Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
Name ....................
JAZZ What it used to be and now is… What is Jazz? “Jazz, like any artistic phenomenon, represents the sum of an addition. The factors of this addition are, to my mind, African music, French and American music and folklore.” (Robet Goffin 1934)1 From its early origins in the Yoruba drumming of West Africa, to its blending with European folk melodies in America, through the slave trade, through the bootlegger clubs of the roaring twenties to the present day, jazz has been around the world. 2 Early jazz sprung from many musical forms, some of which are no-longer around today; spirituals, cakewalks, the music of jig bands, ragtime and the blues. European music from the 1900’s on was quite complex, such as with the Opera’s of Wagner in the 20th Century. The common folk had more of an interest in their simple melodies, harmonies, rhythms and AABA structure songs most commonly found in church singing. As such with the blending of plantation songs, spirituals and the blues Jazz was born. The term of ‘Jazz’ was originally from the area known as Storyville in New Orleans with its many brothels, bars and music joints. As such the term ‘Jazz’ had a vulgar sexual innuendo attached to it. 3 There is a debate as to who was the first musician to ‘invent’ or play the first notes of Jazz. Some say it was Buddy Bolden with his cornet in 1891. However Jelly Roll Morton claimed he himself invented it in 1897. Jelly Roll Morton was also noted as the very first Jazz composer and arranger. 4
Basic Elements of Jazz
Listen to the famous Jazz anthem When the Saints Go Marching In based on an Afro-American Spiritual and make a list of the basic elements of Jazz…
1
Colin King And All That Jazz Caxton Pub, London: 2003
2
Colin King And All That Jazz Caxton Pub, London: 2003
3
Simon Adams Jazz A Crash Course Ivy Press ltd, London: 1999
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Frank Tirro Jazz A History (2nd ed.) W.W. Norton & Company Inc, London: 1993
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
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Ragtime The “Early Jazz Era” (1850 – 1910) One of the important pre-forms of Jazz was Ragtime, a piano music style popular from the 1890’s to the 1920’s. Ragtime also became very popular again when it was used for the film The Sting. You usually hear ragtime played on a piano but they are sometimes arranged for other instruments. The first Ragtime pieces were by black musicians who could not read music and instead improvised the piano music for entertainment and dancing. Their dancing was known as ‘ragging,’ and the piano pieces they danced to were called ‘rags.’ The picture below is the front cover of a piano rag by Scott Joplin, one of the most famous Ragtime composers.
White musicians were worried about Ragtime at first because it was so different from their own music. They even thought it might become so popular that it would put them out of work. Ragtime music came naturally to black musicians and not so easily to white performers. You can usually tell a Ragtime piece by its bouncy and jerky rhythm in the right hand, with a steady beat in the left hand. This means there is a lot of syncopation. The actual tunes of Ragtime were spiky and jumped around a lot – not a bit like the smooth tunes of the white musicians. Other characteristics were: 1. Bright march tempo 2. Duple metre 3. Regular left hand rhythm 4. Syncopated right hand melody 5. Structure of three or four contrasting sections, often repeated. (Eg. AA BB A CC DD, or, Intro AA BB CC DD EE)
Created by SWright 2007-09
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
Name ....................
Ragtime was associated with dance. A famous Ragtime dance was called the Cakewalk. This style of dance made fun of ‘white-folks’ dancing. Claude Debussy wrote a piano piece called Golliwog’s Cakewalk with all the parts of a typical piano rag. It shows how important Ragtime became, even to classical composers. Scott Joplin The acknowledged “King of Ragtime” was Scott Joplin (1868-1917), a composer and pianist whose father had been a slave. Joplin was trained in ‘classical’ music and wrote a ballet and two operas as well as many piano rags. His most famous composition in 1899 was Maple Leaf Rag. He unfortunately died poor and in ill heath after the failure of his last opera Treemonisha written in 1911. Maple Leaf Rag This is a classic example of Ragtime, lasting approximately 3 minutes with the structure of AA BB A CC DD. Each section is exactly sixteen bars in length, and the opening melody (marked Tempo di Marcia – march tempo) features the right hand syncopations so common to this genre of music. Questions: 1. Where did ragtime come from? _____________________________________________________________________ 2. One of the main features of Ragtime is called S_______________ which occurs mostly in the _____________ hand in a piano piece. 3. What is Syncopation? _______________________________________________ 4. How does the tempo of the score for Maple Leaf Rag agree with the Italian tempo marking? ______________________________________________________ 5. The piece is divided into 2 sections; the first part (Tempo di marcia) and a trio. What is the Structure of the first part? _______________________________ 6. What is the form of the trio? ________________________________________ 7. What does the composer do to every section but one? __________________ 8. On the first page of the score ‘box’ in where the composer has created syncopation by using tied notes ie: 9. Circle where the composer has created syncopation by using the rhythm… 10. Where do you find a key change in the piece? ________________________
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
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New Orleans Jazz
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The “Hot Jazz Era” (1910 – 1944) When the American Civil War ended in 1865, many of the brass band instruments left behind by the soldiers were taken up by wandering ‘negroes.’ They taught themselves to play these instruments and subsequently formed bands, which were used for processions and funerals. These ‘marching bands’ were particularly popular in the seaport of New Orleans. In the early 1900’s many of the marching band musicians also played at night in the bars, saloons and clubs of Storyville (This was an unsavoury district of New Orleans, which provided entertainment especially for visiting sailors). The style of music developed by the Storyville bands is known as New Orleans/Dixieland Jazz and has the following characteristics: 1. Small groups of 5-8 performers, comprising of cornet or trumpet, clarinet, trombone, banjo or guitar, piano, bass (often a tuba) and drums 2. A Front Line which were the melodic instruments – trumpet, clarinet and trombone – who would improvise several contrasting melodic lines at once & the Backline – which were all the rhythm instruments 3. Collective improvisation with some solo sections 4. Polyphonic texture in which the cornet or trumpet plays the main melody with variations, against which the clarinet plays a higher counter melody with much sliding between notes 5. Frequent use of the twelve bar blues chord progression (with some jazz alterations) The music these bands created was for dancing and singing, so the beat of the music became very important. There was a strong feeling of 2 beats to a bar (much like a march), but with a lot of syncopated improvisation. One or more chorus’ of collective improvisation generally occurred at the beginning and end of the piece. In between, individual players were featured in improvised solos, accompanied by the rhythm section or by the whole band. Sometimes there were brief unaccompanied solos called breaks. The band’s performance might begin with an introduction and then end with a brief coda or tag. In 1917 Storyville was closed due to Prohibition. This left the Jazz musicians without playing venues, so some of them joined the river boats and spread their music to St. Louis, Memphis and Chicago. As the music then evolved, so did its performance. Solo playing came to be emphasised more than collective improvisation. Soloists began to base their improvisations less on the original melody than on its harmonies. In addition, the trumpet gradually replaced the cornet and the saxophone became a regular member of the band. Some famous players include Buddy Bolden – cornet, Jelly Roll Morton – piano, Sidney Bechet – clarinet, Johnny Dodds – clarinet, Kid Ory – trombone, Louis Armstrong – cornet/trumpet… 5
Oxford Music Online 2009 (formerly Grove Music Online)
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
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The Instruments • As the bands played outside the T___________ or C_____________ became very popular because of its strength and carrying power. The trumpet would play the melody. • Because of its capacity for flexibility and its high range, the C________________ was used. It improvised obligatos above the melody, while the T________________ provided depth beneath the melody line. • The T_________, B____________ or G____________ and D____________ provided the rhythmic foundation.
Louis Armstrong Daniel Louis Armstrong was born in 1901 in New Orleans. He was forced into singing for small change in the ‘red light’ district of New Orleans when his parents left him. He was arrested for shooting a gun into the air when he was 13 and sent to the Coloured Waif’s Home for Boys. It was here that he was introduced to the cornet and earned his nickname Satchmo (derived from satchelmouth). After leaving the orphanage Louis met Joe “King” Oliver who mentored him in the cornet and music. In 1919 he left New Orleans for St. Louis and played on the riverboats between the cities. In 1922 Louis was invited to join King Oliver in Chicago with whom he made a series of recordings playing second cornet. It was in the period of 1925 to 1928, pushed on by his pianist wife Lil Hardin, that Louis Armstrong made the definitive recordings of his career. These were with his Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, and in this period he effectively reinvented Jazz by: a) Establishing the soon to be standard 4/4 time swing tempo b) Establishing the theme – solo – theme structure c) Inventing scat singing (singing/improvising of nonsense syllables) Louis Armstrong placed the soloist at the centre of the music, with fully improvised chord based solos consisting of a Chorus length or more. All future Jazz musicians were to build on this innovative work of Louis Armstrong. This then led into what became known as Chicago Jazz…
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
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Chicago Jazz The “Hot Jazz Era” (1910 – 1944) About 1917 there was a large-scale migration of black Americans from the south to the industrial north of America – mainly Chicago. White musicians in Chicago began to imitate the black jazz style, and Chicago became the new centre of jazz. In the 1920’s Chicago Jazz took on the following characteristics: 1. Small groups of 5-10 players, comprising of trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, guitar, piano, bass and drums 2. Emphasis on solo improvisation, with the full group used at the beginning and end of the composition 3. Solo improvisation was based more on the chord progression of the composition rather than the melody 4. Use of the chorus structure, meaning whole band plays at the start and end of the song with a solo in the middle (This became the standard jazz structure) 5. Often 32 bars in length with AABA structure When King Oliver recorded with his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in the 1920’s, he brought New Orleans musicians with him. Perhaps the music recorded was different to when it was in New Orleans, but the most likely possibility is that his recordings from that time closely approximate original New Orleans jazz and are therefore the most authentic ones we have today. King Oliver’s Dippermouth Blues has Louis Armstrong as second cornet, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Honore Dutrey on trombone, Lil Harden (soon to become Mrs Armstrong) on piano, Budd Scott on banjo, and Baby Dodds on drums. The teens and twenties of the 20th century saw the First World War, prohibition, the closing of Storyville and the invention of sound recording – all leading to a combination of elements that saw the development and progression of Jazz music. 1. What is the backline? 2. What is the frontline? 3. What was beginning to happen with jazz bands? 4. What Big Bang saw music become more available to everyone?
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
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Swing The “Hot Jazz Era” (1910 – 1944) 6
Towards the end of the 1920’s, jazz band began to increase in size, with separate saxophone, brass and rhythm sections. Because of the size of the “Big Bands” group improvisation was no longer possible. Music now had to be arranged and written out, which made the composer – arranger – conductor an important figure in Jazz. By the end of the 1920’s and through the 1930’s a new big band style Swing had emerged. Spread by radio, films, and the recording industry, it was to dominate popular music for the rest of the decade. Swing music has the following characteristics: 1. Large groups, of separate brass, rhythm and saxophone sections 2. Sections are often used alternatively in call & response 3. Frequent use of the brass instruments with effects, such as mutes or wahs 4. Thick four and five note chords within the harmony 5. Common swing pattern on the ryde cymbal or high hats 6. Less emphasis on solo improvisation 7. Walking bass – a bass line which is made up of notes played on every beat of the bar giving the effect of forward motion Famous swing band leaders were Benny Goodman – clarinet, Count Basie – piano, Duke Ellington – piano, and Glen Miller – trombone… Solos played with hard driven rhythms and extensive improvisations were known as Hot, while those played in a softer way were called Sweet.
“Sing Sing Sing” Benny Goodman “In the Mood” Glen Miller “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t got that Swing!” Duke Ellington “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” Duke Ellington
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Picture: http://mountainmarionettes.com/images/Glenn%20Miller.jpg
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Year 10 Elective Music - Jazz Unit
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Bebop The “Bop Revolution” (1940)7 Bebop is a style of jazz that developed in Harlem, New York, during World War II. Musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Thelonious Monk (piano), Max Roach (drums), Charlie Christian (guitar) and later Charlie Parker (alto saxophone) are the main proponents of this style. Bebop, or simply ‘bop’, was reportedly named after Dizzy Gillespie's scat-singing syllables such as "doowop”, “razzamatazz,” “skoobie-doobie-do,” “hi-de-ho” and “bee-bop-a-lula.” Essential to the bop style was a complete emphasis on instrumentalists and improvisation. Performers employed chromatic (all notes) harmonies and more complex rhythms. Before this, jazz had been primarily a diatonic (using notes in a single key) kind of music with a straight, shuffle or swing 4/4 beat. Bebop was something new.8 The key features of Bebop included: 1. Performers superimposed harmonic structures of ‘standard’ songs with melodic themes closer to jazz improvisations, creating ‘new repertoire’ 2. Improvisation became more searching and rhythmically erratic 3. The speed of harmonic, rhythmic and melodic motion led to dense, compact performances 4. Instrumental sonority (without vibrato) became more tense and experimental 5. The rhythm section was thinned out: a) The guitar was often omitted b) The pianist spaced his accompaniment chords more irregularly c) The drummer explored creating a permanent beat on the cymbal with syncopated strokes on the snare, tom-tom and bass drum 6. The range of tempos increased (at times exceeding 360 bpms).
Charlie Parker
“Here was the very nucleus of modern jazz, orbiting in frantic, perfectlycalibrated circles around itself and trailing, like comets, all the styles and techniques that would define the genre for the rest of the century.” 9
Dizzy Gillespie
“Dizzy Gillespie reported that when somebody asked [Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo], ‘How do you and Dizzy converse?’ he would say. ‘Dizzy no peaky pani I no peaky engly, but boff speak African.”10
7 André
Hodeir. "Bop." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 8 Mar. 2009 <http://0-www.oxfordmusiconline.com.library.newcastle.edu.au/ subscriber/article/grove/music/03559>. 8
James, Burnett and Jeffrey Dean. "jazz." The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford Music Online. 8 Mar. 2009 <http://0www.oxfordmusiconline.com.library.newcastle.edu.au/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e3532>. 9
"Parker, Charlie - Bebop & Bird, Volume 1." Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th ed. Ed. Colin Larkin. Oxford Music Online. 8 Mar. 2009 <http:// 0-www.oxfordmusiconline.com.library.newcastle.edu.au/subscriber/article/epm/84006>. 10
Thomas and Nielsen. “Don't Deny My Name: Words and Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition.” Michigan Press, Google Books Online, 8 Mar 2009 < http://books.google.com.au/books?id=wUKZjeBYRsAC>.
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