Music whose roots are in the elements of African music, and its beginning is in the music of the slaves in the United States. Except elements of African rhythms, early jazz drew on Creole bands educated in the European classical tradition, spirituals, marching bands, ragtime, and the blues.

This music is characterized by using highly syncopated melodies and jumpy, unstable rhythms. Harmony is rich and influenced by trends like impressionism and a-tonality, and use of ancient modes. Jazz puts emphasis on improvisation - a player inventing the musical piece in the course of performance and without planning.

In jazz, wind instruments are accepted as melodic instruments, and the rhythm instruments - piano, guitar, double bass, drums - provide accompaniment (although often contribute to improvisations customary in this style).

The religious music that set the foundations to jazz is called the "spirituals". These beautiful and moving religious songs were sung by the new-Christian slaves and gave hope for a better future in the promised land of freedom. Songs that talked about the daily troubles from the life of the African American brought about the gloomy Blues, that combined the "blue notes" - a diminution of thirds and sevenths in the key - and became its trademark. In fact, the blues is the secular counterpart of the spirituals. B.B. King and John Lee Hooker are two of the greatest blues artists.

There are different styles in jazz, such as the Swing - a floating, usually orchestral style, made by artists like Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Count Basie into a sophisticated, well-processed style, especially during the time of the "Big Bands". Louis Armstrong, among jazz's giants, gave it its dignified dimension, and became the messenger of jazz around the world, with jazz hits such as "What a wonderful world" and "Hello Dolly".

The Ragtime - an originally pianist style invented by Scott Joplin ("The Entertainer"), and the jumpy Bebop of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

Nowadays, the innovative style of "fusion" is very popular. Composers like Chick Corea ("Spain"), ensembles like "Weather Report" and players like Michael Brecker and the Marsalis Brothers mix diverse musical influences into complex, interesting jazz performances.

Some important composers of classical music also combined elements of jazz in their work. Particularly known are Gershwin's many works ("Rhapsody is Blue", and the opera about the life of black people "Porgy and Bess"), and Stravinsky's ("Concerto Ebony for a Jazz Orchestra").

Jazz Styles

Spirituals

Blues

The music of sorrow and suffering of African Americans, both vocal and instrumental. The most persistent characteristic of the blues is a twelve-bar pattern and a slow tempo and the name is related to the “blue notes,” i.e., the third and seventh scale degrees which are used either natural or flatted. The form was popularized in the 1910s by composer W.C. Handy, with songs like "Memphis Blues", "St. Louis Blues" and "Basin Street Blues". In the early 1960s, the blues was discovered by Rock musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. They have used the blues as a foundation for offshoot styles, but also continued to create traditional blues.

Ragtime

An early written, unimprovised, jazz predecessor usually performed on the piano. Its names means "rhythm of tears or rags", due to the lack of uniform rhythm. Began during the 1880-1900 period, mainly by Scott Joplin from St. Louis - ragtime's greatest composer and player with famous pieces, such as "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag". This style mixed aspects of marches and classical music, such as a syncopated two-beat rhythm with a melody line, and had a great influence on the earlier forms of jazz (with the presence of blues and improvisation).

Famous composers in the 20th century, such as Stravinsky (in his "Ragtime for 11 instruments") and Milhaud ("The creation of the world") integrated ragtime into their works.

Derived from ragtime in New York in the early 1920s, a style with more syncopated bass line. Mostly played by virtuoso pianists, who resembled one-man bands by immensely fast playing techniques.

Dixieland

The traditional jazz being played by white musicians, in the 1920s in Chicago. Also called "New Orleans jazz", "Chicago jazz" and "Classic jazz", this style usually demonstrates collective improvisations during choruses. In the 1950s, Dixieland had a revival by many groups of amateur jazz musicians.

Traditional / New Orleans Jazz

New Orleans jazz as it emerged and into the 1930s is a descendant of the marching brass bands. The New Orleans Jazz, which overlaps with Dixieland, did not tend to emphasize solos in favor of group playing and common improvising. When the center of Jazz music had shifted up north, from New Orleans to Chicago, the most important jazz musician ever, Louis Armstrong, was summoned up north by Joe "King" Oliver and opened jazz from the blues to a more swinging style with sophisticated improvisations.

Swing

The "Big band" jazz music of the 1930's (through WWII) was with written arrangements, rather repetitious riffs and sophisticated solos. There were very popular ensembles of ten or more musicians in three sections: saxophone, brass, and rhythm. This style of jazz is particularly identified with Benny Goodman's orchestra.

Complex jazz style developed in the early 1940s by saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Thelonious Monk and trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie. This school of jazz believed in innovation in harmony, rhythm and apects of performance practice. The bebop is characterized by improvised solo performances in dissonant and complex patterns, often by accentuation of the second and fourth beats in each four-four measures and by the twelve-bar “blues” phrase structure, and sometimes by the singing of nonsense syllables.

A mixture of bop with some aspects of swing (less dissonant, softened tones and accents on the rhythm section). In this style, as in the swing, musicians put arrangements in the center again. It was nicknamed "West Coast jazz" since most leaders of this genre were centered in Los Angeles. Some instrumentations, such as the ones made by Gil Evans and Miles Davis, started to include non-traditional instruments such as tubas and French horns.

Progressive / Modal Jazz

General term for "modern jazz," which covers various bop and post-bop styles, including the more meditative and looser 'modal jazz', of improvisation based on a series of modes rather than chord changes. Modal jazz clearly emphasized the importance of melodic ideas in improvisations, thus freed up the soloists from the chord structures of bebop. Miles Davis was one of the first musicians who played 'modal jazz'.

Fusion

Since the late 1960s, the fusion became a popular jazz style. The fusion is a hybrid of jazz improvisation with rock rhythms and energies. Miles Davis with his album 'Bitches Brew', Herbie Hancock with his popular jazz-funk album 'Headhunters', and other influential musicians fused rock rhythms with jazz structures and by that introduced jazz to a new set of audiences.

From the 1950's to the 1960's, some musicians, lead by Saxophonist Ornette Coleman, took jazz in more exploratory and avant garde directions. They extended considerably or totally abandoned traditional forms, melody, harmony, and rhythm. Although free jazz expanded the tonal and harmonic palette of listeners, it never won huge public success.

Jazz legends on stamps

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