still being told. Scree tell it the way the best history books do: rich in tradition with a flair for melodrama and plenty of time to take in the scenery. –Anna Gaca

Unheard of Hope

Titanic: Vidrio

Mexico City’s Mabe Fratti turns to ornate melodic experiments in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Héctor Tosta as Titanic. Cello, piano, drums, and horns tumble and crash around one another, with Fratti’s vocals as a floating throughline. Like bits of sea glass washing up in the surf, Vidrio ’s beauty lies in its rounded edges, beguiling haziness, and off-kilter charms. –Allison Hussey

Yara Asmar: synth waltzes and accordion laments

Yara Asmar was drawn to the accordion by fate: The Lebanese multidisciplinary artist found her grandmother’s vintage Hohner Marchesa in her parents’ attic and taught herself to play it, tapping into its warmly reedy sound to accent her synth recordings. The result is the drifting synth waltzes and accordion laments , a set that transmutes the instrument’s droning tones into a sweep of introspective, breath-catching moments of beauty. –Eric Torres

Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival Collection

Memorabilia related to the University of Idaho's Jazz Festival, 1969-2021

Exploring the History of Jazz at the University of Idaho

Spencer Manning, a University of Idaho student pursuing an M.A. in Trumpet Performance, was the recipient of the University of Idaho (U of I) Library’s 2020 Berry International Jazz Fellowship. Over the course of this fellowship, Manning investigated the contents of the Lionel Hampton Papers , the Lionel Hampton Digital Collection , and the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival Collection, with the hope of learning more about the history of U of I’s jazz festival and Lionel Hampton’s role in that history. His research led him to one of the most important figures of U of I’s jazz festival, Lynn “Doc” Skinner.

Skinner agreed to participate in a series of two virtual interviews with Manning in December 2020, during which the two discussed the history of the festival, the naming of the Lionel Hampton School of Music, Lionel Hampton himself, performances by jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald, and much more. The interviews can be viewed in full in this collection , and interview highlights are provided below, accompanied by Manning’s commentary.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy learning more about this storied festival through these interviews.

Clip 1: Dizzy and His Masterclass, 1988

Clip 2: ella fitzgerald at the festival, 1982, clip 3: naming the lionel hampton school of music, 1987, clip 4: culture of the festival, clip 5: clint eastwood at the festival, 1992.

For this first clip from Interview 1 , Doc Skinner and I discussed the significance of the Masterclass given by Dizzy Gillespie at the jazz festival in 1988. This masterclass was given in the Haddock performance hall in the Lionel Hampton School of music. A few details made this clip stand out among the rest of the interview. In Doc’s response to seeing the image, he recalls the massive attendance at the masterclass. He would go on to note that the line of students to get into the hall, “went clear down to the student union building!” He also notes that students were very engaged in what Dizzy had to say and had many meaningful questions for him.

This is significant too, because in a later recollection Dizzy would get emotional with Doc describing that he had never felt, “loved” like he did by those students. Doc would go on to say that Dizzy is not an outwardly emotional person but was tearing up at the care and compassion shown by the students. It is also significant to note that for a person who suffered the negative effects of segregation and racism it was even more powerful to feel this connection from a room of students of all kinds. No matter who they were, what they looked like, or where they came from, they were moved by the love of the music. This was a powerful moment for me as the interviewer as I felt a connection through story told so vividly by Doc. Also, an amazing moment was realized when I made the connection that the room where I was conducting this interview, was the very room that this masterclass was given. What an amazing coincidence and truly impactful moment! Enjoy.

During this part of Interview 1 , Doc discusses the significance of Ella Fitzgerald’s presence at the festival. At this time, Hampton was not yet associated with the festival, however, the students’ presence and love for jazz was still very apparent. In this clip Doc discusses how Fitzgerald was moved by being at the festival, almost as if it was divine intervention. After a rousing performance she was invited to the home of the Dean to meet university officials and staff members. Her name brought a lot of attention and reputation to the festival, so her attendance was truly impactful.

Doc recalls staying at the Dean’s home until 4:00 AM as Fitzgerald wanted to give anyone the chance to visit and shake her hand. This detail speaks to the new-found commitment to the festival and its meaning. Doc recalls that she had a very high opinion of the festival and the things they were doing in Moscow, Idaho. At the end of this segment, Doc tells a story about how Fitzgerald gave him a teaching quote that would stick with him throughout the rest of his career. This quote was, “never wish for the end of a phrase.” This is referring to the feeling associated with not wanting something good to end, like the last note of a great tune. The energy and meaning we feel is something that we should all hold on to because even though all good things must come to an end, we should never wish for the end of a “phrase.”

During this portion of Interview 2 , I showed Doc the images of the ceremony of the naming of the Lionel Hampton School of Music in 1987. This was valuable for a number of reasons, the first being that this moment was impactful for the school of music here at the University of Idaho as well as for Mr. Hampton. The naming of the school happened two years after the jazz festival was named for Hampton, in 1985. In both cases, these were the first instances of a jazz festival and school of music being named after an African American jazz musician. This was very significant to Hampton as Doc recalls the emotions that flooded Hampton when he heard the school of music would be named in his honor.

Doc also recalls that there were many people in attendance at this event, which is very helpful as there are not records or images of the attendance at the ceremony. Apparently, this was an emotional and joyous occasion as many people felt as if the naming of the festival and the school provided a home for jazz music. Immediately following the ceremony Doc describes a private concert that Hampton performed for the music faculty. This performance was intimate and emotional as Hampton wanted to provide a meaningful presentation for the faculty and staff members. So much so, that Hampton had to be cut off after 45 min of playing to attend other events on campus, when he only wanted to keep playing for them. This relationship with the school of music was important to Hampton as he would keep in close contact with the university and its students in a very personal way.

Throughout the process of the interviews, it was clear that the vibe and culture of the festival was one that fostered a meaningful relationship with jazz music.

This culture was perpetuated by Doc Skinner, Hampton, staff members, and most importantly its attendees. Doc states that the students at the festival were like none that most performers had ever seen before. Students showed a respect for the music as well as those who performed it. With genuine interest and care of the tradition, artists felt welcomed and loved when they were there. This not only made them want to come back, but encouraged them to perform and share their experiences at a deeper level.

Doc speaks to the importance of the music and its effects on people throughout the interviews. Students and artists alike took to the music in a way that heightened the experience for all involved. He recalls in this clip the natural appreciation and admiration that performers and students had for each other. He would go on to say that he would like to say that he put the students up to it, but they did it naturally out of the goods of their own hearts. I think that this speaks to the importance of the culture of the festival and the lasting impacts that it would leave on all parties involved in its festivities.

This clip goes beyond just the music community by including Mr. Clint Eastwood. Going into this project I did not anticipate that he would be a part of my findings and conclusions, but as I was going through the festival archives, I found this photograph of Doc, Hampton and Eastwood on stage together.

By talking to Doc, I was able to learn more about how this moment came to be as well as how it impacted the festival that year. It was such a unique moment that it had to be include as one of the highlights of the project.

Come to find out, Eastwood and Hampton had a conversation when Hampton and his big band came through the city where Eastwood was living, Carmel-By-The-Sea. At that time, Clint Eastwood was the Mayor and his attendance at this performance was quite significant. After Hampton’s performance he had a conversation with Eastwood where he recalls hearing about Eastwood’s love for jazz, and that Eastwood himself played jazz as a pianist. Eastwood told Hampton to let him know if there was anything that he could do for him. To which, Hampton responded by inviting him to the jazz festival in Moscow, Idaho in his name. What came of this was a highly anticipated visit from Eastwood that would add to the reputation to the festival. Doc recalls Eastwood’s humble appearance at the festival and his gracious attitudes towards the attendees. I hope you enjoy.

Spencer Manning is a Master’s student at the University of Idaho Lionel Hampton School of Music, studying trumpet performance. He hopes to go on to finish a DMA in trumpet performance upon completion of his degree. With the aspiration to become a trumpet professor at the collegiate level, Spencer enjoys both performing and studying various musical styles.

JUL-AUG 2017

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The Emergence of A New Black Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Text

Over the past decade, a new wave of Black avant-garde music has been gathering momentum in New York, Philadelphia, and beyond. This wave constitutes a major new phase of the movement now commonly known as experimentalism. One of the hallmarks of this movement is the fusion of free jazz and experimental music with various forms of text, including poetry, literary works, and histories that engage deeply with African American pasts, presents, and futures. The other defining feature of this emerging wave is a direct engagement with the culture, social organizations, and politics of the era of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

At the forefront is sound experimentalist/saxophonist/composer Matana Roberts, who is the leader of a new generation of groundbreaking artists mentored by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Since 2011, she has released three chapters of a twelve-part project known as Coin Coin . Roberts describes Coin Coin as “an [exploration] of my own ancestry, alongside time periods in American history I am fascinated with.”

Coin Coin has been Roberts’s vehicle for experimenting with alternative modes of composition, while engaging with personal and historical narratives, recounting tales from her family’s past through stories, interviews, memories, histories, and myth. The name of the project and the focus of the first chapter was one of Roberts’s progenitors, Marie Therese Metoyer, known as Coincoin (1742–1816), a second-generation enslaved woman from colonial Louisiana who after gaining her freedom established herself as a prominent businesswoman and leader of a prominent Creole community, the Melrose Plantation. She bought freedom for some of her children and grandchildren. Mississippi Moonchile (2013) employs interviews that Roberts conducted with her grandmother, who grew up in an impoverished community along the Mississippi River during the Great Depression and eventually moved north to the south side of Chicago during the Great Migration. Roberts delves into blues and jazz traditions in unconventional ways, while also including an operatic tenor. Her frequent turns to Bible passages, narratives from the Civil Rights era, and quoted passages from her grandmother, altogether generate a veritable quilt of African American historical memory and consciousness. River Run Thee (2015) was largely inspired by the book Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters and on the East Coast of Africa: Narrative of Five Years' Experiences in the Suppression of the Slave Trade by G.L. Sullivan. Images and narratives from the book are interwoven with poetry written by Roberts's grandfather, all set to music.

A second artist in this wave who pairs text with avant-garde musical forms is vocalist/composer Fay Victor. A straight-ahead singer in the 1990s, Victor has since created an entire vocabulary of experimental “free song” vocal improvisations employing voice as instrument. The subject matter of Victor’s work covers a wide range, but she, too, addresses historical themes. The song “Exchange Rate” discusses the process of purchasing slaves in West Africa in the eighteenth century, told through the vivid description of an African street fair. She inquires, “I see dreadlocked folks for miles with cowrie shells / in their hair and on some / earrings and necklaces / that they wear … I wonder if all the cowrie shells I see / would have been enough to pay for me / in Dahomey / in 1723?”

Another major force is Heroes Are Gang Leaders (HAGL), co-founded by poet Thomas Sayers Ellis and saxophonist/composer James Brandon Lewis in 2014. Formed as a tribute to the late writer Amiri Baraka, the band is named after one of Baraka's stories. Shortly before Baraka's death in January 2014, the Lewis-Ellis duo opened for Baraka at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City. Ellis later noted, “Our preparation for that performance opened the doors, in us, to all the possibility and ways to speak and have Baraka's whole branch of the tradition speak through us.” While sitting through Baraka's funeral service, Ellis had the inspiration to form HAGL. He wrote, “I heard community and tension and traffics of living sound and struggle and loss, invention, the whole Black treasure chest in Amiri. I just didn't want to ruin it, this rare Thank You, with single-mindedness or selfishness. Amiri Baraka left us with an orchestra of us. All HAGL recordings and performances open to continue that.”

HAGL’s earliest record, The Amiri Baraka Sessions , remains unreleased. One of the goals of The Amiri Baraka Sessions was “to resurrect the matrimony of Black Literary Art and Music as medicine, battle cry, dirge, and the struggle for pleasure.” In July 2015, the band recorded The Avant-Age Garde I Ams of the Gal Luxury at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics as a tribute to beat poet Bob Kaufman. In February 2016, the band released Highest Engines Near/Near Higher Engineers , paying homage to Gwendolyn Brooks. In October 2016, the group released Flukum , honoring Etheridge Knight, Ntozake Shange, James Baldwin, and Michael S. Harper, and as Ellis noted, “Each track is an original explorative power object of sound, sense, and syncretism driving through the red traffic lights at the intersection of where poetry and jazz used to meet.” HAGL’s trumpet player, Philadelphia-based Heru Shabaka-ra, has explored the union of music and language in another way. Since 2014, he has held one of the trumpet chairs in the Sun Ra Arkestra, in which he regards Marshall Allen as the high priest of the Sun Ra spiritual tradition. Stemming from university studies in African and African American literature, he asks, “How is meaning inscribed in words and how has language served as the foundation of culture?” From his study of linguistics, he has developed a sophisticated poetic practice, using a type of proto-language. While one might identify it as a form of scatting, Shabaka-ra thinks of it rather as a form of communication derived from the roots of human language, employing the derivations or root syllables of words to get at a common language that existed prior to its splintering into distinct modern languages. He recites these poetic renderings in proto-language, intermixed with lines from the writings of Sun Ra in English, while performing with HAGL or with his own band, Sirius JuJu.

Another Philadelphia-based artist to have a major impact is Moor Mother, whose debut record, Fetish Bones , released in September, has received critical acclaim. In an interview I conducted with her, she stated, “Free jazz to me is the beginning and its expansion. It is the chants on top of foot stomps and hand claps. It is the scripture over top of the choir.  Free jazz is what’s needed to travel. It is the sound of protest, of peace and of sorrow all at the same time. You cannot go to war without a drum, you cannot time travel or seek outer and inner dimensions without free jazz. Alice Coltrane music is a liberation technology, Sun Ra music is a liberation technology. That’s why I love Amiri Baraka so much. He put jazz into the poetry because if you need to go to a certain place that is the only way. I use a lot of free jazz in my music because it just expands what I am saying and takes it to a deeper level.”

Moor Mother is a scholar and practitioner of Black Quantum Futurism (BQF), which she describes as “a new approach to living and experiencing reality by way of the manipulation of space-time in order to see into possible futures, and/or collapse space-time into a desired future in order to bring about that future’s reality. This vision and practice derives its facets, tenets, and qualities from quantum physics, futurist traditions, and Black/African cultural traditions of consciousness, time, and space. Under a BQF intersectional time orientation, the past and future are not cut off from the present—both dimensions have influence over the whole of our lives, who we are and who we become at any particular point in space-time.” Moor Mother’s piece, “Creation Myth,” is a time-traveling foray through a series of race riots from 1866 to the present told from a first-person perspective through which she is bloodied, loses her limbs, and barely survives to arrive in Ferguson, Missouri, while recounting many of the fallen who did not survive. The lyrics are a call to witness, but also a call to action, and one that demands dignity for Black bodies.

Moor Mother’s work is informed by her street-based photographic practice for which she focuses on neighborhoods that are being demolished. Her work brings to life people often living in challenging circumstances like the Washington Park neighborhood of Aberdeen, Maryland where she grew up. She declared, “Just speaking my truth makes it political because of the systematic oppression that is happening in this country. Even if I am not trying to be political, my story just is political.” Throughout her work, Moor Mother crafts lyrics that speak of class war, resistance to violence, and day-to-day oppression. Much of her music feels suppressed, like a weight is placed on the sounds themselves and she is pushing upwards and outwards against it.

Different forms of meaning—experimental language and sound, the blending of history and myth, the poetic tradition reimagined, and the past-present-future continuum—are all defining features of the new Black avant-garde crafted by some of the most talented artists currently working in these volatile times.

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• Jazz Fusion
• Rap/Hip-Hop

Jazz Hip-Hop Fusion

Rapper Black Thought of The Roots, 1999

Key Attributes of Jazz Hip-Hop Fusion

• Love/Relationships
• Economics/Poverty
• Social Consciousness

Musical Features

• Improvisation
• Electronic Sounds
• Polyrhythms
• Instrumentals

Instruments

• Other Percussion

“I was born in ’87, I love hip-hop. I’m a jazz baby as well; I was exposed to this music at a very young age. To me, it’s the same music—it’s coming from the same tree—and they’re extensions of one another.” Marquis Hill

Jazz hip-hop fusion is a fusion of hip-hop beats, samples, scratching, and rap lyrics blended with the techniques of jazz improvisation. It became popular in the 1990s and continues to evolve in the 21st century with the innovations of a new generation of jazz and hip-hop musicians.

Context and History

Origins and Early Collaborations

In London’s club scene in the 1960s and 1970s, DJs began mixing rare jazz tracks, largely from the Blue Note catalogue, with psychedelic styles, funk, and other popular genres along with percussion tracks to produce a groove (a syncopated and repetitive foundation established by the bass and drum) labeled “acid jazz.” In the 1980s, club DJs began adding elements of hip-hop to the mix and emphasizing the rhythmic component by incorporating live musicians—drummers, percussionists, and horn players—who played over pre-recorded music to create a new type of danceable jazz. Simultaneously, in the US, hip-hop DJs teamed up with jazz artists to produce a jazz–funk–hip-hop fusion style. Working with DJ Grand Mixer D.ST, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, for example, experimented with the art of scratching on the hit “Rockit” (1983).

The fusion of jazz and hip-hop evolved into a distinctive style when rappers began sampling jazz melodies and rhythms from recordings of Dizzy Gillespie, Lonnie Liston Smith, Donald Byrd, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, and Roy Ayers, among others, and later collaborating with jazz musicians. Stetsasonic’s “Talkin’ All That Jazz” from In Full Gear (1988) samples jazz breaks from Lonnie Liston Smith’s “Expansions” and Donald Byrd’s “(Fallin’ Like) Dominoes.”

Gang Starr was the first rap group to work directly with jazz musicians, recording “Jazz Thing” with Branford Marsalis for Spike Lee’s movie Mo’ Better Blues (1990)—a song derived from Gang Starr’s “Jazz Music” (1989). Most jazz musicians, nevertheless, did not recognize the potential of rap for musical experimentation until after 1990.

Saxophonist Greg Osby was the first to collaborate with rappers, resulting in a musical hybrid he called “Street Jazz.” Working with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest and Eric Sadler of Public Enemy, Osby demonstrated the compatibility of the two idioms in 3-D Lifestyles (1993), which fuses rap rhymes, hip-hop rhythms, scratching, R&B samples, and multilayered textures with the improvisations and vocabulary of jazz. The commercial success of Osby’s productions resulted in similar collaborations between jazz musicians and rap, R&B, and pop music artists.

Hip-Hop’s Influence on Established Jazz Musicians

In 1992, jazz musician Roy Ayers recorded Double Trouble , which featured funk vocalist Rick James and raps by Ayers. That same year, Miles Davis, guided by rap producer Easy Mo Bee, recorded Doo-Bop , which was released posthumously. “The Doo Bop Song,” a standout on this recording, includes samples from “Summer Madness” by the funk group Kool and the Gang. Rapper Guru, of Gang Starr, produced a session in 1993 with jazz musicians Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, Ronny Jordan, Courtney Pine, Lonnie Liston Smith, Gary Barnacle, Zachary Breaux, Simon Law, Carleen Anderson, and N’Dea Davenport. The outcome was the album Jazzmatazz , an experimental fusion of hip-hop and jazz. Digable Planets recorded Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) that same year. In 1994, Branford Marsalis recorded Buckshot LeFonque , an eclectic album that drew from and combined various popular styles with jazz. The track “The Scratch Opera” employs many production techniques and elements from rap, such as sampling, scratching, rapping, and poly-texturing.

Jazz and Hip-Hop Intertwine

In the early 1990s, hip-hop artists primarily rapped over looped samples of a jazz melody. By the late 1990s, however, jazz musicians explored new ways to intertwine the languages of jazz and hip-hop. Trumpeter Russell Gunn, for example, on his 1999 album Ethnomusicology , incorporated live instrumentation, improvisation, DJs scratching, and MCs rapping. Key tracks on the album include “The Blackwidow Blues” and “Shiva.” At around the same time, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove began working with the Soulquarians, a loose collective of neo-soul and hip-hop artists that also included Erykah Badu, Common, Questlove, and D’Angelo. Hargrove appeared on influential neo-soul and hip-hop albums including Common’s Like Water for Chocolate , Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun , and D’Angelo’s Voodoo . Hargrove began incorporating elements of hip-hop and neo-soul into his own music, leading him to form his hip-hip–soul–jazz fusion group The RH Factor in the early 2000s. Hargrove’s work with The RH Factor, in particular, would eventually help to define the trajectory of jazz–hip-hop fusion in the early 21st century.

The RH Factor released its first album, Hard Groove , in 2003. The band’s recording debut features guest appearances from Hargrove’s fellow Soulquarians Erykah Badu, Common, and D’Angelo. Key tracks on Hard Groove include “Common Freestyle,” which features rapping by Common backed by members of The RH Factor, and “Poetry,” which features Erykah Badu and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest. Hargrove would record another pair of albums with The RH Factor, including 2004’s Strength and 2005’s Distractions . The RH Factor’s innovative fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and contemporary R&B made a major impact on young musicians—most notably Robert Glasper and the members of Snarky Puppy—who were fluent in jazz improvisation but maintained strong connections to other styles of African American music including hip-hop, soul, and contemporary gospel.

Together with Hargrove, the other major influence on the development of jazz–hip-hop fusion in the early 2000s was alternative hip-hop producer James “J Dilla” Yancey. J Dilla, like Hargrove, was a member of the Soulquarians collective. His distinctive production style is marked by his intricate layering of very short samples—often drawn from classic jazz recordings—and his use of hand-played drumbeats. Instead of utilizing a process called quantization, which automatically subdivides beats into a standardized loop, Dilla often used a drum machine to perform his beats by hand. This process gave his beats a loose and flexible feeling that captured the attention of drummers in both hip-hop and jazz. The Dilla-produced Slum Village album Fantastic, Vol. 2 provides many good examples of his style. On the track “Get Dis Money,” for instance, Dilla combines a Herbie Hancock sample with his trademark drumbeats. Dilla’s production style was a key influence on D’Angelo’s classic album Voodoo , and his work eventually became foundational to jazz hip-hop fusion artists including Steven “Flying Lotus” Ellison and Robert Glasper.

Jazz Hip-Hop Fusion in the 2010s

After the important contributions of Hargrove and Dilla, the next decade and a half would see a wave of important jazz hip-hop fusion recordings as the language of hip-hop became increasingly embedded in the work of young jazz musicians. Pianist Robert Glasper was among the most influential of the next generation. He had toured with The RH Factor and spent time observing J Dilla influences on Glasper’s own work. Glasper’s key contribution was adapting the distinctive beats and loops of hip-hop production to the instrumentation of the jazz piano trio. For example, a key track on his 2007 album In My Element is “J Dillalude,” which features Glasper’s arrangement of a string of J Dilla beats for his piano trio. Glasper continued down this path with the formation of the Robert Glasper Experiment, whose 2012 jazz hip-hop fusion album Black Radio won a Grammy for Best R&B Album and featured guest appearances from Mos Def and Lupe Fiasco.

The 2010s brought other celebrated jazz hip-hop fusion projects from an array of musicians. Drummer Karriem Riggins, who had spent the 1990s and early 2000s as a sideman for artists ranging from Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown to Common and J Dilla, released Alone Together , his first solo album, in 2012. Riggins had worked closely with Dilla before the latter’s death, and Alone Together is an album of short, impressionistic sketches that is heavily inspired by Dilla’s album Donuts . Like Dilla, Riggins mixes eclectic samples with live instrumentation. Key tracks on Alone Together include “Water” and “K. Riffins,” both of which feature Riggins’s drumming layered with jazz-inflected samples.

Chicago-based jazz trumpeter Marquis Hill, who won the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Trumpet competition in 2014, recalled Robert Glasper in his simultaneous grasp of post-bop jazz improvisation and alternative hip-hop. On recordings with his Blacktet, in particular 2014’s Modern Flows EP, Vol. 1 and 2018’s Modern Flows Vol. 2 , Hill blends straight-ahead jazz playing with rap and spoken word passages. The track “King Legend” on Modern Flows Vol. 1 , for example, combines ensemble accompaniment from the Blacktet with a rap verse from MC King Legend. Modern Flows Vol. II features another guest appearance from King Legend on “Legend’s Outro III,” along with spoken word contributions from M’Reld Green on “Prayer for the People” and “Herstory.”

The development of jazz hip-hop fusion demonstrates that jazz musicians have retained a strong commitment to traditional styles, even while forging new musical trends. The recordings of these artists place elements of the jazz tradition in dialogue with newer techniques drawn from hip-hop producers and MCs.

Musical Features/Performance Style

Jazz hip-hop fusion is distinguished from other jazz styles by its fusion of hip-hop beats, samples, scratching, and rap lyrics blended with the techniques of jazz improvisation. Most early experimentation with hip-hop merely layered freestyle rapping over a live jazz instrumental track that incorporated scratching (Guru’s Jazzmatazz, 1993). As the genre evolved, jazz artists drew from a broader pool of aesthetic possibilities, weaving together disparate elements into the fabric of the jazz track, rather than simply layering them. For example, hip-hop’s “hardcore” aesthetic is embedded in Greg Osby’s tracks of “Mr. Gutterman” and “Street Jazz” from his 3-D Lifestyle (1993). The sound is aggressive, polytextured, polyrhythmic, and polysonic. It samples sound effects associated with this aesthetic, including excerpts from political speeches, sirens, gunshots, babies crying, screams, and street noises—all of which capture the ethos, chaos, tension, anger, and despair common in inner-city life. Jazz hip-hop fusion artists of the 2000s and 2010s, like Robert Glasper, found new ways to adapt the musical language of hip-hop production to traditional jazz ensemble instrumentation. For example, Glasper’s track “Dillalude #2” from his album Black Radio Recovered incorporates techniques including sampling, quotation, and looping to transform a series of J Dilla beats into a seamless instrumental suite for the Robert Glasper Experiment. The work of 21st-century jazz hip-hop fusion artists sometimes evokes the jazz-influenced spoken word style of artists like Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets. Lupe Fiasco, for example, dedicates his spoken word outro on Glasper’s recording of “Always Shine” (from Black Radio ) to “my hero Heron, Gil Scott.” M’Reld Green’s spoken-word critique of gentrification on “Prayer for the People” (from Marquis Hill’s Modern Flows Vol. 2 ) recalls the overtly political spoken word recordings of the 1960s and 1970s.

The lyrics associated with jazz hip-hop fusion run the gamut. They range from themes of romance, life experiences, and world events to social commentary on the historical past, conditions of poverty, and other issues that negatively impacted the lives of African Americans.

Bibliography

• Chinen, Nate. Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century. New York: Pantheon Books, 2018.
• Szatmary, David P. Jazz: Race and Social Change (1870-2019). New York: Oxford University Press. 2020.
• Williams, Justin A. “The Construction of Jazz Rap as High Art in Hip-hop Music” in Journal of Musicology, Vol.27. No. 4 (Fall 2010), 435-459.