Jazz music: features and characteristics. Directions and styles of jazz Types of jazz

After Christopher Columbus discovered a new continent and Europeans settled there, ships of human traders increasingly followed the shores of America.

Exhausted by hard work, homesick and suffering from the cruel treatment of the guards, the slaves found solace in music. Gradually, Americans and Europeans became interested in unusual melodies and rhythms. This is how jazz was born. What is jazz, and what are its features, we will consider in this article.

Features of the musical direction

Jazz refers to music of African American origin, which is based on improvisation (swing) and a special rhythmic construction (syncope). Unlike other areas where one person writes music and another performs, jazz musicians are also composers.

The melody is created spontaneously, the periods of writing, performance are separated by a minimum period of time. This is how jazz comes about. orchestra? This is the ability of musicians to adapt to each other. At the same time, everyone improvises their own.

The results of spontaneous compositions are stored in musical notation (T. Cowler, G. Arlen "Happy all day long", D. Ellington "Don't you know what I love?" etc.).

Over time, African music was synthesized with European. Melodies appeared that combined plasticity, rhythm, melodiousness and harmony of sounds (CHEATHAM Doc, Blues In My Heart, CARTER James, Centerpiece, etc.).

Directions

There are more than thirty directions of jazz. Let's consider some of them.

1. Blues. Translated from English, the word means "sadness", "melancholy". Blues was originally a solo lyric song by African Americans. Jazz-blues is a twelve-bar period corresponding to a three-line verse form. Blues compositions are performed at a slow pace, some understatement can be traced in the texts. blues - Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and others.

2. Ragtime. The literal translation of the name of the style is broken time. In the language of musical terms, "reg" denotes sounds that are additional between the beats of the measure. The direction appeared in the USA, after they were carried away by the works of F. Schubert, F. Chopin and F. Liszt overseas. The music of European composers was performed in the style of jazz. Later original compositions appeared. Ragtime is characteristic of the work of S. Joplin, D. Scott, D. Lamb and others.

3. Boogie-woogie. The style appeared at the beginning of the last century. The owners of inexpensive cafes needed musicians to play jazz. What is musical accompaniment requires the presence of an orchestra, of course, but it was expensive to invite a large number of musicians. The sound of different instruments was compensated by pianists, creating numerous rhythmic compositions. Boogie features:

• improvisation;
• virtuoso technique;
• special accompaniment: the left hand performs a motor ostinant configuration, the interval between bass and melody is two or three octaves;
• continuous rhythm;
• pedal exclusion.

Boogie-woogie was played by Romeo Nelson, Arthur Montana Taylor, Charles Avery and others.

style legends

Jazz is popular in many countries around the world. Everywhere there are stars, which are surrounded by an army of fans, but some names have become a real legend. They are known and loved throughout. Such musicians, in particular, include Louis Armstrong.

It is not known how the fate of a boy from a poor Negro quarter would have developed if Louis had not ended up in a correctional camp. Here, the future star was recorded in a brass band, however, the team did not play jazz. and how it is performed, the young man discovered much later. Armstrong gained worldwide fame thanks to diligence and perseverance.

Billie Holiday (real name Eleanor Fagan) is considered the founder of jazz singing. The singer reached the peak of popularity in the 50s of the last century, when she changed the scenes of nightclubs to the stage.

Life was not easy for the owner of a range of three octaves, Ella Fitzgerald. After the death of her mother, the girl ran away from home and led a not too decent lifestyle. The start of the singer's career was the performance at the Amateur Nights music competition.

George Gershwin is world famous. The composer created jazz works based on classical music. The unexpected manner of performance captivated listeners and colleagues. Concerts were invariably accompanied by applause. The most famous works of D. Gershwin are "Rhapsody in Blues" (co-authored with Fred Grof), the operas "Porgy and Bess", "An American in Paris".

Also popular jazz performers were and remain Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughn, Miles Davis and others.

Jazz in the USSR

The emergence of this musical trend in the Soviet Union is associated with the name of the poet, translator and theatergoer Valentin Parnakh. The first concert of a jazz band led by a virtuoso took place in 1922. Later A. Tsfasman, L. Utyosov, Y. Skomorovsky formed the direction of theatrical jazz, combining instrumental performance and operetta. E. Rozner and O. Lundstrem did a lot to popularize jazz music.

In the 40s of the last century, jazz was widely criticized as a phenomenon of bourgeois culture. In the 1950s and 1960s, attacks on performers ceased. Jazz ensembles were created both in the RSFSR and in other Union republics.

Today, jazz is performed without hindrance at concert venues and in clubs.

Understanding who is who in jazz is not so easy. The direction is commercially successful, and therefore often about the "only concert of the legendary Vasya Pupkin" they shout from all the cracks, and really important figures go into the shadows. Under the pressure of Grammy winners and advertising from Jazz radio, it is easy to lose focus and remain indifferent to style. If you want to learn how to understand this kind of music, and maybe even love it, learn the most important rule: do not trust anyone.

It is necessary to make judgments about new phenomena with caution, or like Hugues Panasier - the famous musicologist who drew a line and branded all jazz after the 50s, calling it "fake". In the end, he turned out to be wrong, but this did not affect the popularity of his book, The History of Genuine Jazz.

It is better to treat the new phenomenon with silent suspicion, so you will definitely pass for your own: snobbery and adherence to the old is one of the brightest characteristics of the subculture.

In conversations about jazz, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald are often mentioned - it would seem that you can't go wrong here. But such remarks betray the neophyte. These are emblematic figures, and if you can still talk about Fitzgerald in a suitable context, then Armstrong is the Charlie Chaplin of jazz. You won't talk to an arthouse movie buff about Charlie Chaplin, will you? And if you do, then at least not in the first place. Mentioning both famous names is possible in certain cases, but if you have nothing in your pocket besides these two aces, hold them and wait for the right situation.

In many directions there are fashionable and not very fashionable phenomena, but to the greatest extent this is characteristic of jazz. A mature hipster, used to looking for rare and strange things, will not understand why Czech jazz of the 40s is not interesting. It will not be possible to find something conditionally “unusual” and trump with your “deep erudition” here. In order to imagine the style in general terms, one should list its main directions since the end of the 19th century.

Ragtime and blues are sometimes called proto-jazz, and if the former, being not quite a complete form from a modern point of view, is interesting simply as a fact of music history, then the blues is still relevant.

Ragtime by Scott Joplin

And although researchers call the psychological state of Russians and a total sense of hopelessness the reason for such a surge of love for the blues in the 90s, in reality everything can be much simpler.

A selection of 100 popular blues songs

Classic boogie woogie

As in European culture, African Americans divided music into secular and spiritual, and if the blues belonged to the first group, then spiritual and gospel - to the second.

Spirituals are more austere than gospels and are performed by a choir of the faithful, often accompanied by even-numbered clapping—an important feature of all styles of jazz and a problem for many European listeners who clap out of place. The music of the Old World most often makes us nod to odd beats. In jazz, it's the other way around. Therefore, if you are not sure that you feel these second and fourth beats, which are unusual for a European, it is better to refrain from clapping. Or watch the performers themselves do it, and then try again.

Scene from the film "12 Years a Slave" with the performance of the classic spiritual

Contemporary spiritual by Take 6

Gospel songs were more often performed by one singer, they have more freedom than spirituals, so they became popular as a concert genre.

Classical gospel music performed by Mahalia Jackson

Modern gospel music from the film Joyful Noise

In the 1910s, traditional or New Orleans jazz took shape. The music from which it arose was performed by street orchestras, which were then very popular. The importance of instruments is growing sharply, an important event of the era is the emergence of jazz bands, small orchestras of 9–15 people. The success of the Negro bands motivated white Americans who created the so-called Dixielands.

Traditional jazz is associated with films about American gangsters. This is due to the fact that its heyday fell on the days of Prohibition and the Great Depression. One of the brightest representatives of the style is the already mentioned Louis Armstrong.

Distinctive features of the traditional jazz band are the steady position of the banjo, the leading position of the trumpet and the full participation of the clarinet. The last two instruments over time will replace the saxophone, which will become the permanent leader of such an orchestra. By the nature of the music, traditional jazz is more static.

Jelly Roll Morton Jazz Band

Modern Dixieland Marshall's Dixieland Jazz Band

What is wrong with jazz and why is it customary to say that no one can play this music?

It's all about her African origin. Despite the fact that by the middle of the 20th century whites had defended their right to this style, it is still widely believed that African Americans have a special sense of rhythm that allows them to create a feeling of swinging, which is called “swing” (from English to swing - “to swing "). It is risky to argue with this: most of the great white pianists from the 1950s to our times have become famous thanks to their direction or intellectual improvisations that betray deep musical erudition.

Therefore, if in a conversation you mentioned a white jazz player, you should not say something like “how great he swings” - after all, he swings either normally or not at all, such is reverse racism.

And the word "swing" itself is too worn out, it is better to pronounce it in the very last place, when it is probably appropriate.

Each jazz player must be able to perform "jazz standards" (main melodies, or, in other words, evergreen), which, however, are divided into orchestral and ensemble. For example, In the Mood is rather among the first.

In the Mood. Performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra

At the same time, the famous works of George Gershwin appear, which are considered both jazz and academic at the same time. These are Blues Rhapsody (or Blue Rhapsody), written in 1924, and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), famous for its Summertime aria. Prior to Gershwin, jazz harmonies were used by such composers as Charles Ives and Antonin Dvorak (symphony "From the New World").

George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Aria Summertime. Academically performed by Maria Callas

George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Aria Summertime. Jazzed by Frank Sinatra

George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Aria Summertime. Rock version. Performed by Janis Joplin

George Gershwin. Blues Rhapsody. Performed by Leonard Bernstein and his orchestra

One of the most famous Russian composers, like Gershwin, writing in the jazz style is Nikolai Kapustin. .

Both camps look askance at such experiments: jazz musicians are convinced that a written work without improvisation is no longer jazz “by definition”, and academic composers consider jazz expressive means too trivial to work with them seriously.

However, classical performers play Kapustin with pleasure and even try to improvise, while their counterparts act wiser, not encroaching on someone else's territory. Academic pianists who put their improvisations on public display have long been a meme in jazz circles.

Since the 1920s, the number of cult and iconic figures in the history of the direction has been growing, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to put these numerous names in your head. However, some can be recognized by their characteristic timbre or manner of performance. One of these memorable singers was Billie Holiday.

All of Me. Performed by Billie Holiday

In the 50s, a new era begins, called "modern jazz". The musicologist Yug Panasier, mentioned above, denied it from her. This direction opens with the bebop style: its characteristic feature is high speed and frequent change of harmony, and therefore it requires exceptional performing skills, which were possessed by such outstanding personalities as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

Bebop was created as an elite genre. Any musician from the street could always come to a jam session - an evening of improvisations, so the pioneers of bebop introduced fast tempos to get rid of amateurs and weak professionals. This snobbery is partly inherent in fans of such music, who consider their favorite direction the pinnacle of jazz development. It is customary to treat bebop with respect, even if you don’t understand anything about it.

Giant Steps. Performed by John Coltrane

A special chic is to admire the outrageous, deliberately rude manner of Thelonious Monk's performance, who, according to gossip, perfectly played complex academic works, but carefully concealed it.

Round Midnight. Performed by Thelonious Monk

By the way, the discussion of gossip about jazz performers is not considered shameful - rather, on the contrary, it indicates a deep involvement and hints at a great listening experience. Therefore, you should know that Miles Davis's drug addiction affected his stage behavior, Frank Sinatra had connections with the mafia, and there is a church named after John Coltrane in San Francisco.

Mural "Dancing Saints" from a church in San Francisco.

Along with bebop, another style was born within the framework of the same direction - cool jazz(cool jazz), which is distinguished by a "cold" sound, moderate character and unhurried pace. One of its founders was Lester Young, but there are also many white musicians in this niche: Dave Brubeck , Bill Evans(not to be confused with Gil Evans), Stan Getz and etc.

take five. Performed by the Dave Brubeck Ensemble

If the 50s, despite the reproaches of conservatives, opened the way for experiments, then in the 60s they become the norm. At this time, Bill Evans is recording two albums of arrangements of classical works with a symphony orchestra, Stan Kenton, representative progressive jazz, creates rich orchestrations, the harmony in which is compared with Rachmaninov's, and in Brazil there is its own version of jazz, completely different from other styles - bossanova .

Granados. Jazz arrangement of the work "Maja and the Nightingale" by the Spanish composer Granados. Performed by Bill Evans with symphony orchestra

Malaguena. Performed by the Stan Kenton Orchestra

Girl from Ipanema. Performed by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz

Loving bossanova is as easy as loving minimalism in modern academic music.

Thanks to its unobtrusive and "neutral" sound, Brazilian jazz has found its way into elevators and hotel lobbies as background music, although this does not detract from the significance of the style as such. Claiming that you love bossa nova is worth it only if you really know its representatives quite well.

An important turn was outlined in the popular orchestral style - symphojazz. In the 1940s, jazz, powdered with academic symphonic sound, became a fashionable phenomenon and a standard of the golden mean between two styles with a completely different background.

Luck Be a Lady. Performed by Frank Sinatra with Jazz Symphony Orchestra

In the 1960s, the sound of the sympho-jazz orchestra lost its novelty, which led to Stan Kenton's experimentation with harmony, Bill Evans' arrangements, and Gil Evans' themed albums such as Sketches of Spain and Miles Ahead.

Sketches of Spain. Performed by Miles Davis with the Gil Evans Orchestra

Experiments in the field of symphonic jazz are still relevant, the most interesting projects in recent years in this niche are the Metropole Orkest, The Сinematic Orchestra and Snarky Puppy.

Breathe. Performed by The Cinematic Orchestra

Gretel. Performed by Snarky Puppy and Metropole Orkest (Grammy Award, 2014)

The bebop and cool jazz traditions have merged into hard bop, an improved version of bebop, although it can be difficult to tell one from the other by ear. Prominent performers in this style are The Jazz Messengers, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey and some other musicians who originally played bebop.

hard bop. Performed by The Jazz Messengers Orchestra

Moanin'. Performed by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

Rich improvisations at a fast pace required ingenuity, which led to searches in the field fret. So born modal jazz. It is often singled out as an independent style, although similar improvisations are also found in other genres. The most popular modal piece was "So What?" Miles Davis.

So What? Performed by Miles Davis

While brilliant jazz players were figuring out how to further complicate an already complex music, blind authors and performers Ray Charles and walked the path of the heart, combining jazz, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues in their work.

Fingertips. Performed by Stevie Wonder

What'd I say. Performed by Ray Charles

At the same time, jazz organists are loudly declaring themselves, playing music on the Hammond electric organ.

Jimmy Smith

In the mid-60s, soul jazz appeared, which combined the democratism of soul with the intellectualism of bebop, but historically it is usually associated with the latter, silent about the significance of the former. The most popular soul jazz figure was Ramsey Lewis.

The 'In' Crowd. Performed by the Ramsey Lewis Trio

If from the beginning of the 50s the division of jazz into two branches was only felt, then in the 70s it was already possible to speak of this as an irrefutable fact. The pinnacle of the elite direction was

Jazz is a musical movement that originated in the late 19th century in the United States. From the popular music of the masses to a highly intellectual art, jazz has had and continues to have a huge impact on the musical and cultural traditions of the whole world.

In the 1920s, jazz was the epitome of popular music in the United States, but it was on the other end of the scale of musical values, as opposed to commercial music. Having gone through the mainstream stages on its way of development, merging with other genres of music from different cultures, jazz in the middle of the 20th century took on modern forms, turning into music for intellectuals.

Nowadays, jazz belongs to the realm of high art, is considered a prestigious musical genre, continuing to influence modern music, while borrowing some elements from it for its own development (for example, elements of hip-hop and so on).

History of Jazz

The history of jazz originates from the end of the 19th century. At its core, jazz is a combination of a number of musical cultures and national traditions of African tribes brought to the United States as slaves. Jazz is characterized by the complex rhythm of African music and European harmony.

Jazz originated in New Orleans, a city in the south of the United States. The first well-known style of jazz was "New Orleans", which is considered traditional in relation to other directions. In the first two decades of the 20th century, jazz was the regional music. Gradually, it spread to other regions of the United States. This was facilitated by cruise ships that rose up the Mississippi. To amuse the public, jazz orchestras played on the ships, the music of which appealed to the general population. So, jazz gradually got into other specifically St. Louis, Kansas City, and Memphis.

Jazz musicians from New Orleans also went on tour in the US, even reaching Chicago. One of the famous jazz musicians of the time, Jerry Roll Morton, had performed regularly in Chicago since 1914. A little later, a whole white jazz orchestra (Dixieland) under the direction of Tom Brown moved to Chicago. By the beginning of the 1920s, the center of jazz development in the USA moved to Chicago and a new style appeared - "Chicago".

The end of the era of pure jazz is considered to be 1928, the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States. During this period, many people were left without work, including musicians of jazz ensembles. Jazz itself as a musical direction ceased to exist in its pure form, remaining only in some cities in the south of the country.

During the Chicago period of the development of jazz, one of the main jazz musicians, Louis Armstrong, gained popularity.

Pure jazz was replaced by swing - a kind of jazz music, which was performed by large ensembles of 10 or more people, big bands. Swing is an orchestral style of music. He gained wide popularity throughout the country. During this period, jazz began to listen and play in almost every city in the United States. Swing is more of a dance style than pure jazz. That is why its popularity was wider. The swing era lasted from the early 30s to the mid 40s of the 20th century. The most popular swing performer in the US was the orchestra conducted by Benny Goodman. In addition, orchestras with the participation of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and other jazzmen were also popular.

Swing lost its popularity during the difficult wartime. This was due to the lack of personnel for the acquisition of huge big bands and the economic inexpediency such teams.

Swing had a great influence on the further development of jazz, in particular on bebop, blues and pop music.

Fifteen years later, swing was revived by the efforts of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, who recreated their big bands from the style's heyday. In addition, the swing revival was influenced by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

Bop

In the early 1940s, a new direction appeared in the jazz environment in the USA - bebop. This is fast and complex music, which is characterized by improvisations based on the high skill of the performers. Among the founders of the style are Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. Bebop is a kind of reaction of jazz musicians to the popularity of swing and an attempt to protect their compositions from overplaying by amateurs by complicating the music.

Bebop is considered to be an avant-garde style of jazz, difficult for the audience, accustomed to the simplicity of swing. Another difference is the focus on the soloist, his virtuoso mastery of his instrument. Bebop is completely anti-commercial by nature. At this time, there is a shift in the development of jazz from popular music towards music for the elite.

Bebop gave modern jazz small orchestras, the so-called combos, consisting of three people. He also discovered such names as Chick Corea, Michael Legrand, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane and others.

Further development of jazz

Bebop did not replace swing, it existed in parallel with big band music, which was transformed into the mainstream. Famous orchestras existed in the post-war period. Their music has received a new development, having absorbed the best traditions of other jazz styles and trends, as well as popular music of various . At present, performances by the orchestras of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, as well as the Chicago Jazz Ensemble and the Smithsonian Orchestra are known all over the world.

Other styles of jazz

Jazz has been constantly transformed under the influence of other musical trends, forming new trends:

• cool jazz - the complete opposite of bebop was embodied in cool jazz, the detached and "cold" sound of which was first embodied in music by Miles Davis;
• progressive jazz - developed in parallel with bebop, it was also an attempt to move away from big band music by improving compositions;
• hard bop - a kind of bebop with more reliance on the blues, developed in the northeast of the United States (Detroit, New York, Philadelphia), the compositions are more rigid and heavy, but no less aggressive and demanding on the skill of the performers;
• modal jazz - experiments by Miles Davis and John Coltrane with an approach to jazz melody;
• soul jazz;
• Jazz funk;
• free jazz - an innovative movement, one of the most controversial trends in jazz, considered to be the founders of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, is characterized by changes in the structure and feeling of the musical component, the rejection of the chord sequence, as well as atonality;
• fusion - the fusion of jazz with different areas of music - pop, rock, soul, funk, rhythm and blues and others influenced the emergence of the fusion or jazz-rock style;
• postbop - further development of bebop bypassing free jazz and other jazz experiments;
• acid jazz is a new concept in jazz music, jazz with a touch of funk, hip-hop and groove.

Jazz festivals in the USA

In the United States, the birthplace of jazz, various festivals dedicated to this style of music are held. The most famous is the New Orleans Jazz Festival, which takes place in late spring in New Orleans on Congo Square.

Jazz is rightfully considered the most difficult musical form to perceive. Listening to jazz requires the brain to be active in order to determine all musical progressions and harmonic constructions. Thus, jazz is considered one of the instruments that influence intellectual abilities.

The content of the article

JAZZ(English jazz), a generic concept that defines several types of musical art, differing from each other in style, artistic tasks, and role in public life. The term jazz (originally jass) did not occur until the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, it can also come from the French jaser (with the meaning “to chat”, which is preserved in American slang: jazz - “flies”, “nonsense”), and from which - or a word in one of the African languages ​​that had a certain erotic meaning, especially since in the natural phrase jazz dance ("jazz dance") the word dance carried the same meaning from Shakespeare's time. In the highest circles of the New and Old Worlds, the word, which later became a purely musical term, was associated with something noisy, rude, dirty. English writer Richard Aldington in the preface to the novel Death of a hero, in which he describes the "trench truth" and the moral loss of the individual after the First World War, calls his novel "jazzy".

Origins.

Jazz appeared as a result of a long interaction of various layers of musical culture throughout North America, wherever Negro slaves from Africa (mainly Western) had to master the culture of their white masters. These are religious hymns - spirituals, and the most common form of everyday music (brass band), and rural folklore (negroes - skiffle), and most importantly - salon piano music ragtime - ragtime (literally "ragged rhythm").

Minstrel show.

This music was distributed by wandering "minstrel theaters" (not to be confused with the medieval European term) - minstrel shows, colorfully described by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and musical by Jerome Kern Showboat. Minstrel show troupes, in which Negro life was depicted in a caricature form, consisted of whites (the first sound film also belongs to this genre). jazz singer, in which the role of a Negro was played by the Lithuanian Jew Al Jolson, and the film itself had nothing to do with jazz as an art), and from Negro musicians, in this case forced to parody themselves.

Ragtime.

Thanks to the minstrel show, the audience of European origin learned about what would become jazz, and she adopted piano ragtime as her own art. It is no coincidence that the writer E. Doctorow and the film director M. Foreman turned the actual musical concept of “torn rhythm” into “torn time” - a symbol of those changes that in the Old World were referred to as “the end of the century”. By the way, the drum character of ragtime (coming from typical European late Romantic pianism) is greatly exaggerated due to the fact that the mechanical piano became the main means of its distribution, which did not convey the subtleties of piano technique. Among the Negro ragtime songwriters were serious composers such as Scott Joplin. But they became interested only seventy years later, after the success of the action movie. Sting(1973), the soundtrack of which was based on the compositions of Joplin.

Blues.

Finally, there would be no jazz without the blues (blues is originally a collective plural, denoting a state of sadness, melancholy, despondency; the concept of “suffering” acquires the same double meaning for us, however, denoting a completely different musical genre). Blues is a solo (rarely duet) song, the peculiarity of which is not only in a specific musical form, but in a vocal-instrumental character. The formative principle inherited from Africa - a short question of the soloist and the same short answer of the choir (call & response, in choral form it appears in spiritual hymns: the “question” of the preacher - the “answer” of the parishioners) - in the blues turned into a vocal-instrumental principle: the author - the performer asks a question (and repeats it in the second line) and answers himself, most often on the guitar (less often on the banjo or piano). Blues is the cornerstone of modern pop music, from black rhythm and blues to rock music.

archaic jazz.

In jazz, its origins merged into a single channel, which happened in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Often, separate streams arbitrarily connected with each other: for example, according to one of the African traditions, brass bands played funeral marches on the way to the cemetery, and cheerful dances on the way back. In small pubs, itinerant blues writers sang to the accompaniment of the piano (the style of playing the blues on the piano in the late 1920s would turn into an independent musical genre of boogie-woogie), typically European salon orchestras included songs and dances from their minstrel shows in their repertoire, cakewalks (or cakewalks, cake-walk - dance to ragtime music). Europe recognized ragtime precisely as an accompaniment to the latter (the famous puppet cakewalk Claude Debussy). And characteristically African-American plastics produced at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. no less, if not more, impressive than syncopated salon music). By the way, the records of the brass band of one of the Russian imperial regiments with a keyquoke have been preserved. Negro's dream. All these combinations are conditionally called archaic jazz.

If necessary, ragtime pianists, along with brass bands, accompanied blues vocalists and female vocalists, and they, in turn, included entertainment and salon repertoire in their programs. Such music can already be considered jazz, even if the first groups called themselves, as in the famous song, and then in the film musical by Irving Berlin, “ragtime orchestras”.

New Orleans.

It is believed that the most favorable circumstances accompanied the formation of jazz in the port city of New Orleans. But we must keep in mind that jazz was born wherever there was an interpenetration of African-American and European cultures.

In New Orleans, two African-American cultures coexisted side by side: the relatively free Creoles (French-speaking Negroes, usually Catholics) and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant slaves freed after the American Civil War. Although the civil liberties of French-speaking Creoles were also relative, they still had access to classical culture of European origin, which, say, even immigrants from Europe were deprived of in puritanical New England. The opera house, for example, opened in New Orleans much earlier than in the Puritan cities of the US North. In New Orleans, public entertainment was allowed on holidays - dances, carnivals. Not the last role was played by the presence in New Orleans of the mandatory “red lights” quarter for the port city - Storyville.

Brass bands in New Orleans, as in Europe, were an integral part of urban life. But in the African-American environment, the brass band has changed radically. From a rhythmic point of view, their music was as primitive as European dances and marches, and had nothing to do with future jazz. The main melodic material was rationally and compactly distributed among the three instruments: all three played the same theme - the cornet (trumpet) led it more or less close to the original, the mobile clarinet seemed to meander around the main melodic line, and the trombone from time to time inserted rare but powerful replicas. The leaders of the most famous ensembles not only in New Orleans, but throughout the state of Louisiana were Bank Johnson, Freddie Keppard and Charles "Buddy" Bolden. However, the original records of that time have not been preserved, and it is no longer possible to verify the authenticity of the nostalgic memories of New Orleans veterans (including Louis Armstrong).

Even before the outbreak of the First World War, ensembles of "white" musicians appeared who called their music "jass" ("ss" was soon replaced by "zz", since the word "jass" easily turned into not very decent, it was enough to erase the first the letter "j"). The fact that New Orleans was famous as a center of "resort" entertainment is proved at least by the fact that the New Orleans Rhythm Kings ensemble with the popular pianist-composer Elmer Shebel was popular in Chicago, but there was not a single New Orleans in it. Over time, the "white orchestras" began to call themselves - in contrast to the Negro - Dixieland, i.e. just "southern". One such ensemble, the Original Dixieland Jass Band, ended up in New York in early 1917 and made the first recordings of what can definitely be considered jazz, not only in name. The record was released with two things: Livery Stable Blues and Dixieland Jass Band One-Step.

Chicago.

In parallel, a jazz environment was taking shape in Chicago, where many New Orleans settled after the United States entered World War I in 1917 and martial law was introduced in New Orleans. Trumpeter Joe "King" Oliver's "Creole Jazz Band" was especially famous (although there was only one real Creole among its members). Fame "Creole Jazz Band" brought a coordinated performance of two cornets at once - Oliver himself and his young student Louis Armstrong. The first records of Oliver-Armstrong, recorded in 1923 with the famous "breaks" of two cornets, became jazz classics.

"Age of Jazz".

The 1920s saw the beginning of the Jazz Age. Louis Armstrong asserts the priority of the improvisational soloist with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles; pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton gains fame in New Orleans; another New Orleanian, Creole clarinetist-saxophonist Sidney Bechet, spreads the glory of jazz in the Old World (he toured including in Soviet Russia in 1926). The famous Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet Bechet was impressed by precisely that characteristically "French" vibration, which the whole world would later recognize in the voice of Edith Piaf. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the first jazzman from the Old World who influenced Americans was the Belgian gypsy Django Reinhardt, a guitarist who lived in France.

New York is becoming proud of its own jazz forces - the Harlem orchestras of Fletcher Henderson, Louis Russell (Armstrong himself worked with both) and Duke Ellington, who moved here in 1926 from Washington and quickly won a leading position in the famous Cotton Club.

Improvisation.

It was in the 1920s that the main principle of jazz was gradually formed - not a dogma, not a form, but improvisation. It is believed that in New Orleans Jazz / Dixieland it is of a collective nature, although this is not entirely accurate, since in fact the source material (theme) is not yet separated from its development. In essence, New Orleans musicians were repeating by ear the simplest forms of European songs, dances, and black blues.

In the Armstrong ensembles, with the participation, first of all, of the outstanding pianist Earl Hines, the formation of the jazz form of the theme with variations (theme - solo improvisations - theme) began, where the "unit of improvisation" is chorus (in Russian terminology "square"), as if a variant of the original themes of exactly the same (or in the future - related) harmonic construction. Whole schools of black and white musicians took advantage of Armstrong's discoveries in the Chicago period; white Bix Beiderbeck composed compositions in the spirit of Armstrong, but they turned out to be surprisingly close to musical impressionism (and had characteristic names like In A Mist – In a foggy haze). Virtuoso pianist Art Tatum relied more on the harmonic scheme of the square than on the melody of the original theme. Saxophonists Column Hawkins, Lester Young, Benny Carter transferred their achievements to monophonic wind instruments.

In Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, for the first time, a system of "support" for a solo improviser was developed: the orchestra was divided into three sections - rhythmic (piano, guitar, double bass and drums), saxophone and brass (trumpets, trombones). Against the background of the constant pulsation of the rhythm section, saxophones and trumpets with trombones exchanged brief repetitive "formulas" - riffs developed in the practice of folk blues. The riff was both harmonic and rhythmic.

1930s.

This formula was adopted by virtually all the big bands that had already formed in the 1930s, after the economic crisis of 1929. Actually, the career of the "king of swing" - Benny Goodman - began with several arrangements by Fletcher Henderson. But even Negro jazz historians admit that Goodman's orchestra, originally composed of white musicians, played better than Henderson's own orchestra. One way or another, but the interaction between the Negro swing orchestras of Andy Kirk, Jimmy Lunsford, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and white orchestras was getting better: Goodman played the Count Basie repertoire, Charlie Barnet copied Ellington, and the group of clarinetist Woody Herman was even called the “blues playing orchestra” . There were also very popular orchestras of the Dorsey brothers (the black Cy Oliver worked there), Artie Shaw (he first introduced the fourth group - strings), Glenn Miller (with the famous "crystal chord" - crystal chorus, when a clarinet plays along with saxophones; for example, in the famous moonlight serenade- the keynote of the second film with Miller, Bandwives). First film - Sun Valley Serenade- was filmed before the US entered World War II and was among the spoils of war obtained by the Red Army in Germany. Therefore, it was this musical comedy that was destined to personify almost the entire art of jazz for two or three generations of post-war Soviet youth. The fact that the perfectly natural pairing of clarinets and saxophones sounded revolutionary shows how standardized the production of swing-era arrangers was. It is no coincidence that by the end of the pre-war decade, even the "king of swing" Goodman himself, it became clear that creativity in large orchestras - big bands - is giving way to a standardized routine. Goodman reduced the number of his musicians to six and began to regularly invite Negro musicians to his sextet - trumpeter Cootie Williams from the Ellington Orchestra and young electric guitarist Charlie Christian, which in those days was a very bold step. Suffice it to say that Goodman's colleague, pianist and composer Raymond Scott, even composed a piece called When Kuti left Duke.

Formally, even Duke Ellington agreed with the generally accepted division of the orchestra into three groups, however, in his instrumentation, he proceeded not so much from the scheme as from the capabilities of the musicians themselves (it was said about him: in a jazz score, instead of instrument names, there are names of musicians; even his three-minute virtuoso Ellington pieces called Concerto for Cootie mentioned by Cootie Williams). It was in Ellington's work that it became clear that improvisation is an artistic principle.

The 1930s was also the heyday of the Broadway musical, which provided jazz with the so-called. evergreens (literally "evergreen") - separate numbers that turned into a standard jazz repertoire. By the way, the concept of "standard" in jazz does not contain anything reprehensible, it is the name of either a popular melody or a specially written theme for improvisation. The standard is, so to speak, an analogue of the philharmonic concept of "repertoire classics".

In addition, the 1930s is the only period when most of all popular music, if not jazz (or swing, as they said then), then at least was created under its influence.

Naturally, the creative potential that was formed within the swing orchestras of improvising musicians, by definition, could not be realized in entertainment swing orchestras - such as Cab Calloway's orchestra. It is no coincidence that jam sessions play such a large role in jazz - meetings of musicians in a narrow circle, as a rule, late at night, after work, especially on the occasion of tours of colleagues from other places.

Bebop - bop.

At such meetings, young soloists from various bands - including Charlie Christian, guitarist from the Benny Goodman Sextet, drummer Kenny Clarke, pianist Thelonious Monk, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie - gathered in a Harlem club back in the early 1940s. By the end of World War II, it became clear that a new style of jazz had been born. From a purely musical point of view, it was no different from what was played in swing big bands. The external form was completely new - it was “music for musicians”, there were no “instructions” for dancing in the form of a clear rhythm, loud chords at the beginning and end, there were no simple and recognizable melodies in the new music. The musicians played popular Broadway songs and blues, but instead of the familiar melodies of these songs, they deliberately used improvisations. Trumpeter Gillespie is said to have been the first to call what he did with his colleagues "ribop" or "bebop" or "bop" for short. At the same time, the jazzman began to turn from an entertainer into a figure of social significance, which coincided with the birth of the beatnik movement. Gillespie brought into fashion glasses in a massive frame (at first even with glasses without diopters), instead of a hat, he takes a special jargon, in particular, the word cool instead of hot, which is still fashionable. But the main impulse for young New Yorkers came when alto saxophonist Charlie Parker from Kansas City (he played in Jay McShann's big band) joined the company of boper. Brilliantly gifted, Parker went much further than his colleagues and contemporaries. By the end of the 1950s, even such innovators as Monk and Gillespie returned to their roots - to Negro music, while the discoveries of Parker and some of his associates (drummer Max Roach, pianist Bud Powell, trumpeter Fats Navarro) still attract the attention of musicians.

Cool.

In the 1940s in the United States, due to copyright litigation, the musicians' union prohibited instrumentalists from recording records; in reality, only recordings of vocalists accompanied by one piano or a vocal ensemble came out. When the ban was lifted (1944), it became clear that the "microphone" singer (for example, Frank Sinatra) was becoming the central figure of pop music. Bebop attracted attention as "club" music, but soon lost its audience. But in a softened form and already under the name "cool" new music has taken root in elite clubs. Yesterday's boppers, such as the young Negro trumpeter Miles Davis, were assisted by solid musicians, in particular Gil Evans, pianist and arranger of Claude Thornhill's swing orchestra. In Miles Davis' Capitol-Nonet (named after the Capitol company that recorded this nonet, later reissued under the title Birth of the Cool) both white and black musicians “passed practice” together - saxophonists Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan, as well as black pianist and composer John Lewis, who also played with Charlie Parker, and later founded the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Another pianist whose name is associated with the cool, the blind Lenny Tristano, was the first to use the possibilities of the recording studio (speeding up the tape, overlaying one record on another). Tristano was the first to record his spontaneous, non-square-shaped improvisations. Concert works for big bands (various in style - from neoclassicism to serialism) under the general name "progressive" could not prolong the agony of swing and did not have a public resonance (although among the authors were young American composers Milton Babbitt, Pete Rugolo, Bob Grettinger). At least one of the Progressive orchestras—led by pianist Stan Kenton—certainly outlived its time and enjoyed some popularity.

West Coast.

Many Kenton orchestra members served Hollywood, so that the more Europeanized style of "cool" (with academic instruments - horn, oboe, bassoon and the corresponding manner of sound production, and to a certain extent the use of polyphonic imitation forms) was called "West coast" (West coast). ). The Shorty Rogers Octet (of which Igor Stravinsky spoke highly), the Shelley Mann and Bud Shank Ensembles, the Dave Brubeck Quartets (with saxophonist Paul Desmond) and Gerry Mulligan (with white trumpeter Chet Baker and Negro Art Farmer).

Back in the 1920s, the historical ties between the African-American population of the United States and the black population of Latin America affected, but only after World War II did jazzmen (primarily Dizzy Gillespie) begin to consciously use Latin American rhythms, they even talked about an independent direction - Afro-Cuban jazz.

In the late 1930s, an attempt was made to restore old New Orleans jazz under the names New Orleans Renaissance and Dixieland Revival. Traditional jazz, as all varieties of the New Orleans style and Dixieland (and even swing) were later called, became widespread in Europe and almost merged with the urban household music of the Old World - the famous three "B"s in the UK - Acker Bilk, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball (the latter became famous for the Dixieland version Moscow evenings at the very beginning of the 1960s). In the wake of the Dixieland revival in the UK, there was also a fashion for archaic ensembles of home-made instruments - the skiffle, with which the members of the Beatles quartet began their careers.

In the United States, entrepreneurs George Wayne (organizer of the famous 1950s jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island) and Norman Grantz supported (and actually shaped) the idea of ​​the mainstream - classical jazz, built according to a proven pattern (collectively played theme - solo improvisations - reprise of the theme) and based on the expressive means of the 1930s with separate, carefully selected techniques of later styles. The mainstream in this sense includes, for example, the musicians of Granz's enterprise "Jazz at the Philharmonic". In a broader sense, mainstream is virtually all jazz until the early 1960s, including bebop and its later varieties.

Late 1950s - early 1960s

- one of the most fruitful periods in the history of jazz. With the advent of rock and roll, instrumental improvisation was finally pushed to the sidelines of pop music, and jazz as a whole began to realize its place in culture: there were clubs in which it was customary to listen more than dance (one of them was even called "Birdland" , nicknamed Charlie Parker), festivals (often outdoors), record companies created special branches for jazz - "labels", and an independent recording industry arose (for example, Riverside, which began with a brilliantly compiled anthology of jazz history). Even earlier, in the 1930s, specialized magazines began to appear (“Down Beat” in the USA, various illustrated monthlys in Sweden, France, and in the 1950s in Poland). Jazz, as it were, splits into light, club, and serious, concert. The continuation of the "progressive" was the "third trend", an attempt to combine jazz improvisation with the forms and performing resources of symphonic and chamber music. All currents converged on the "Modern Jazz Quartet", the main experimental laboratory for the synthesis of jazz and "classics". However, the enthusiasts of the "third current" hurried; they wished for reality, believing that there was already a generation of symphony orchestra players familiar enough with jazz practice. The "third current", as well as any other direction in jazz, still has its adherents, and in some music schools in the US and Europe, performing groups are created from time to time ("Orchestra USA", "American Philharmonic "Jack Elliot) and even relevant courses are given (in particular, by pianist Ran Blake). The "Third Current" found apologists in Europe, especially after the performance of the "Modern Jazz Quartet" in the center of the world musical avant-garde Donaueschingen (FRG) in 1954.

On the other hand, the best swing big bands competed with pop music in the field of dance music. There were also new directions in light jazz music. Thus, the Brazilian guitarist Lorindo Almeida, who moved to the United States in the early 1950s, tried to convince his colleagues that it was possible to improvise based on the Brazilian samba rhythm. However, only after the tour of the Sten Getz quartet in Brazil does the “jazz samba” appear, which in Brazil is given the name “bossa nova”. Bossa nova actually became the first signs of the future New World music.

The mainstream in jazz of the 1950s and 1960s remains bebop - already called hard bop (heavy, energetic bop; at one time they tried to introduce the concept of “neo-bop”), updated with cool improvisational and composer finds. In the same period, an event occurred that had very serious aesthetic consequences, including for jazz. Singer-organist-saxophonist Ray Charles was the first to connect the incompatible - the structures (in vocal music also of lyrical content) of the blues and the question-answer microstructure associated only with the pathos of spiritual chants. This direction receives the name “Soul” in Negro culture (the concept, in the radical 1960s, which became the synonym for the words “Negro”, “Black”, “African American”, etc.); the concentrated content of all African-American features in jazz and black pop music has been called "funky".

At that time, hard bop and jazz soul were opposed to each other (sometimes even within the same group, for example, the Adderley brothers; one - saxophonist Julian "Cannonball", considered himself a follower of hard bop, the other - cornetist Nat - a follower of soul jazz). The centerpiece of hard bop, this modern mainstream academy, was (until the death in 1990 of its leader drummer Art Blakey) the Jazz Messengers quintet.

A series of records by the Gil Evans Orchestra - a kind of trumpet concertos by Miles Davis with an orchestra, released in the late 1950s and early 1960s, fully corresponded to the aesthetics of the cool of the 1940s, and Miles Davis recordings of the mid-1960s (in particular, the album Miles Smiles), i.e. the apotheosis of the updated bebop - hard bop, appeared when the jazz avant-garde was already in fashion - the so-called. free jazz.

Free jazz.

Already in the works on one of the orchestral albums of trumpeter Davis ( Porgy & Bess, 1960), the arranger Evans suggested that the trumpeter improvise based not on a harmonic sequence of a certain duration - a square, but on a certain scale - a mode (mode), also not random, but extracted from the same theme, but not the chord accompaniment, but rather the melody itself. The principle of modality, lost by European music in the Renaissance, but still underlying all the professional music of Asia (mugham, raga, dastan, etc.), opened up truly limitless possibilities for enriching jazz with the experience of world musical culture. And Davis and Evans did not fail to use it, and on the material of Spanish (ie, essentially, Euro-Asian) flamenco, which was ideally suited for this purpose.

Davis' colleague, saxophonist John Coltrane, turned to India, Coltrane's colleague, Eric Dolphy, who died early and brilliantly gifted saxophonist and flutist, turned to the European musical avant-garde (the title of his play is noteworthy Gazzeloni- in honor of the Italian flutist, music performer Luigi Nono and Pierre Boulez).

In parallel, in the same 1960, two quartets - Eric Dolphy and alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman (with trumpeters Don Cherry and Freddie Hubbard, double bassists Charlie Hayden and Scott La Faro) - are recording an album free jazz (free jazz), defiantly decorated with a reproduction of the painting White light famous abstract artist Jackson Pollock. The stream of collective consciousness, lasting approximately 40 minutes, was a spontaneous, defiantly unrehearsed (although two versions were recorded) improvisation by eight musicians, and only in the middle did everyone converge for a short time in a pre-written unison by Coleman. After "summing up" modal soul jazz and hard bop on a very successful album in all respects A Love Supreme(including commercially - 250 thousand records were sold), John Coltrane, however, followed in the footsteps of Coleman, recording the program Ascension (Ascension) with the black avant-garde team (including, by the way, the Negro saxophonist from Copenhagen, John Chikai). In the UK, free jazz was also promoted by the black West Indian alto saxophonist Joe Harriot. In addition to Great Britain, an independent school of free jazz has developed in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. In other countries, spontaneous collective improvisation turned out to be a temporary fad, a fashion for the avant-garde (the 1960s was the last period of the experimental avant-garde in academic music as well); at the same time, there was a transition from the aesthetics of innovation at any cost to a postmodern dialogue with the past. It can be said that free jazz (together with other currents of the jazz avant-garde) is the first phenomenon in world jazz in which the Old World was in no way inferior to the New. It is no coincidence that many American avant-garde artists, in particular San Ra with his big band, for a long time (almost until the end of the 1960s) "hid out" in Europe. A combined team of European avant-garde artists in 1968 recorded a project far ahead of its time machine gun, in the UK, the "Spontaneous Music Ensemble" arose and the principles of spontaneous improvisation were first theoretically formulated (by the guitarist and leader of the ongoing project company Derek Bailey). In the Netherlands there was an association "Instant Composers Pool", in Germany - the orchestra of Alexander von Schlippenbach "Globe Unity", the first jazz opera was recorded by international efforts Escalator Over the Hill Carla Blay.

But only a few - among them pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton - remained true to the principles of "storm and stress" of the turn of the 1950s and 1960s.

At the same time, Negro avant-gardists - political radicals and followers of John Coltrane (in fact, Coltrane himself, who died in 1967) - Archie Schepp, the Aylers brothers, Pharoah Sanders - returned to moderate modal forms of improvisation, often of oriental origin (for example, Jozef Lateef , Don Cherry). They were followed by yesterday's radicals like Carla Blay, Don Ellis, Chick Corea, who easily switched to electrified jazz-rock.

Jazz rock.

The symbiosis of "cousins" of jazz and rock music had to wait a long time. The first attempts at rapprochement were made not even by jazzmen, but by rockers - musicians of the so-called. brass rock "and - American Chicago groups, British bluesmen led by guitarist John McLaughlin. Jazz-rock was independently approached outside of English-speaking countries, for example, Zbigniew Namyslovsky in Poland.

All eyes were on trumpeter Miles Davis, once again setting jazz down a perilous path. During the second half of the 1960s, Davis gradually approached the electric guitar, keyboard synthesizers and rock rhythms. In 1970 he released an album Bitches Brew with several keyboardists and McLaughlin on electric guitar. Throughout the 1970s, the development of jazz-rock (aka fusion) was determined by the musicians who took part in the recording of this album - keyboardist Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter created the Weather Report group, John McLaughlin - the Mahavishnu Orchestra quintet, pianist Chick Corea - Return to Forever Ensemble, drummer Tony Williams and organist Larry Young - Lifetime Quartet, pianist and keyboardist Herbie Hancock participated in several projects at once. Jazz again, but at a new level, is moving closer to soul and funk (Hancock and Corea, for example, participate in the recordings of singer Stevie Wonder). Even the outstanding pioneer of the 1950s tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins switches to funky pop music for a while.

However, by the end of the 1970s, there was also a "counter" movement towards the restoration of "acoustic" jazz - both avant-garde (the famous "Attic" festival of Sam Rivers in 1977) and hard bop - in the same year, the musicians of the Miles Davis Ensemble of the sample The 1960s are reunited, but without Davis himself, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard takes his place.

With the emergence of such an influential figure as Wynton Marsalis in the early 1980s, neo-mainstream, or, as it is also called, neo-classicism, actually takes the lead in jazz.

This does not mean that everything goes back to the first half of the 1960s. On the contrary, by the mid-1980s, attempts to synthesize seemingly mutually exclusive trends were becoming more and more noticeable - for example, hard bop and electric funk in the New York association "M-base", which included singer Cassandra Wilson, saxophonist Steve Coleman, pianist Jerry Ellen, or light electric fusion in the face of guitarist Pat Metheny, who collaborates with both Ornette Coleman and his British colleague Derek Bailey. Coleman himself unexpectedly gathers an "electric" ensemble with two guitarists (including prominent funk musicians - guitarist Vernon Reid and bassist Jamaladeen Takuma). However, at the same time, he does not abandon his principle of collective improvisation according to the method of “harmology” formulated by him.

The principle of polystylistics lies at the heart of the New York school "Downtown", headed by saxophonist John Zorn.

Late 20th century

Americanocentrism is giving way to a new information space, conditioned, among other things, by new means of mass communication (including the Internet). In jazz, as in the new pop music, knowledge of the musical languages ​​of the “third world” and the search for a “common denominator” become mandatory. This is Indo-European folklore with Ned Rothenberg in the Sync quartet or a Russian-Carpathian mixture in the Moscow Art Trio.

Interest in traditional musical cultures leads New York avant-garde artists to master the everyday music of the Jewish Diaspora, and French saxophonist Louis Sklavis - Bulgarian folk music.

If earlier it was possible to become famous in jazz only “through America” (as became known, for example, the Austrian Joe Zawinul, the Czechs Miroslav Vitoush and Jan Gammer, the Pole Michal Urbanyak, the Swede Sven Asmussen, the Dane Nils Hennig Oersted-Pedersen, who emigrated from the USSR to 1973 Valery Ponomarev), now the leading trends in jazz are also taking shape in the Old World and even subjugating the leaders of American jazz - such as, for example, the artistic principles of the ECM company (folklore, composer polished and typically European in terms of "sound" stream of consciousness), formulated by the German producer Manfred Eicher using the music of the Norwegian Jan Garbarek as an example, Chick Corea, pianist Keith Jarrett, and saxophonist Charles Lloyd are now confessing, even without being associated with this company by exclusive contracts. Independent schools of folklore jazz (world jazz) and jazz avant-garde are also taking shape in the USSR (the famous Vilnius school, among the founders of which, however, there was not a single Lithuanian: Vyacheslav Ganelin - from the Moscow region, Vladimir Chekasin - from Sverdlovsk, Vladimir Tarasov - from Arkhangelsk, but among their students was, in particular, Petras Vishnyauskas). The international nature of mainstream and free jazz, the openness of the civilized world lead to the emergence of "above the barriers" of statehood and nationality, for example, the influential Polish-Finnish group of Tomasz Stanko - Edvard Vesal or the strong Estonian-Russian duo of Lembit Saarsalu - Leonid Vintskevich. The boundaries of jazz are expanding even more with the involvement of everyday music of different peoples - from country music to chanson in the so-called. jam bands.

Literature:

Sargent W. Jazz. M., 1987
Soviet jazz. M., 1987
« Hear what I'll tell you» . Jazzmen about the history of jazz. M., 2000



Jazz - a form of musical art that arose at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century in the USA, in New Orleans, as a result of the synthesis of African and European cultures and subsequently became widespread. The origins of jazz were the blues and other African American folk music. Characteristic features of the musical language of jazz were improvisation, polyrhythm based on syncopated rhythms, and a unique set of techniques for performing rhythmic texture - swing. Further development of jazz occurred due to the development of new rhythmic and harmonic models by jazz musicians and composers. Jazz sub-jazzes are: avant-garde jazz, bebop, classical jazz, cool, modal jazz, swing, smooth jazz, soul jazz, free jazz, fusion, hard bop and a number of others.

History of the development of jazz

Wilex College Jazz Band, Texas

Jazz arose as a combination of several musical cultures and national traditions. It originally came from Africa. Any African music is characterized by a very complex rhythm, music is always accompanied by dances, which are fast stomping and clapping. On this basis, at the end of the 19th century, another musical genre emerged - ragtime. Subsequently, the rhythms of ragtime, combined with elements of the blues, gave rise to a new musical direction - jazz.

The blues originated at the end of the 19th century as a fusion of African rhythms and European harmony, but its origins should be sought from the moment slaves were brought from Africa to the New World. The brought slaves did not come from the same clan and usually did not even understand each other. The need for consolidation led to the unification of many cultures and, as a result, to the creation of a single culture (including music) of African Americans. The processes of mixing African musical culture, and European (which also underwent serious changes in the New World) took place starting from the 18th century and in the 19th century led to the emergence of "proto-jazz", and then jazz in the generally accepted sense. The cradle of jazz was the American South, and especially New Orleans.
Pledge of eternal youth of jazz - improvisation
The peculiarity of the style is the unique individual performance of the jazz virtuoso. The key to the eternal youth of jazz is improvisation. After the emergence of a brilliant performer who lived his whole life in the rhythm of jazz and still remains a legend - Louis Armstrong, the art of jazz performance saw new unusual horizons for itself: vocal or instrumental solo performance becomes the center of the entire performance, completely changing ideas about jazz. Jazz is not only a certain type of musical performance, but also a unique cheerful era.

new orleans jazz

The term New Orleans is commonly used to describe the style of musicians who played jazz in New Orleans between 1900 and 1917, as well as New Orleans musicians who played in Chicago and recorded records from about 1917 through the 1920s. This period of jazz history is also known as the Jazz Age. And the term is also used to describe the music played in different historical periods by New Orleans revivalists who sought to play jazz in the same style as New Orleans school musicians.

African-American folklore and jazz have parted ways since the opening of Storyville, New Orleans' red-light district famed for its entertainment venues. Those who wanted to have fun and have fun here were waiting for a lot of seductive opportunities that offered dance floors, cabaret, variety shows, circus, bars and eateries. And everywhere in these institutions music sounded and musicians who mastered the new syncopated music could find work. Gradually, with the growth of the number of musicians working professionally in the entertainment establishments of Storyville, the number of marching and street brass bands decreased, and instead of them, the so-called Storyville ensembles arose, the musical manifestation of which becomes more individual, in comparison with the playing of brass bands. These compositions, often called "combo orchestras" and became the founders of the style of classical New Orleans jazz. Between 1910 and 1917, Storyville's nightclubs became the ideal setting for jazz.
Between 1910 and 1917, Storyville's nightclubs became the ideal setting for jazz.
The development of jazz in the United States in the first quarter of the 20th century

After the closure of Storyville, jazz began to turn from a regional folk genre into a nationwide musical direction, spreading to the northern and northeastern provinces of the United States. But of course, only the closure of one entertainment quarter could not contribute to its wide distribution. Along with New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Memphis played an important role in the development of jazz from the very beginning. Ragtime was born in Memphis in the 19th century, from where it then spread throughout the North American continent in the period 1890-1903.

On the other hand, minstrel performances, with their motley mosaic of African-American folklore from jig to ragtime, spread quickly and set the stage for the advent of jazz. Many future jazz celebrities began their journey in the minstrel show. Long before Storyville closed, New Orleans musicians were touring with so-called "vaudeville" troupes. Jelly Roll Morton from 1904 toured regularly in Alabama, Florida, Texas. From 1914 he had a contract to perform in Chicago. In 1915 he moved to Chicago and Tom Brown's White Dixieland Orchestra. Major vaudeville tours in Chicago were also made by the famous Creole Band, led by New Orleans cornet player Freddie Keppard. Having separated from the Olympia Band at one time, Freddie Keppard's artists already in 1914 successfully performed in the best theater in Chicago and received an offer to make a sound recording of their performances even before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which, however, Freddie Keppard short-sightedly rejected. Significantly expanded the territory covered by the influence of jazz, orchestras playing on pleasure steamers that sailed up the Mississippi.

Since the end of the 19th century, river trips from New Orleans to St. Paul have become popular, first for the weekend, and later for the whole week. Since 1900, New Orleans orchestras have been performing on these riverboats, the music of which has become the most attractive entertainment for passengers during river tours. The future wife of Louis Armstrong, the first jazz pianist Lil Hardin, began in one of these orchestras, Suger Johnny. The riverboat band of another pianist, Faiths Marable, featured many future New Orleans jazz stars.

Steamboats that traveled along the river often stopped at passing stations, where orchestras arranged concerts for the local public. It was these concerts that became creative debuts for Bix Beiderbeck, Jess Stacy and many others. Another famous route ran along the Missouri to Kansas City. In this city, where, thanks to the strong roots of African-American folklore, the blues developed and finally took shape, the virtuoso playing of New Orleans jazzmen found an exceptionally fertile environment. By the early 1920s, Chicago became the main center for the development of jazz music, in which, through the efforts of many musicians who gathered from different parts of the United States, a style was created that was nicknamed Chicago jazz.

Big bands

The classic, established form of big bands has been known in jazz since the early 1920s. This form retained its relevance until the end of the 1940s. The musicians who entered most big bands, as a rule, almost in their teens, played quite definite parts, either learned in rehearsals or from notes. Careful orchestrations, along with massive brass and woodwind sections, produced rich jazz harmonies and produced the sensationally loud sound that became known as "the big band sound".

The big band became the popular music of its day, reaching its peak in the mid-1930s. This music became the source of the swing dance craze. The leaders of the famous jazz bands Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Chick Webb, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Lunsford, Charlie Barnet composed or arranged and recorded on records a genuine hit parade of tunes that sounded not only on the radio but also everywhere in dance halls. Many big bands showed their solo improvisers, who brought the audience to a state close to hysteria during well-hyped "battles of the orchestras".
Many big bands demonstrated their solo improvisers, who brought the audience to a state close to hysteria.
Although the popularity of big bands declined significantly after World War II, orchestras led by Basie, Ellington, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Harry James, and many others toured and recorded frequently over the next few decades. Their music was gradually transformed under the influence of new trends. Groups such as ensembles led by Boyd Ryburn, Sun Ra, Oliver Nelson, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones-Mal Lewis explored new concepts in harmony, instrumentation and improvisational freedom. Today, big bands are the standard in jazz education. Repertory orchestras such as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterpieces, and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble regularly play original arrangements of big band compositions.

northeastern jazz

Although the history of jazz began in New Orleans with the advent of the 20th century, this music experienced a real rise in the early 1920s, when trumpeter Louis Armstrong left New Orleans to create new revolutionary music in Chicago. The migration of New Orleans jazz masters to New York that began shortly thereafter marked a trend of continuous movement of jazz musicians from the South to the North.

Louis Armstrong

Chicago embraced New Orleans music and made it hot, turning it upside down not only with Armstrong's famed Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, but others as well, including the likes of Eddie Condon and Jimmy McPartland, whose Austin High School crew helped revive the New Orleans schools. Other notable Chicagoans who have pushed the boundaries of classic New Orleans jazz include pianist Art Hodes, drummer Barrett Deems, and clarinetist Benny Goodman. Armstrong and Goodman, who eventually moved to New York, created a kind of critical mass there that helped this city turn into a real jazz capital of the world. And while Chicago remained primarily the center of sound recording in the first quarter of the 20th century, New York also emerged as the premier jazz venue, hosting legendary venues such as the Minton Playhouse, the Cotton Club, the Savoy and the Village Vanguard, and as well as arenas such as Carnegie Hall.

Kansas City Style

During the era of the Great Depression and Prohibition, the Kansas City jazz scene became a mecca for the newfangled sounds of the late 1920s and 1930s. The style that flourished in Kansas City is characterized by soulful blues-tinged pieces, performed by both big bands and small swing ensembles, demonstrating very energetic solos, performed for patrons of taverns with illegally sold liquor. It was in these pubs that the style of the great Count Basie crystallized, starting in Kansas City with Walter Page's orchestra and later with Benny Moten. Both of these orchestras were typical representatives of the Kansas City style, which was based on a peculiar form of blues, called "urban blues" and formed in the playing of the above orchestras. The jazz scene of Kansas City was also distinguished by a whole galaxy of outstanding masters of vocal blues, the recognized "king" among which was the longtime soloist of the Count Basie Orchestra, the famous blues singer Jimmy Rushing. The famous alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, who was born in Kansas City, upon his arrival in New York, widely used the characteristic blues "chips" he had learned in the Kansas City orchestras and later formed one of the starting points in the experiments of boppers in the 1940s.

West Coast Jazz

Artists captured by the cool jazz movement in the 1950s worked extensively in the Los Angeles recording studios. Largely influenced by nonet Miles Davis, these Los Angeles-based performers developed what is now known as West Coast Jazz. West Coast jazz was much softer than the furious bebop that had preceded it. Most West Coast jazz has been written out in great detail. The counterpoint lines often used in these compositions seemed to be part of the European influence that had penetrated into jazz. However, this music left a lot of space for long linear solo improvisations. Although West Coast Jazz was performed primarily in recording studios, clubs such as the Lighthouse on Hermosa Beach and the Haig in Los Angeles often featured its masters, which included trumpeter Shorty Rogers, saxophonists Art Pepper and Bud Shenk, drummer Shelley Mann and clarinetist Jimmy Giuffrey.

The Spread of Jazz

Jazz has always aroused interest among musicians and listeners around the world, regardless of their nationality. It is enough to trace the early work of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his fusion of jazz traditions with the music of black Cubans in the 1940s or later, the connection of jazz with Japanese, Eurasian and Middle Eastern music, known in the work of pianist Dave Brubeck, as well as in the brilliant composer and leader of jazz - the Duke Ellington Orchestra, which combined the musical heritage of Africa, Latin America and the Far East.

Dave Brubeck

Jazz constantly absorbed and not only Western musical traditions. For example, when different artists began to try to work with the musical elements of India. An example of this effort can be heard in the recordings of flautist Paul Horn at the Taj Mahal, or in the stream of "world music" represented, for example, by the Oregon band or John McLaughlin's Shakti project. McLaughlin's music, formerly mostly based on jazz, began to use new instruments of Indian origin, such as the khatam or tabla, during his work with Shakti, intricate rhythms sounded and the form of the Indian raga was widely used.
As the globalization of the world continues, jazz is constantly influenced by other musical traditions.
The Art Ensemble of Chicago was an early pioneer in the fusion of African and jazz forms. The world later came to know saxophonist/composer John Zorn and his exploration of Jewish musical culture, both within and outside the Masada Orchestra. These works have inspired entire groups of other jazz musicians, such as keyboardist John Medeski, who has recorded with African musician Salif Keita, guitarist Marc Ribot and bassist Anthony Coleman. Trumpeter Dave Douglas brings inspiration from the Balkans to his music, while the Asian-American Jazz Orchestra has emerged as a leading proponent of the convergence of jazz and Asian musical forms. As the globalization of the world continues, jazz is constantly being influenced by other musical traditions, providing mature food for future research and proving that jazz is truly world music.

Jazz in the USSR and Russia

The first in the RSFSR jazz band of Valentin Parnakh

The jazz scene originated in the USSR in the 1920s, simultaneously with its heyday in the USA. The first jazz orchestra in Soviet Russia was created in Moscow in 1922 by the poet, translator, dancer, theater figure Valentin Parnakh and was called "Valentin Parnakh's First Eccentric Jazz Band Orchestra in the RSFSR". The birthday of Russian jazz is traditionally considered October 1, 1922, when the first concert of this group took place. The orchestra of pianist and composer Alexander Tsfasman (Moscow) is considered to be the first professional jazz ensemble to perform on the air and record a disc.

Early Soviet jazz bands specialized in performing fashionable dances (foxtrot, Charleston). In the mass consciousness, jazz began to gain wide popularity in the 30s, largely due to the Leningrad ensemble led by actor and singer Leonid Utesov and trumpeter Ya. B. Skomorovsky. The popular film comedy with his participation "Merry Fellows" (1934) was dedicated to the history of a jazz musician and had a corresponding soundtrack (written by Isaac Dunayevsky). Utyosov and Skomorovsky formed the original style of "tea-jazz" (theatrical jazz), based on a mixture of music with theater, operetta, vocal numbers and an element of performance played a large role in it. A notable contribution to the development of Soviet jazz was made by Eddie Rosner, a composer, musician and leader of orchestras. Having started his career in Germany, Poland and other European countries, Rozner moved to the USSR and became one of the pioneers of swing in the USSR and the initiator of Belarusian jazz.
In the mass consciousness, jazz began to gain wide popularity in the USSR in the 1930s.
The attitude of the Soviet authorities towards jazz was ambiguous: as a rule, domestic jazz performers were not banned, but harsh criticism of jazz as such was widespread in the context of criticism of Western culture in general. In the late 1940s, during the struggle against cosmopolitanism, jazz in the USSR experienced a particularly difficult period, when groups performing "Western" music were persecuted. With the onset of the "thaw", the repressions against the musicians were stopped, but the criticism continued. According to the research of professor of history and American culture Penny Van Eschen, the US State Department tried to use jazz as an ideological weapon against the USSR and against the expansion of Soviet influence in the third world countries. In the 50s and 60s. in Moscow, the orchestras of Eddie Rozner and Oleg Lundstrem resumed their activities, new compositions appeared, among which the orchestras of Iosif Weinstein (Leningrad) and Vadim Ludvikovsky (Moscow), as well as the Riga Variety Orchestra (REO), stood out.

Big bands brought up a whole galaxy of talented arrangers and solo improvisers, whose work brought Soviet jazz to a qualitatively new level and brought it closer to world standards. Among them are Georgy Garanyan, Boris Frumkin, Alexei Zubov, Vitaly Dolgov, Igor Kantyukov, Nikolai Kapustin, Boris Matveev, Konstantin Nosov, Boris Rychkov, Konstantin Bakholdin. The development of chamber and club jazz in all its diversity of style begins (Vyacheslav Ganelin, David Goloshchekin, Gennady Golshtein, Nikolai Gromin, Vladimir Danilin, Alexei Kozlov, Roman Kunsman, Nikolai Levinovsky, German Lukyanov, Alexander Pishchikov, Alexei Kuznetsov, Viktor Fridman, Andrey Tovmasyan , Igor Bril, Leonid Chizhik, etc.)

Jazz Club "Blue Bird"

Many of the above masters of Soviet jazz began their creative career on the stage of the legendary Moscow jazz club "Blue Bird", which existed from 1964 to 2009, discovering new names of representatives of the modern generation of Russian jazz stars (brothers Alexander and Dmitry Bril, Anna Buturlina, Yakov Okun, Roman Miroshnichenko and others). In the 70s, the jazz trio "Ganelin-Tarasov-Chekasin" (GTC) consisting of pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin, drummer Vladimir Tarasov and saxophonist Vladimir Chekasin, which existed until 1986, became widely known. In the 70-80s, the jazz quartet from Azerbaijan "Gaya", the Georgian vocal and instrumental ensembles "Orera" and "Jazz-Khoral" were also known.

After a decline in interest in jazz in the 90s, it began to gain popularity again in youth culture. Jazz music festivals are held annually in Moscow, such as Usadba Jazz and Jazz in the Hermitage Garden. The most popular jazz club venue in Moscow is the Union of Composers jazz club, which invites world-famous jazz and blues performers.

Jazz in the modern world

The modern world of music is as diverse as the climate and geography that we learn through travel. And yet, today we are witnessing a mixture of an increasing number of world cultures, constantly bringing us closer to what, in essence, is already becoming “world music” (world music). Today's jazz cannot but be influenced by sounds penetrating into it from almost every corner of the globe. European experimentalism with classical overtones continues to influence the music of young pioneers such as Ken Vandermark, a frigid avant-garde saxophonist known for his work with such notable contemporaries as saxophonists Mats Gustafsson, Evan Parker and Peter Brotzmann. Other more traditional young musicians who continue to search for their own identities include pianists Jackie Terrasson, Benny Green and Braid Meldoa, saxophonists Joshua Redman and David Sanchez, and drummers Jeff Watts and Billy Stewart.

The old tradition of sounding is being rapidly carried on by artists such as trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who works with a team of assistants both in his own small bands and in the Lincoln Center Jazz Band, which he leads. Under his patronage, pianists Marcus Roberts and Eric Reed, saxophonist Wes "Warmdaddy" Anderson, trumpeter Markus Printup and vibraphonist Stefan Harris grew into great musicians. Bassist Dave Holland is also a great discoverer of young talent. Among his many discoveries are artists such as saxophonist/M-bassist Steve Coleman, saxophonist Steve Wilson, vibraphonist Steve Nelson and drummer Billy Kilson. Other great mentors of young talent include pianist Chick Corea and the late drummer Elvin Jones and singer Betty Carter. The potential for the further development of jazz is currently quite large, since the ways of developing talent and the means of its expression are unpredictable, multiplying by the combined efforts of various jazz genres encouraged today.