Following my recent interest, recordings and mixing of jazz. I've decided to take a deeper look into the genre to see what I can learn about it's history, development and its' genre influences!
Jazz is typically dynamic, consists largely of improvisation and can be a deeply personal form of expression. Today it's largely associated with piano, drums, upright bass and wind instruments such as the saxophone and trumpet. However it's instrumentation is also often more diverse, sometimes including trombone, flute, clarinet, even amplified guitar and strings such as violin. That being said this music genre ofcourse can be played by any instrument around the world, but for it to be jazz, it needs improvisation, and a rhythmic style called syncopation - where rhythmic emphasis is placed on beats that it's not normally found.
Check out the video below for some more on syncopation!
Jazz is about making something familiar- a familiar song - into something fresh. And about making something shared -a tune that everyone knows - into something personal. (americanhistory.si.edu)
History:
Although it wasn't called jazz at the time, jazz has it's origins in the late 18th century, near and in New Orleans, America.
The deepest root jazz has - as explained by Billie Taylor in this video, was before slavery was abolished in 1865, when African slaves were brought to America, bringing their musical culture with them (at least in their heads). Often forbad musical instruments and forced to do back-breaking labour, music became a means of survival for them, they created a vocal music called 'spirituals' as a means of communication and relief.
Billie Taylor said that this music contained all of the basic characteristics of jazz, and was but a short step from the first authentic form of jazz - Ragtime. Austin Pegouske in his short documentary explains that the syncopation present in spirituals stems from African musical culture before many African people were taken as slaves to America.
Ragtime and Blues:
Ragtime -
To paraphrase loc.gov, Originally this genre was a musical composition for the piano, normally written in duple meter, involving a greatly syncopated treble lead and a rhythmically solid bass. These compositions are often composed of three or four contrasting segments or sections of 16 or 32 measures.
Ragtime enjoyed it's popularity between 1895 and 1917 and because of the time often made it's way around via sheet music instead of recordings (unlike jazz). After 1917, jazz captured the publics imagination and absolutely took great influence from the syncopation of ragtime.
Blues -
Thelonious Monk's Institute of Jazz has a paper on 'The Influence of the Blues on Jazz', which states that Jazz and blues have plenty in common, ofcourse their origins in the african-american communities I mentioned earlier in the US, to their collective spread using the developing practices of recording and radio.
The paper also claims that "the twelve-bar blues chorus, with its familiar harmonic structure and narrative form, was the single most popular template for early jazz improvisation"
Blues is characterised by call and response interactions, blues style chord progressions and ofcourse the twelve bar blues. Worried notes or blues notes are a very important part of this genre, they are thirds or fifths flattened in pitch. The term blues itself refers to the melancholy and sadness that is also the expression in the spirituals that influenced the blues so greatly.
Conclusion:
Ragtime and Blues are very different genres, however they were both critical in their influence on jazz. We can consider them the parents of jazz, just as ragtime influenced jazz with syncopation, blues influenced jazz with improvisation and unpredictability.
For more on production techniques of Jazz, read up on a couple of my recent jazz projects!
References:
1. National Museum of American History. (2018). What is Jazz?. [online] Available at: http://americanhistory.si.edu/smithsonian-jazz/education/what-jazz [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
2. McLaughlin, M. (2012). All about jazz, uniquely American music. [online] washintonpost. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/all-about-jazz-a-unique-form-of-american-music/2012/05/24/gJQA4bswnU_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.17e510810d73 [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
3. The Library of Congress. (2018). History of Ragtime. [online] Available at: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035811/ [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
4. Jazzinamerica.org. (2018). The Influence of the Blues on Jazz. [online] Available at: http://www.jazzinamerica.org/pdf/1/influence%20of%20jazz%20on%20blues.pdf [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
5. Direct Current Musiс. (2017). Ragtime and Blues Influence on Jazz » Direct Current Musiс. [online] Available at: https://directcurrentmusic.com/jazz-essays/ragtime-and-blues-influence-on-jazz-2520/ [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
6. YouTube. (2013). history of jazz pt 1. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATJX7gZ4D6w [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
7. Pegouske, A. (2015). African American Music: From Spirituals to Jazz and the Blues. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Vk6m6pqt8 [Accessed 28 Oct. 2018].
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