History of jazz

Jazz today refers to a group of musical genres of Afro-American origin. Its essential characteristics are the emphasis on specific rhythms, the preponderance of improvisation and the particular treatment of instrumental or vocal sounds, originally derived from the imitation of human voices.

The origins of jazz

Jazz has its origins in a cultural mix, the result of the integration of traditions brought from Africa by slaves from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century with harmonic and melodic instrumental methods invented in Europe. This musical crossbreeding that took place in the United States is at the origin of a large number of musical styles that have appeared since the 19th century and throughout the 20th century up to the present day.

The origin of the term jazz is not defined with certainty and there could be several. One possibility is that the word comes from the American slang gism or gasm, which is synonymous with sexual energy. Dizzy Gillespie said that jasi expresses the idea of a hectic, high-pressure pace of life in an African language. In its early days, the term jazz, defining music played in places where prostitution was practised, was associated with something sexual, energetic and by analogy with movement and dance.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the southern United States, the ancestors of Jazz, the work songs sung on cotton plantations by slaves, as well as the Blues, were considered rustic, proletarian and of rather poor renown. Ragtime, of which Scott Joplin is the most famous representative, is played on the piano in brothels and saloons. The blues is sung on plantations. Only the negro spirituals and gospel songs, which are performed in church, enjoy a "respectable" place of broadcasting.

It is the meeting of these different musical styles, mixing themselves with the music of military marches heard in the streets during parades, which at the beginning of the 20th century created the basis of a music that was soon to be called jazz.

New Orleans

At the very end of the 19th century, street bands appeared in the Storyville district of New Orleans, where prostitution, alcohol and gambling were concentrated and allowed. These "brass bands" or street bands were exclusively composed of black musicians. They performed at parades, funerals or outdoor events such as balls or public meetings.

The African influences of the black instrumentalists of these orchestras encouraged them to integrate numerous syncopations to the marches, quadrilles and other dances of French origin played at the time in this city. These itinerant orchestras were composed of transportable instruments: trumpet, trombone, clarinet, banjo or guitar, tuba as double bass, washboard or drums as percussion. Some of these so-called "spasm bands" were made up of children playing instruments made from recycled objects such as gas pipes, barrels, kettles or cigar boxes.

Charles "Buddy" Bolden (1877 - 1931) is considered to be at the origin of the first jazz band in history. In 1895 he founded his orchestra in 1895, mixing the styles of the time. From a repertoire of waltzes, mazurkas, ragtimes, rural blues, negro spirituals and street parade music, Bolden would soon create a new genre of music that was partly improvised. At that time, in the years 1900 - 1910, this new music was not yet officially called jazz.

Pianist and singer Jelly Roll Morton also made his debut as a musician in Storyville before leaving for other destinations. Another great musician from this neighbourhood, trumpeter, singer, composer and conductor Louis Armstrong, made jazz history with his unique voice and his contribution to the birth of the rhythm of jazz: swing.

In 1917, the government closed the Storyville district, causing the now unemployed musicians to emigrate to Chicago. It was among other things with the gangsters' money spent in the cabarets of this city that the "New orleans" style really blossomed and widened its fame.

From the blues came the boogie woogie and at the same time the musicians borrowed and transformed more and more the themes of popular songs from Broadway and elsewhere.

It was around this time that a certain George Gershwin (1898 - 1937) made himself known to the general public. This trained pianist composed numerous works on the border between classical music and jazz, forming a brilliant synthesis of these musical genres. This approach to musical "fusion" at this point is almost unique in the history of music. Gershwin's original melodies would soon become part of the repertoire of jazz musicians and become jazz standards. Among his compositions that would leave their mark on jazz and classical music were Rhapsody in Blue, Un Américain à Paris, variations on "I Got Rhythm," Porgy and Bess (including the famous "Summertime" melody) and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

The Swing Years

In the 1930s, the vogue for jazz called swing or middle jazz developed. Jazz orchestras such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie or Glenn Miller's grew in size, became fashionable in Hollywood, California and arrived in Europe.

Soloists and their improvisations are becoming more and more important in these large formations. This is the case of the American saxophonist Lester Young, who was engaged from 1936 to 1940 in Count Basie's jazz orchestra. This gave this artist the best possible springboard to develop his art and his career.

These bands play original compositions by their conductor and some of their musicians, such as Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A train" when he was working with Duke Ellington. They perform many popular themes of the time, such as All of Me, as well as those taken from musicals of the time, whose composers included Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin.

The hit songs of the time provide jazz and crooner singers like Frank Sinatra with many beautiful melodies like Everything happens to me or "Angel Eyes" by composer and conductor Matt Dennis. Alec Wilder, another creator of popular songs, composed themes such as "I'll Be Around" or Moon and sand (in 1941) for several musicals, operas and film scores. It was only a few years later, in 1944, that another famous crooner, Nat King Cole, began his career as Besame Mucho. This theme quickly became an international success and has since been taken up by countless other jazz musicians.

Gypsy jazz

At the same time that the swing style was taking off in the United States, gypsy jazz appeared in France with Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli who formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France.

This formation was and remains one of the most famous French jazz groups in the history of jazz. Classically, a gypsy jazz group is composed of several guitars and a double bass, to which can be added, among other instruments, the violin. This style is the result of a mixture of gypsy, or gypsy, music imported from Eastern Europe, popular French music of the inter-war period and American swing jazz standards of the time, such as the theme Have you met Miss Jones.

The virtuosity displayed by the musicians of gypsy jazz groups is obviously inspired by the tradition of gypsy folk music, which is itself often extremely virtuosic. Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli are the first famous virtuoso representatives in the history of gypsy jazz, but they are far from being the only ones.

After a few decades during which this musical genre was relatively forgotten, it has enjoyed a strong revival of interest since the 1990s. Famous current representatives of this music include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Angelo Debarre, Romane, Patrick Saussois, Christian Escoudé, and Django's grandson himself, David Reinhardt. These musicians are characterised by a great technical mastery of their instrument and musical formulas typical of gypsy jazz. The pompe is one of them: it is the very regularly played repetition of the accompanying chords on the guitar.

Bebop

In 1940, the bebop revolution took place and an original repertoire appeared that completely transformed and completed the repertoire of blues and standards. Bebop was created as a reaction to the music, played by big bands, partly devoted to musical entertainment and dance. For the first time, complex harmonic sequences and musical compositions with hellish tempi appear. Generally speaking, the trend is towards smaller groups such as quartets, quintets and sextets.

Be-bop is the first real revolution in African-American jazz music. Black musicians are showing a new conception of their art. By this approach they strongly and with great talent affirm their musical identity to a predominantly white audience.

The American saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920 - 1955) is a great virtuoso and a musician who has left his mark on the history of jazz. He played an essential role in the emergence of the "Be-bop" style in the 1940s. Many of his themes became jazz standards: Billie's bounce, "Donna Lee", Blues for Alice, "Moose the Mooche", "Confirmation", "Dewey Square", "Now's the Time", "Scrapple from the Apple", "Dexterity", "Yardbird Suite", "Au Privave". In a more Latin style C. Parker composed the famous My little suede shoes.

The other pillars of this musical movement are undoubtedly the pianists Thelonious Monk, Bud powell and trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, who also wrote many themes that have become bebop standards.

Cool jazz

During the 1940s, new musical trends soon appeared. The cool (literally: fresh) is a break with the exuberance of be-bop, without the aggressiveness of the sound. It incorporates elaborate musical arrangements such as those of Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, or pianist John Lewis. Certain processes, or forms, from classical music are used as in Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo à la Turk (1920 - 2012) with saxophonist Paul Desmond (1924 - 1977).

During the 1940s and 1950s many American musicians composed popular songs, such as Alec Wilder with Moon and sand. These melodies were often taken up by the jazz musicians of the time and gradually became standards.

The harmonious style of cool jazz really took the opposite direction from be-bop, often adopting more moderate tempi as well as being inspired by classical music. It developed mainly on the west coast of the United States, hence its name west coast jazz. In California, white musicians have a solid classical university musical education. As a result, the west coast style is often a subtle blend of inspiration from so-called "classical" music and the rhythms, harmonies, and forms of jazz.

A form of fusion of these two musical styles is behind the approach of musicians and composers of this musical trend such as Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan. Saxophonist Stan Gets is one of the great representatives of this period in the history of jazz, as is trumpet player and singer Chet Baker in his unforgettable interpretations of standards such as "Everything happens to me" and "My funny Valentine".

It was at the end of this decade that Oscar Peterson, one of the greatest jazz pianists in history, began to be known. He will leave his mark on entire generations of musicians with his sense of swing as well as his extraordinary virtuosity.

Hard bop

Hard bop, which appeared in the early 1950s, is characterised by the integration of bluesified themes into the more complex harmonic structures of bebop. In the history of music, hard bop is in a way the natural evolution of deliberately provocative bebop towards a less elitist, more consensual and more "mainstream" musical style. The instrumentation of jazz be-bop is generally of the quintet type with trumpet and saxophone. Sophisticated harmonic suites highlight often-singing melodies, helping to appeal to a wider audience.

The Jazz Messengers, a highly successful orchestra founded by drummer Art Blakey and pianist and composer Horace Silver, is typical of this era. Pianist and composer Horace Silver (Song for my father) and saxophonist and composer Benny Golson (Hassan's dream, Blues March) are two prominent members of this group. They perfectly illustrate the musical direction of hard bop in their numerous compositions.

Jazz funk

Jazz funk music began to appear in the United States at the end of the 1950s. It marked a kind of return to the "dirty" game with rhythms with syncopated, marked and insistent patterns. In the 60s, it became more commercial, and is often associated with the notion of "soul" as with the music of Ray Charles.

It is at the end of the 60s that James Brown's band, "The JB's", one of whose hits is "Sex machine", invented the very groovy syncopated rhythm typical of funk, which we will call funk beat. The rhythmic support on the first beat of this music is a novelty in jazz. This new style integrates a very characteristic slapped electric bass playing, which takes a very important place in the piece. Slapping" consists of pulling hard on the bass string so that it produces a "slapped" sound by bouncing off the fingerboard (the bass neck).

Artists like Herbie Hancock in Cantaloupe Island, Stevie Wonder the composer of Isn't she lovely, Miles Davis, or bands like Kool and the Gang will integrate this rhythmic style and compose many hits with it.

The funk of the 60's and 70's is obviously one of the sources of inspiration for the disco of the 80's, and will influence many artists like Earth Wind and Fire, The temptations, and in a way Michael Jackson or Prince.

Afro-Cuban jazz

The Afro-Cuban style, a mixture of bebop and Cuban music, appeared in the 45's with artists such as Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Cab Calloway. Charlie Parker participated in this new musical style with some of his compositions including My little suede shoes and Tico - Tico.

The thematic material of jazz is enriched with influences from Latin American music such as Mambo or Rumba. Bongos and congas are added to the rhythm sections, as Dizzy Gillespie does in his various successive jazz orchestras.

The Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria, born in Havana (1922 - 2003), was one of the precursors of the genre. The composer of "Afro Blue", who moved to New York in 1950, played with the very first Afro-Cuban jazz big bands. Among these salsa orchestras were those of Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Perez Prado, and the Fania All Stars.

In the following years other Latin influences gradually arrived in the United States to mix with jazz music. They came from the Caribbean, such as calypso.

La bossa nova

The bossa nova, literally meaning "new wave", was born in Brazil in the late 1950s. According to Antônio Carlos Jobim, its main inventor along with João Gilberto, it was born from the meeting of Brazilian samba and jazz. Samba was invented and practised in Brazil by black slaves brought to the country by the Portuguese. The first Bossa Nova album in history is "Chega de Saudade" (1958), with music by Jobim, interpretation by João Gilberto and lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes.

The rhythms of La bossa nova and samba are close enough to indicate their obvious filiation. The bossa is played with a Latin-type rhythm and is therefore binary and not swinging, in other words ternary. Its characteristic is that it is syncopated and repetitive, like samba, but with a slower tempo and a much softer musical expression.

The harmonic instrument of choice for the rhythm section of the bossa is the guitar, which in some cases provides the accompaniment for the singer or solo instrument alone. In addition to percussion, the piano also often has its place in the instrumental composition of the bossa nova orchestra. Jobim also often played the piano part on recordings of his own compositions.

The harmonies and structures of the bossa nova are derived from jazz and more specifically from cool jazz, one of the main stylistic trends of the 1950s. They are sometimes even inspired by classical music. For example, there is a real kinship as well as an obvious influence of Chopin's famous piano prelude No. 4 on the melody and harmony of Jobim's How insensitive standard.

Antônio Carlos Jobim says that Henri Salvador inspired him during one of his concerts to invent the bossa nova, a musical genre that will take an important place in the history of jazz. Stan Getz, the velvety-sounding saxophonist, recorded the famous "Desafinado" in 1962 with Charlie Byrd's trio, followed by a legendary album with Jobim and the Gilberto couple in which the magnificent standard Girl from Ipanema is featured.

This music brought a new rhythmic pulse to jazz as well as a large number of original themes such as Corcovado, Você abusou, Recado bossa nova, Black orpheus, Agua de beber, One note samba or Doralice. The Bossa nova style has been fully integrated into the music played by today's jazz bands and jazzmen for many years now.

Latin jazz and Salsa

Salsa, music with a Cuban influence, was originally made for dancing. It has its origins in the Cuban "Son" which is a musical genre that dates back to the end of the 19th century. From the 1950s onwards, Puerto Rican emigration to the United States was intensive. It brought with it the influences of Latin American music: bolero (Mexico), calypso (West Indies), reggae (Jamaica), samba (Brazil), mariachi music (Mexico), cumbia (Colombia), joropo (Venezuela), tango (Argentina), merengue (Dominican Republic).

Many Cubans emigrated to the United States after the end of the Cuban revolution. Salsa groups appeared in large numbers and settled on the New York - Miami - Havana - San Juan axis. In North America, this mixture of styles is generally called "Latin jazz" or "salsa" which means "mixture" or "sauce" in Spanish. The word "salsa" is a generic name encompassing a wide variety of rhythms and styles.

It is structured around very specific rhythmic principles. The piano turns a repetitive ostinato type figure: the "montuno" (pronounced "montouno"). The accompanying principle of the double bass is called the tumbao. The "clave" is the repetitive rhythm specific to this music developed by percussion instruments. The salsa orchestra works using these two-bar rhythmic patterns, repeated throughout the piece except for certain musical "breaks".

Its rhythm section is traditionally made up of the double or bass, piano, congas, bongos, timpani and claves. On this rhythmic salsa basis, the pianist or wind player's improvisation can be performed in or out of the key of the piece. When improvising out of key, the jazz jargon says that the improvisation is played "out".

Puerto Rico, which is a possession of the United States, has adapted Afro-Cuban music to its own musical traditions and has produced a special salsa.

Bebo Valdes and his son Chucho Valdés with his group Irakere are two pianists who have made a name for themselves in this style. Tito Puente, a famous percussionist and multi-instrumentalist, has been recording numerous salsa albums with different orchestras since the 1950s.

Modal jazz

Modal jazz appeared at the very end of the 1950s. The album "Kind of Blue" is definitely its most famous representative, and will also be the best-selling record in the history of jazz. The songs on this album all became great standards: So what, Freddie Freeloader, Blue in Green, All blues and Flamenco Sketches.

The two leading musicians on this recording are trumpet player Miles Davis, who initiated the project, and pianist Bill Evans, who will propose innovative harmonies for the time.

In the 1960s, John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner recorded one of the reference interpretations of modal jazz, "My Favorite Things" in the album of the same name. In 1964 the pianist Herbie Hancock composed and played Cantaloupe Island, another modal-style hit, featured on his album "Empyrean Isles".

Modal jazz is structured around a minimum of chords and requires a maximum of melodic freedom, harmonic and rhythmic enrichment from improvising musicians. The mode or modes corresponding to the few chords that make up the musical piece are used, hence the name "modal jazz". For the most part these are ancient or "Greek" modes. The most common is undoubtedly the Dorian mode, but others such as Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian can also be regularly used.

It was in the era of modal jazz that the so-called "out" playing, i.e. outside the key corresponding to the accompanying chord, really came into being. Indeed, when there are few harmonic changes as in the modal style, it is very enriching for his

improvisation to use melodic variations which go as far as going out of key.

Free jazz

Free jazz, which developed at the end of the 1950s and in the 1960s, was characterised by the disappearance of "classical" swing, by a renunciation of theme, harmonic structure and tonality. Free jazz musicians no longer use academic instrumental technique to voluntarily incorporate parasitic noises and new sounds into their playing.

The harmonic and melodic principles no longer being relevant, the musical discourse is in total rupture with what has been composed and played until now. Free jazz is a kind of parenthesis in the history of music, because the concept of the negation of harmony and past musical structures will not be taught for very long and will only affect a relatively small audience.

By pushing back the limits of music, this artistic experience will bring a new impetus to the world of jazz, freeing it a little more from old musical logics.

This upheaval renews all the old musical patterns that were in use until the 1960s. Free jazz was also an opportunity for black American musicians to strongly express social and human demands in an America that was sometimes intolerant towards ethnic minorities.

Among the musicians who distinguished themselves in free jazz were John Coltrane, who would turn increasingly to this style in the last years of his life, pianists Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, double bassist and composer Charles Mingus, saxophonists Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler and Joe Maneri.

Jazz Fusion

One of the first fusion jazz bands, Weather Report, was formed in 1971 by pianist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. He was to be one of the most influential. Their most famous composition remains Birdland. The instruments are electrically amplified, the arrangements are sometimes complex, and the rhythm of this music is mostly binary.

In the seventies the musicians Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Tony Williams, the bands Return to Forever with Chick Corea, Weather Report, "The Crusaders", "Pat Metheny Group", in France "Sixun" and "Magma", participate very creatively in this musical style.

The 80's will see the emergence of new trends, with a wider audience, such as smooth jazz. Numerous artists will participate in giving this style its letters of nobility. Among them we can mention the singer Al Jarreau, the saxophonist Grover Washington and his hit "Just the two of us", Sade, George Benson, Norah Jones the singer of Don't know why, Michael Bublé, Bob James on the keyboard in the band "Fourplay".

STOPS : New-Orleans, north cities (NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.), West-Coast, Cuba, Brazil, Africa, Europa…