Portal:Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues, ragtime, European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. (Full article...)
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Front door of house of Nick LaRocca, Uptown New Orleans, with notes that start his number "Tiger Rag" in the door screens
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Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that jazz singer Judi Singh's mother and father were, respectively, among the earliest Black and Sikh settlers of Alberta, Canada?
- ... that jazz fusion and funk musician Mark Lettieri graduated with a degree in marketing?
- ... that Jazzy's 2023 single "Giving Me" made her the first Irish solo female act to top the Irish Singles Chart since Julie-Anne Dineen in 2009 with "Do You Believe"?
- ... that in 2021 Sarah Aristidou recorded Jörg Widmann's Labyrinth V, a wordless piece for her soprano voice with "ululations, sobs, jazz inflections and wild laughter"?
- ... that Tim Kinsella made most of the lyrics for Cap'n Jazz's only album, Shmap'n Shmazz, during his first experience with psilocybin mushrooms?
- ... that in 1973 Luten Petrowsky played the saxophone in a quartet that made the first record with jazz musicians from both East and West Germany?
More did you know...
- ... that although Ray Charles and Nancy Sinatra solos of "Here We Go Again" made Billboard's Hot 100, Charles' 2004 duet with Norah Jones became the second Grammy Record of the Year that did not?
- ... that Willie Nelson, Wynton Marsalis and Norah Jones (trio pictured) recorded a live tribute album covering songs of Ray Charles?
- ... that Philippe Saisse's Grammy-nominated album At World's Edge was dedicated to his father Maurice?
- ... that most of 75 was recorded on Joe Zawinul's 75th birthday and about two months before he died? (Zawinul pictured)
- ... that Steve Vai plays the sitar on "Moroccan Roll", a track from Mike Stern's Grammy-nominated album Big Neighborhood?
May 2011
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"Pretty Little Thing" by Art Gillham
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