Born in the heart of New Orleans, it is lead to believe that jazz is both a popular music style and serious art form. This is proven to be correct through its development in the 19th and early 20th century, being heavily influenced through ragtime, marching bands, blues and African American spirituals. Throughout history, jazz has created serious use of improvisation, individuality and complexity that has shaped and aspired artists of today’s music. Before 1920, ragtime was seen to be a popular music style consisting of syncopated melodies and steady beats that had high contribution in creating a style of jazz. Primarily developed by African American Pianists who traveled throughout the south playing in saloons, dance halls and brothels, Ragtime flooded throughout America the music publishing industry, a music interest for whites and blacks.
Founded in New Orleands in the early 1900's was the greatest platform for success. New Orleans was a heaven beacuse there were various coultures in a confind musical city. When Jazz became trendy everyone wanted it play, letting people from all walks of life add thier personal flare to it. That is the beauty of Jazz, though there are guidlines to what makes Jazz music there are also infanite amount of possiblities to create something unique. One of Jazz's greatest weapons for success is improvization.
History of Jazz Music Jazz music, one of the most popular genres there is today in American culture. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines jazz as a type of music with lively rhythms and melodies that is often made up by musicians as they play. American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre. Although the jazz has been defined in the dictionary there is no common definition of this music has been reached according to musicians. Jazz music consists of several layers and the process is very difficult with composing and performing joined together.
Hip hop originated when New York DJ’s began isolating the percussion breaks on funk and rock records. Pioneering DJ’s such as Grand Master Flash, Africa Bambataa, DJ Jazzy J started scratching jazz and jazz funk records creating a new sound with immense energy. DJ’s and hip hop producers have always gravitated to jazz records for their richness and flexibility due majorly to jazz’s instrumental based structure. This makes a song ideal for sampling. In its early days
Our main goal and focus is to trace the development of Afro American musical styles and learn about their pioneers. * * * I. SACRED TRADITIONS: The earliest genre from the sacred tradition era is Folk Spiritual Music from the 1800's (earliest form of African American religious music), one of the most exhilarating, expressive and inspiring forms of African American music. Folk Spiritual is mainly a religious form of music. It is improvised spontaneously and created by individuals or groups often
However, under the guidance and the Buena Vista Club album project of Juan de Marcos Gonzalez and Ry Coder, these veteran Cuban musicians were able to bring their music to the world and have it remembered by many people. The Buena Vista Social Club film also contributed to the spread of the Afro-Cuban music from these veteran musicians by giving a brief history of the musicians and showing their performances. The focus of this paper will be on one of the performances shown in the film, the song “Chan Chan” to be specific. “Chan Chan” is the first song to be performed in the film (5:10-9:04) after the film’s introduction. This song is performed in Le Carre, Amsterdam on the eleventh and twelfth of April of 1998.
The apparent simplicity of blues music has been played with in a great number of ways along the years. If in the late 1800s, the poor African- Americans used a guitar, a harmonica and a powerful sad voice, things evolved with the adding of blowing instruments, drums and basses at the beginning of the 1900s. Blues music’s evolution was organic, it mend itself naturally to the fashion of the times to become the music that, when listened to, one immediately associates it with America, with all of its history, hardships and diversity of people and feelings. Blues music was born in the South, specifically in the Mississippi Delta, and migrated along with the poor African-Americans to the cultural and cosmopolitan city of New Orleans, Louisiana. These men were seeking for jobs on the docks of the city, trying to escape a very segregated environment where they were still being treated as slaves.
It also had deeper roots in a style of music called “Blues,” which was used to express the daily experiences of the community (History). Other influences include the combination of West African folk music with the popular classical music of Europe, developing into syncopated rhythms and chord variations on classical pieces (Passion). Jazz started when World War I had just ended and a social revolution was on it's way. Customs and values of previous were rejected. Life was to be lived to the fullest.
Becoming a Jazz Singer There are countless different aspects that should be thoroughly examined when reviewing assets that are essential to becoming a successful jazz singer. To be clear, a jazz singer is a vocalist who brings his or her own interpretation to a song and improvises through sounds, notes, words and/or phrasing. A jazz singer has spontaneous elements as well as solid technique, and an excellent example of always singing how you feel. Through technique, great influences, and practice, we will explore different ways of becoming a flourishing jazz vocalist. Jazz technique is something that can be interpreted differently to each individual, but generally the following are summarized methods that can greatly influence overall exceptional execution.
The Swing Bands The music industry has redefined itself over the years to accommodate the ongoing changes in American culture. During the thirties and forties band music began to transcend toward a younger generation (Starr, Waterman, 2010, p. 118). The most popular bands that erupted airways and venues during this time were swing bands (Starr, waterman, 2010, p. 119). In retrospect, swing bands followed the same chord patterns of Tin Pan Alley’s blues compositions that was common in the early twenties and thirties (Starr, Waterman, 2010, p. 131) In addition, both styles of music were formed from African-American culture (Starr, Waterman, 2010). Moreover, each band also used specific techniques in their music to gain attention from a variety of ethnic groups and often promoted dancing during the band’s performances (Starr, Waterman, 2010).