Readings in Jazz History Essay

Jazz, the music which was born and blossomed in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century, later traveled all over the country acquiring new features and forms. The New Orleans jazz style included polyphonic music in which different musical instruments simultaneously play different variations on a particular piece of music and which includes freer rhythmic improvisation. Usually the musical instruments included trumpet, clarinet, and trombone all playing different melody at the same time. Starting from New Orleans jazz traveled to Chicago, Kansas City, New York and others and made them its centers for a certain period. Kansas City jazz flourished in the 1930s, when the town was an entertainment capital during the Depression. The city’s unique sound was largely defined by the reliance of its bands on blues, fast tempos, and simple riff structures. Local bands developed to a high degree in relative isolation from outside influences. The top quality of African-American origin of jazz mattered to many other cities, but did not reach Texas until the middle 1920s. And the impact of the representatives of New Orleans style, so decisive in other parts of the country, was less strongly felt in this region. In contrast, the sound of the blues was pervasive in Texas. Kansas style, distinguished by the rise of larger dance bands, was characterized the inclination for the blues. The Kansas City style as it evolved in the 1920s and 1930s incorporated an informal â€Å"head chart† style relying on simple memorized parts. Among the pioneers of Kansas City jazz were Count Basie band (featuring Lester Young) and Jay McShann band (featuring Charlie Parker). One of the most influential of the Kansas City players from the 1930s was Lester Young. Among his achievements was the change of melodic improvisation in jazz, where he offered an alternative to the hot, syncopated style. Jazz style became distinguished by flowering of cool jazz, a supple manner of phrasing across bar lines, a greater sensitivity to intervals that underlay harmonies, and emotional elevation. Lester elaborated the techniques of jazz improvisation and broadened the music’s emotionality. Among other prominent players was Count Basie whose band worked on refining swing style, music which largely derived from the blues, relied on formal, syncopated arrangements to support soaring, improvised solos. It was propulsive music, infectious and irresistible. Murray’s thesis on the return of Kansas City jazz to its roots in New Orleans seems to be more like nostalgic view. If to look at jazz of the 1930ies more attentively, it will become obvious that it was rather the reconsideration of the true nature of jazz than a throwback. Kansas City jazz again returned to improvisation, to free performance, but improvisation now was intentional, the true jazz musician was that who could play without scores, who could improvise with melody and create off hand. However, if to return to New Orleans’ improvisation, it was predetermined by the lack of education. The musicians of that time were not professionals and many of them just reproduced on the stage the music the way they felt it. So the difference in the grounds for improvisation is the key factor that does not allow the assertion that Kansas style is the throwback to the initial form of jazz to be feasible. â€Å"I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. if you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music. † (96) – these words of Billy Holiday convey the general attitude towards the jazz that existed among prominent musicians and jazz critics in the 1930s. The survey of the ideas on jazz music and its nature expressed by such musician as Louis Armstrong, Billy Holiday and Duke Ellington as well as jazz critics Robert Goffin and John Hammond leads to the conclusion that all of them meet in the view on the nature of jazz. Though with different approaches and interpretation both musicians and critics stand up for the idea that real jazz is the music which is not written down and played all times in the same way. In other words all of them uphold the opinion that improvisation is the only key feature of true jazz what makes it easy music. However, as it was mentioned there are still some variances in approaches. Thus, Goffin for example, uses the term â€Å"hot jazz† to define improvised form and claims that â€Å"hot jazz, [is] otherwise known as improvised jazz, a type of music that was in existence long before it was formally tabulated. The epithet â€Å"hot† is applied to any passage â€Å"in which the executant or executants abandon the melodic theme and develop an imaginative structure on the basis of that theme and incorporated with it. † (83) At the same time he points to the problems related to the setting jazz tunes within fixed scores that result in nothing but poor resemblance of real music. He contrasts melodic jazz to hot jazz in favour of latter: â€Å"Melodic jazz has contributed nothing to music and will only be remembered for its unspeakable insipidness; whereas hot jazz is a creative principle which can scarcely fail to affect the music of the future in the most original and unexpected directions†. (84) Special attention Goffin pays to Louis Armstrong, whom he considers â€Å"the supreme genius of jazz† (85). Speaking about Louis Armstrong, he also defends the idea of improvisation to be the true music. He, actually, differentiates between swing and jazz, attributing latter to the contemporary commercialized music. Swing for Armstrong is exactly that type of free music based on improvisation which was practiced in New Orleans thirty years before his time. The same as Goffin does Armstrong rebukes the practice of writing down music, and explains that tendency by the quest for profit of record companies. At the same time, John Hammond distinguishes African-American musical traditions from the popular commercial phenomenon which he refers to as swing that is played predominantly at this time by white bands. He accuses people involved in music business of commercialization of jazz and deprivation it of any value: â€Å"Not the least of the despoilers are the commercial gentlemen, who produce all kinds of ridiculous recorded jazz under the caption â€Å"Swing,† and who are directly responsible for the stunt music that great men like Armstrong play these days. In this society there are always Breakfast Food people to sell their wares by tying them up with something popular†. (103) Hammond stands out in this team by the most fervent wish to surmount racial conflicts in jazz realm. He constantly points out to the fact that Black musicians suffer from being prejudiced by audience and record companies, despite the fact that the jazz is originally black music. Therefore, considering these ideas, we can arrive to the conclusion that all of mentioned participants of jazz world have common understanding of improvised nature of real jazz, and all of them acknowledge that with putting music in the frames of scores the musicians deprive it of its emotional load, feeling and originality. While, the tendency to written scores existed and evolved there must have been an explanation to it. The professionals discussed above agree in view that the main threat to the jazz was the commerce, practiced by record companies that tried to gain maximum profit from popular music of those days. And, as it usually occurs, such practice contributed to the simplification of music. However, looking back, this tendency did not have lethal effect for jazz, while today we can see that jazz did not stumbled in its progress and continues its development appearing in such modern forms as acid jazz, nu jazz etc. Works cited list Walser, Robert. Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999