Everything Jazz

I love jazz. I do love everything about jazz. Listening to it, reading about it, hearing people talk about it, every pictures of it, and mostly talking with someone about jazz. Every little thing that I do I would really love it when jazz would be the main source of it.

Latin jazz has two main varieties: Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz. Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the U.S. directly after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s. Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-1950s as bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, and Arturo Sandoval. Brazilian jazz such as bossa nova is derived from samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English.

Free jazz uses implied or loose harmony and tempo, which was considered controversial when this approach was first developed. The bassist Charles Mingus is also frequently associated with the avant-garde in jazz, although his compositions draw off a myriad of styles and genres. The first major stirrings came in the 1950s, with the early work of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, performers included John Coltrane, Archie Shepp , Sun Ra , Albert Ayler , Pharoah Sanders , and others. Free jazz quickly found a foothold in Europe, also in part because musicians such as Ayler, Taylor, Steve Lacy and Eric Dolphy spent extended periods in Europe.

In jazz, the skilled performer will interpret a tune in very individual ways, never playing the same composition exactly the same way twice. Depending upon the performer’s mood and personal experience, interactions with fellow musicians, or even members of the audience, a jazz musician/performer may alter melodies, harmonies or time signature at will. European classical music has been said to be a composer’s medium. Jazz, however, is often characterized or described as the product of freethinking creativity, interaction and collaboration, placing equal value on the contributions of composer and performer, skillfully weighing the respective claims of the composer and the improviser.

While jazz may be difficult to define, improvisation is clearly one of its key elements. Early blues was commonly structured and designed around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, a common element in the African American oral tradition. A form of folk music which had emerged in part from work songs and field hollers of rural Blacks, early blues was also highly improvisational. These features are fundamental to the nature of jazz. While in European classical music elements of interpretation, ornamentation and accompaniment are usually remained to the performer’s discretion, the performer’s primary goal is to play a composition as it was written.

In the early 1980s, a less than heavy commercial kind of jazz fusion called pop fusion or “smooth jazz” became successful and garnered significant radio airplay, with smooth jazz saxophonists such as Grover Washington, Jr. and Najee. Smooth jazz received lots of airplay across the U.S., helping to push the careers of jazz vocalists. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of subgenres combined jazz with mainstream music, such as Acid jazz, nu jazz, and jazz rap. Acid jazz and nu jazz combined elements of jazz and modern forms of electronic dance music.

Jazz as a musical style, differs because it could be sounded as folk but not folk, blues but not blues. Actually, Jazz may be resembled in RnB or known as rhythm and blues, but it only differs by what musical instrument is played. Besides, it is different because of the combination of American music and African music.

Today Jazz is being mixed with other genres like rock, Latin music, and this so-called hard bop and bebop style and others and this is called the Jazz fusion. Today, because of the evolution of the technology, Jazz uses some distorted sounds by electric guitars.

Jazz poetry is a poetry wherein it expresses a jazzy rhythm and style. Some of the jazz poets are Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot, but then they’ve given up during early 1920’s. Come 1990, there were also new jazz artists who showed a very great talent in Jazz. Some of these are Aldo Romano and Andrew Hill who have received a Jazzpar prize.

If there’s a national museum, there is also an exclusive museum for Jazz. It is the American Jazz Museum located in USA. There, they exhibit histories not only Jazz but also American Music.

There is also an association exclusive for Jazz – International Association for Jazz Education. This is a non-profit institute for those talented individuals regarding Jazz. How great isn’t it?

Back during the army days in World War II, big bands were the ‘in’ thing in jazz, and toured all over American bases during the war, entertaining soldiers there.

A particular name that was famous during this time was Glenn Miller, who, during 1939 to 1942, was one of the best-selling swing jazz recording artists along with his band, the Glenn Miller Band. Oldies may remember the bands hits like “In the Mood”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, “Tuxedo Junction”, “Little Brown Jug”, and “Pennsylvania 6-5000″.

It is unfortunate though, that a tragedy befell Miller when he was on his way from the United Kingdom to Paris to perform for the troops that had liberated the city in 1944. He boarded a a single-engined UC-64 Norseman plane with the USAAF serial number 44-70285, on December 15, 1944, and was never seen again, along with the plane. The mystery remains unloved to this day.

The place has changed a lot in the recent years, with many of the notable bars and clubs closing shop, it’s hard to imagine the place without jazz that has been so part of the area’s history and development. Many areas where the true roots of jazz used to be found are now sprawling city blocks with hotels and other modern buildings that have all but erased the long and historic culture that gave way to jazz. Natural disasters and other issues such as the recession are weighing heavy on the music that has so developed into something of a legend with its soothing tunes and primal effect is soothing even the most tired soul.
The question now is if the spirit of jazz will once again return to its birthplace, long since abandoned by the many artists who used to grace the land, with their music, talent and pure genius.

They have proliferated the globe in the musical style that is jazz and many a famous artists have grown into their own, all made possible by the backyard bars and lounges that once housed the legends of Jazz. There may never be a true revival of the music in a place where rock, alternative and other styles have flourished all thanks to the innovations of jazz. Seems jazz survives only in the hearts and souls of those who favor the style over the many derivatives that have surfaced, like a child overtaking its parents in success and recognition.