JAZZ

English
Certification
Paper

ROOTS
Coordinating
teacher:
Mihalache Oana
Student:
Moraru Cristina
INTRODUCTION

Jazz is the most significant form of musical expression in American culture

and outstanding contribution to the art of music. From obscure origins in New
Orleans over a century ago, the music and the word we use for it are now
familiar all over the world. In slightly over one hundred years, this evolution
has given birth to approximately twenty distinct Jazz styles.

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ORIGINS OF JAZZ: RAGTIME

Ragtimes capital was Sedalia, Missouri, where Scott

Joplin, the leading ragtime composer and pianist, had settled.
Ragtime was largely composed, primarily pianistic music,
due to this aspect, ragtime lacking one essential characteristic
of jazz: improvisation.
More than any other form of jazz, ragtime may be described
as white music, played black.

Scott Joplin

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NEW ORLEANS STYLE

At the turn of the century, New Orleans was a witches cauldron of persons and races.
All these voluntary and involuntary immigrants loved first of all their own music. New
Orleans style is the first example of hot playing, hot connoting the emotional warmth
and intensity of the music.
New Orleans was a watershedfor the music of the countryside, for the spirituals
that were sung during the religious services, and for the old primitive blues-folk
songs. All these things merged in the earliest forms of jazz.

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THE STYLES OF JAZZ: THE TEENS. DIXIELAND

One of the first uses of the term "Dixieland" with reference to

music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Their
1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of this new style of
music.
It has become customary to label all New Orleans European-
American jazz Dixieland, thus separating it from essential New
Orleans style, but the borderlines remain fluid.

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THE TWENTIES. CHICAGO

New Orleans style actually had its really great period in the Chicago of the twenties.
It was in Chicago that the most famous New Orleans jazz recordings were made.
Stimulated by the jazz life of the South Side, young white musicians began to
develop what has been called Chicago style. As imitation, their music was
unsuccessful; instead they came up with something new: Chicago style.

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 THE THIRTIES. SWING

In the Swing era, Benny Goodman became the King of Swing. In

Benny Goodmans band, the different styles flowed together and
the bands easy melodic quality and clean intonation made it
possible to sell jazz to a mass audience.
Derived from New Orleans Jazz, Swing was robust and
invigorating.

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THE FORTIES. BEBOP

The term bebop came into being spontaneously used when

someone attempted to sing at that time the best-loved interval:
the flatted fifth. This is the explanation that trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie gave for the origin of the term bebop.
To the listener of that time, the sounds characteristic of bebop
seemed to be racing, nervous phrases that occasionally appeared
as melodic fragments.

Dizzy Gillespie

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 THE FIFTIES. COOL JAZZ. HARD BOP

This trend first became apparent in the playing of trumpeter Miles

Davis, in the piano improvisations of student John Lewis, and in
the arrangements of Tadd Dameron. Cool jazz represents a
smoothed out mixture of Bop and Swing, tones being harmonic
again and dynamics now being softened
At the beginning of the nineties, the stylistic delta of jazz had
become immeasurably broad.
Miles Davis

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JAZZ IN SOCIETY

In the 1920s women rebelled against their traditional roles as

daughters and mothers. Women wanted to be seen as individuals
outside of their familial roles.
The dance halls and jazz clubs were places where women could
escape from the traditional roles that were demanded of them by a
rigid society. The women who frequented these places were called
flapper girls.

Flapper girl

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CONCLUSIONS
Nearly one hundred years after it began, jazz is still what it was then: music of protest; that,
too, contributes to its aliveness. It cries out against social, racial and spiritual discrimination.
Jazz music comes from life experience and human emotion as the inspiration of the creative
force and through this discourse is chronicled the story of its people.

Jazz music is a language of your emotions.

Charles Mingus - American musician

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