O Jazz is a style of music that was born in the US in the New Orleans region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
With African-American culture as its cradle, jazz has a non-linear rhythm and its greatest mark is the improvisation. Over the years, many sub-genres have emerged from this same root.
It is also important to highlight the great relationship between jazz and blues music styles.
Origin of Jazz
The emergence of jazz has African culture as its main matrix. People who were captured in Africa and taken to American soil to be enslaved found in music and singing a kind of "refuge" in which to express themselves.
Thus, while working on the rice, cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations, workers sang collective songs.
After the abolition of slavery in the country in 1863, blacks approached Western instruments and there was a mixture of cultures, melodies and rhythms.
Later, around 1890, with the growth of cities, this sonorous effervescence took shape in New Orleans, Louisiana, more precisely in the Storyville neighborhood, in bars called Honky Tonks.
In this region, there was space for the development of folk music combined with American influences, which in turn were inspired by European references. Hence, several rhythms such as the ragtime, Blues and Spirituals.
From the combination of these rhythms and experiments, jazz originates which, like the blues, uses the "blue note", a specific musical note that gives the music a melancholy characteristic.
It was around the 20s that this musical aspect gained space in other places and became part of the cultural life of the elite as well.
In addition, during this period, new technologies and ways of communication appeared, such as radio, allowing jazz to spread to different parts of the planet.
Jazz Styles and Artists
The trajectory of jazz was marked by a lot of experimentation, sound mixtures and improvisation. This fact generated sub-genres, which appeared more or less in this chronological order:
swing and big bands
These are the first prominent jazz styles that emerged in the 1930s. Swing is now played on radios and encourages the strengthening of big bands, which were orchestras with various musicians and instruments.
Important names from that time are: Bix Beiderbecke, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, who at that time was already well known and earned the title of "jazz king".
bebop and hard bop
Bebop and hard bop are more "radical" jazz styles, with more complex and faster sounds. It is at this time that the jazz gains a "modernization", in the 50s. Major artists: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bill Evans.
cool jazz and soul jazz
These strands appear in opposition to previous styles. They have greater smoothness and longer melodic lines. Soul jazz has a lot of blues influence. A great artist of that time is Miles Davis.
free jazz
Free jazz appears at the end of the 50s with a more experimental style, free and uncommitted to sound symmetry. John Coltrane is an outstanding musician in this genre.
jazz fusion
From the 60s onwards, jazz began to mix with other rhythms, especially rock. Here we have, for example, names like Herbie Hancock and Frank Zappa.
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is a Latin American rhythm that mixes jazz with other instruments and rhythms such as salsa, merengue, mambo and samba.
Jazz Features
There are different styles of jazz, so their characteristics also change from one to another, however, we can say that, in general, these particularities remain:
- freedom;
- improvisation;
- individual interpretation;
- creativity;
- non-linear rhythms;
- dancing sound.
Jazz in Brazil
In Brazil, the emergence of jazz was, at first, very close to what was done in the USA. The style in the country was made as an imitation of North American jazz bands, as is the case of the band led by Severino Araújo, for example.
Later, in the late 50s, with the appearance of Bossa nova, there is also the improvisation, creativity and freedom so characteristic of jazz. In other words, a specifically Brazilian type of jazz music is created.
Important names of this trend in Brazil were: João Gilberto, Zimbo Trio, Luiz Eça, Hélio Delmiro, Victor Assis Brasil, Raul de Souza, Márcio Montarroyos, Rio Jazz Orchestra, Hermeto Pascoal and Egberto Gismonti.
You may also be interested:
- Music history
- history of samba
