American Jazz: Birth, Improvisation, and Diversity

AMERICAN JAZZ
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American Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that can be traced to the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The genre was famous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and borrowed significantly from the blues and ragtime. It is a blend of many different cultures, making it “uniquely American” because America too has many cultures. It features a West African culture, the spirituals of the black slaves in America, and also utilizes instruments such as piano and trumpet. As the music spread further across the world, it borrowed national, regional, and local musical cultures that resulted in different styles. An assessment of the genre’s history and development to date helps one comprehend the cultural influences of jazz in modern art and any other contributions of the music to the modern world.
The Birth of Jazz
The genre is extremely important to the Americans because, throughout the 1920s, it infiltrated into almost every aspect of the country’s culture. It even contributed to the music that came up afterward. It has had a ripple effect on almost every aspect of the country’s life, ranging from style and social movements to other art forms that came after it. After World War I, many jazz musicians migrated from New Orleans to major northern cities, including Chicago and New York, which resulted in an extensive spread of the style. As the musicians moved to these cities, they found different cultures from their new homes and merged them with their music styles. Since music expresses the language of the culture, the musicians continued spreading the jazz characteristics among the locals, ultimately changing the type of music that they liked listening to. The music had a significant impact on the country’s culture as it influenced not only fashion and poetry but also the Civil Rights Movement. The people changed their style of clothing to make it easier to dance to jazz tunes. What began as a new style morphed and came with many different genres in the country’s culture. The Jazz rhythms have influenced other music genres including Rock, Hip-Hop, Pop among other genres. Even the poetry evolved because of jazz, in which jazz poetry became an emerging genre in the era. Unlike before, the poems assumed the emotional and improvisational feel of jazz music.[Parsonage, Catherine. The evolution of jazz in Britain, 1880–1935. Routledge, 2017.] [Hardie, Daniel. Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style. iUniverse, 2002.]
Jazz also contributed to the establishment of women’s liberation, a significant cultural moment. The increase in dance halls and jazz clubs saw an increasing number of women seek a place to go and vent their rebellions against the established traditional roles. They were not restricted on how to dress, and as a result, they decided to wear dresses that were associated with jazz performance freely. Therefore, jazz helped spice up their meetings, and during this process, they met other women and were able to plan their activities. As the women began adopting a certain dress code, and other people also changed some of their behaviors, the country’s culture eventually changed since culture is determined by code of conduct, dress code, and other characteristics. It successfully changed the culture because music is an expressive language of culture and tells the story of society. Besides, it expresses emotion and shares ideas of society. For example, during a revolutionary process, music may be used to express patriotism and may also be used to inform society about the values that it should uphold and the vices it should drop.[Kirschbaum, Charles. "Categories and networks in jazz evolution: The overlap between bandleaders’ jazz sidemen from 1930 to 1969." Poetics 52 (2015): 154-178.]
Jazz’s significant influence on music emanates from its influence on other artworks and artists. Many fans of the genre preferred going to New York. Popular musicians such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker used to hold their performances in the city. This tradition continues today, in which many artists still continue to visit some of the best jazz clubs to perform and entertain the masses. Many songs, ranging from “Honey Pie” by the Beatles to Pink Floyd’s “Time” and hip-hop artists such as Q-Tip drew some of their performance characteristics from jazz. The genre has had an extremely significant influence on the country’s music culture to the extent that it is almost impossible to come across a musician who was not influenced by the genre at some point. Jazz music influenced hip hop by serving as a musical backdrop and gifting the genre artists with a unique sense of creativity, openness to improvisation, thinking outside the musical boundaries, and the ability to merge different societal aspects together. Thus, jazz is the father and mother of hip-hop. Both were born out of oppression, and both appear to be protest music. For a hip-hop producer who desires some melodic staff, the individual may first go to jazz.[Chandler, Justin. “The Convergence of Jazz and Hip-Hop, from Louis Armstrong to Kendrick Lamar | CBC Music.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, March 14, 2019. /music/read/the-convergence-of-jazz-and-hip-hop-from-louis-armstrong-to-kendrick-lamar-1.5057102.]
Jazz Improvisation
While jazz is difficult to define because of its complex nature and several subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining features. This concept of improvisation defines the influence that jazz music had on other genres. Improvisation refers to the process of creating fresh melodies over and over, following a specific repeating cycle. The general observation is that the best-improvised music is composed, and the best-composed music sounds improvised. The improvisation process involves consideration of the three main elements that define music: melody, harmony, and rhythm. With time, music producers have unraveled new ways of improvising their music. In the case of jazz, improvisation has mainly focused on the language, musical ideas, and the concept of speaking. People learning jazz often compare it to learning a foreign language. There are new words, phrases, and even grammar to facilitate communication with the new environment. During the process, the individual learns the patterns, chord shapes, licks, and different tonalities as well as sequences and harmonies. One gains flexibility and fluency in the improvisation process. Thus, in terms of language, improvisation entails finding freedom in certain boundaries as determined by melody. Jazz is not limited to boundaries and is hence known for pushing through the diatonic boundaries to explore the various potentials. Thus, the improvisation process also includes alteration.[Biles, John A. "GenJam: Evolution of a jazz improviser." In Creative evolutionary systems, pp. 165-187. Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.] [Norman, Liesa Karen. "The respective influence of jazz and classical music on each other, the evolution of third stream and fusion and the effects thereof into the 21st century." PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2002.]
Improvisation based on the development of musical ideas focuses on the use of various melodic techniques. The four essential approaches include sequences, arpeggios, scalar improvisation, and neighboring tones. A sequence refers to a pattern played utilizing the same intervallic and melodic structure on varying degrees of a scale. An arpeggio occurs when the notes of a chord are played independently, one by one. Scalar improvisation entails improvising melodies within a scale. Neighboring and leading tones is a technique that focuses on a note in a scale together with its neighboring tones. Finally, there is the tendency of speaking in jazz, which is also part of improvisation. Improvisation involves playing music governed by some vocabularies that help one follow the melody and enjoy them. Therefore, any action that makes the music enjoyable can be considered as improvisation. Some performers prefer speaking during the performance to pass a message to the listener. It involves the simple ac...