What is Jazz?
A: 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 and ragtime.
Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a
major form of what?
A: Musical expression in traditional and popular music.
Jazz is characterized by what?
A: Swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals,
polyrhythms and improvisation.
Jazz has roots in what?
A: European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national,
regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to what?
A: Different styles.
When did New Orleans jazz begin?
A: In the early 1910s.
It combined earlier brass band marches, French
quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with what?
A: Collective polyphonic improvisation.
But jazz did not begin as a what?
A: A single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere.
What were the prominent styles in the 1930s?
A: Arranged dance-oriented swing big bands,
Kansas City jazz (a
hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that
emphasized musette waltzes).
What emerged in the 1940s?
A: Bebop, 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.
When did “Cool jazz” develop?
A: Near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long,
linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of what?
A: Hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and
blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano.
What developed in the late 1950s?
A: Modal jazz, 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 when?
A: 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 what became successful, garnering significant radio airplay?
A: Smooth jazz.
Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as
what?
A: Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz.
The origin of the word jazz has resulted in
considerable research, and its history is what?
A: Well documented.
It is believed to be related to jasm, a slang term
dating back to 1860 meaning what?
A: "Pep, energy".
The use of the word in a musical context was documented
as early as 1915 in what?
A: The Chicago Daily Tribune.
Its first documented use in a musical context in New
Orleans was in what?
A: A November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands".
Why is Jazz difficult to define?
A: Because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over
100 years, from ragtime to the rock-infused fusion.
Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in
part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is what?
A: One of its defining elements.
The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the
influence of what?
A: Earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in
part from the work songs and field hollers of African American slaves on
plantations.
These work songs were commonly structured around what?
A: A repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also
improvisational.