Jazz (English Jazz) - a form of musical art that emerged in the late 19th - early 20th centuries in the United States, in New Orleans, as a result of the synthesis of African and European cultures, and subsequently became widespread. The origins of jazz are blues and other African American folk music. The characteristic features of the musical language of jazz were originally improvisation, polyrhythm based on syncopated rhythms, and a unique set of techniques for performing rhythmic texture - swing. The further development of jazz occurred due to the development of new rhythmic and harmonic models by jazz musicians and composers. Jazz flavors are avant-garde jazz, bebop, classical jazz, cool, fret jazz, swing, smooth jazz, soul jazz, free jazz, fusion, hard bop and a number of others.

The history of the development of jazz

Vilex College Jazz Band, Texas

Jazz originated 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 quick tapping and slapping. On this basis, at the end of the 19th century, another musical genre emerged - ragtime. Subsequently, the rhythms of ragtime, combined with elements of blues, gave rise to a new musical direction - jazz.

The blues arose 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 the slaves were brought from Africa to the territory of the New World. The slaves brought in were not 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 musical) of African Americans. The processes of mixing of African musical culture and European (which also underwent serious changes in the New World) took place from the 18th century and in the 19th century led to the emergence of "protojazz", and then jazz in the conventional sense. The cradle of jazz was the American South, and above all New Orleans.
The key to eternal youth of jazz is 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 genius performer who lived his entire 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 the idea of \u200b\u200bjazz. Jazz is not only a certain type of musical performance, but also a unique and cheerful era.

New Orleans Jazz

The term New Orleans generally refers to the style of musicians who played jazz in New Orleans between 1900 and 1917, as well as New Orleans musicians who played and recorded records in Chicago from about 1917 through the 1920s. This period of jazz history is also known as the "Age of Jazz". And this term is also used to describe the music performed in various historical periods by the New Orleans Renaissance, who aspired to perform jazz in the same style as the musicians of the New Orleans School.

The paths of African American folklore and jazz have separated since the discovery of Storyville, New Orleans' red-light district famous for its entertainment venues. Those wishing to have fun and have fun awaited a host of seductive opportunities offered by dance floors, cabaret, variety shows, circus, bars and eateries. And everywhere in these institutions music sounded and musicians who mastered new syncopated music could find work. Gradually, with the increase in the number of musicians professionally working 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 bands, often called "combo orchestras", became the founders of the style of classical New Orleans jazz. In 1910-1917, Storyville's nightclubs became the ideal environment for jazz.
In 1910-1917, Storyville's nightclubs became ideal environments for jazz
The development of jazz in the USA in the first quarter of the XX century

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

On the other hand, minstrel performances, with their colorful mosaics of all kinds of African American folklore from jig to ragtime, quickly spread everywhere and paved the way for the arrival of jazz. Many future jazz celebrities began their journey precisely in the menstrell show. Long before the closure of Storyville, New Orleans musicians went on tour with so-called "vaudeville" troupes. Jelly Roll Morton has toured regularly since 1904 in Alabama, Florida, Texas. From 1914 he had a contract to perform in Chicago. In 1915, the White Dixieland Orchestra of Tom Brown moved to Chicago. The famous Creole Band, led by New Orleans cornetist Freddie Keppard, also made major vaudeville tours in Chicago. Having separated from the Olympia Band, Freddie Keppard's artists already in 1914 successfully performed in the best theater in Chicago and received an offer to make sound recording of their performances even before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which, however, Freddie Keppard shortsightedly rejected. Significantly expanded the area 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 a weekend, and then for a whole week. Since 1900, New Orleans orchestras have been performing on these riverboats, making their music the most attractive entertainment for passengers on river tours. The future wife of Louis Armstrong, the first jazz pianist Lil Hardin, began in one of these orchestras "Sugar Johnny". The riverboat orchestra of fellow pianist Fates Marable has played many future New Orleans jazz stars.

Steamers sailing along the river often stopped at passing stations where orchestras performed concerts for the local audience. It was these concerts that became the creative debuts for Bix Beiderback, Jess Stacy and many others. Another famous route ran through 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 the New Orleans jazzmen found an exceptionally fertile environment. By the early 1920s, the main center for the development of jazz music was Chicago, in which the efforts of many musicians who gathered from different parts of the United States created a style that received the nickname Chicago jazz.

Big bands

The classic, established form of big bands has been known in jazz since the early 1920s. This shape retained its relevance until the late 1940s. The musicians who entered the majority of big bands, as a rule, almost in their teens, played quite certain parts, either learned by rehearsal or from sheet music. Meticulous orchestrations combined with large brass and woodwind sections produced rich jazz harmonies and created a sensationally loud sound that became known as "the big band sound".

The Big Band became the popular music of its time, peaking in the mid-1930s. This music has become the source of the swing dancing craze. The leaders of the famous jazz orchestras Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Chick Webb, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Lunsford, Charlie Barnett composed or arranged and recorded on records a genuine hit parade of tunes that sounded not only on the radio but also everywhere in the dance halls. Many big bands showcased their solo improvisers, who brought the audience to a state close to hysteria during well-promoted "battles of the orchestras".
Many big bands showed off 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 records frequently over the next several decades. Their music was gradually transformed under the influence of new trends. Groups such as ensembles led by Boyd Rybern, Sun Ra, Oliver Nelson, Charles Mingus, Ted Jones-Mel Lewis explored new concepts in harmony, instrumentation and improvisational freedom. Today, big bands are the standard in jazz education. Repertoire orchestras such as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, Smithsonian Jazz Masterpieces Orchestra, and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble regularly play original big band arrangements.

Northeast jazz

Although the history of jazz began in New Orleans in the early twentieth century, the music took off in the early 1920s when trumpeter Louis Armstrong left New Orleans to create revolutionary new music in Chicago. The migration of New Orleans jazz masters to New York, which began soon thereafter, marked the trend of a constant movement of jazz musicians from South to North.

Louis Armstrong

Chicago embraced the music of New Orleans and made it hot, raising the intensity of not only Armstrong's famous Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, but others as well, including the likes of Eddie Condon and Jimmy McPartland, whose team from Austin High School helped revive New Orleans. schools. Other famous Chicagoans who have pushed the horizons of New Orleans' classic jazz style 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, which helped this city to turn into a real jazz capital of the world. And while Chicago remained in the first quarter of the 20th century mainly the center of sound recording, New York also turned into a major concert venue for jazz, with such legendary clubs as Minton Playhouse, Cotton Club, Savoy and Village Vanguard, and also by arenas such as Carnegie Hall.

Kansas City Style

During 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 was characterized by soulful blues-tinged pieces performed by both big bands and small swing ensembles, featuring highly energetic solos performed for clandestine pubs. It was in these pubs that the style of the great Count Basie crystallized, starting in Kansas City with the Walter Page Orchestra and subsequently with Benny Mouten. Both of these orchestras were typical representatives of the Kansas City style, the basis of which was a peculiar form of blues, called "urban blues" and formed in the playing of the above-named orchestras. The Kansas City jazz scene was also distinguished by a whole galaxy of outstanding masters of vocal blues, recognized as the "king" among whom was the longtime lead singer of the Count Basie Orchestra, the famous blues singer Jimmy Rushing. The famous Kansas City-born altsaxophonist Charlie Parker, upon his arrival in New York, made extensive use of the characteristic blues "tricks" he had learned in the Kansas City orchestras and which subsequently constituted one of the starting points in Bopper experiments in the 1940s.

West Coast Jazz

Performers caught up in the cool jazz movement in the 1950s worked extensively in Los Angeles recording studios. Largely influenced by the nonet Miles Davis, these Los Angeles-based performers developed what is now known as "West Coast Jazz", or West Coast jazz. West Coast jazz was much softer than the furious bebop that preceded it. Most of the West Coast jazz pieces have been written out in great detail. The counterpoint lines often used in these compositions seemed like bits of European influences that had permeated jazz. However, this music also left a lot of space for lengthy linear solo improvisations. Although West Coast Jazz was performed primarily in recording studios, clubs such as The Lighthouse at Ermoza Beach and the Haig in Los Angeles frequently featured its top masters, including trumpet player Shorty Rogers, saxophonists Art Pepper and Bud Schenk. drummer Shelley Mann and clarinetist Jimmy Juffrey.

Spreading jazz

Jazz has always attracted interest among musicians and listeners around the world, regardless of their nationality. Suffice it to trace the early works of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and his synthesis of jazz traditions with the music of black Cubans in the 1940s or later, the combination 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 jazz leader - Orchestra of Duke Ellington, who combined the musical heritage of Africa, Latin America and the Far East.

Dave Brubeck

Jazz constantly absorbed not only Western musical traditions. For example, when different artists started trying to work with the musical elements of India. An example of this effort can be heard in the recordings of flutist Paul Horn at the Taj Mahal, or in the stream of "worldwide music" presented, for example, by the Oregon band or the John McLaughlin Shakti project. McLaughlin's music, formerly mainly based on jazz, while working with Shakti began to use new instruments of Indian origin, such as the hatama or tabla, intricate rhythms sounded and the form of Indian raga was widely used.
As the globalization of the world continues, the impact of other musical traditions is constantly felt in jazz.
The Art Ensemble of Chicago was an early pioneer in the fusion of African and jazz forms. Later, the world got to know saxophonist / composer John Zorn and his exploration of Jewish musical culture, both within and outside the Masada Orchestra. These works have inspired groups of other jazz musicians, such as keyboardist John Medeski, who recorded with African musician Salif Keita, guitarist Marc Ribot and bassist Anthony Coleman. Trumpet player Dave Douglas has inspired Balkan influences into 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, the impact of other musical traditions is constantly being felt in jazz, providing mature food for future research and proving that jazz is truly world music.

Jazz in the USSR and Russia

Valentin Parnakh's first jazz band in the RSFSR

The jazz scene emerged in the USSR in the 1920s simultaneously with its flourishing in the USA. The first jazz orchestra in Soviet Russia was created in Moscow in 1922 by the poet, translator, dancer, and theatrical figure Valentin Parnakh and was called “Valentin Parnakh's First Eccentric Jazz Band Orchestra in the RSFSR”. The birthday of national 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 the first professional jazz band to perform on the radio and record a disc.

Early Soviet jazz bands specialized in performing fashionable dances (foxtrot, charleston). In the mass consciousness, jazz began to gain widespread popularity in the 30s, largely thanks to the Leningrad ensemble led by actor and singer Leonid Utesov and trumpeter Y.B. Skomorovsky. The popular comedy film "Merry Guys" (1934) with his participation was devoted to the history of a jazz musician and had a corresponding soundtrack (written by Isaac Dunaevsky). Utesov and Skomorovsky formed the original style of "tea-jazz" (theatrical jazz), based on a mixture of music with theater, operetta, vocal numbers and the element of performance played an important role in it. A notable contribution to the development of Soviet jazz was made by Eddie Rosner, a composer, musician and orchestra leader. Having started his career in Germany, Poland and other European countries, Rosner moved to the USSR and became one of the pioneers of swing in the USSR and the pioneer 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 to jazz was ambiguous: domestic jazz performers, as a rule, were not banned, but harsh criticism of jazz as such was widespread, in the context of criticism of Western culture in general. At the end of the 40s, during the struggle against cosmopolitanism, jazz in the USSR was going through a particularly difficult period, when bands performing "Western" music were persecuted. With the beginning of the "thaw", repressions against the musicians were stopped, but criticism continued. According to research by 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. In the 50s and 60s. in Moscow, the orchestras of Eddie Rosner and Oleg Lundstrem resumed their activities, new compositions appeared, among which the orchestras of Joseph Weinstein (Leningrad) and Vadim Ludvikovsky (Moscow), as well as the Riga Variety Orchestra (REO).

Big bands have brought up a whole galaxy of talented arrangers and soloists-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, Alexey Zubov, Vitaly Dolgov, Igor Kantyukov, Nikolai Kapustin, Boris Matveev, Konstantin Nosov, Boris Rychkov, Konstantin Bakholdin. The development of chamber and club jazz begins in all the diversity of its stylistics (Vyacheslav Ganelin, David Goloshchekin, Gennady Golstein, Nikolai Gromin, Vladimir Danilin, Alexey Kozlov, Roman Kunsman, Nikolai Levinovsky, German Lukyanov, Alexander Pishchikov, Alexey Kuznetsov, Viktor Fridman, , Igor Bril, Leonid Chizhik, etc.)

Jazz Club "Blue Bird"

Many of the above-mentioned masters of Soviet jazz began their 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" (GTCH), consisting of pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin, drummer Vladimir Tarasov and saxophonist Vladimir Chekasin, which existed until 1986, became widely known. In the 70's and 80's, the jazz quartet from Azerbaijan “Gaia”, the Georgian vocal and instrumental ensembles “Orera” and “Jazz-Choral” were also known.

After the decline in interest in jazz in the 90s, it again began to gain popularity in youth culture. Moscow annually hosts jazz music festivals such as Manor 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 experience through travel. And yet, today we are witnessing the mixing of an increasing number of world cultures, constantly bringing us closer to what is, in essence, already becoming “world music”. Today's jazz can no longer be influenced by sounds that penetrate 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, an avant-garde saxophonist frejaz, best known for his work with contemporaries such as saxophonists Mats Gustafsson, Evan Parker and Peter Brotzmann. Other young, more traditional musicians who continue to search for their own identity 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 continued by artists such as the trumpet player Winton Marsalis, who works with an entire team of assistants, both in his own small bands and in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, which he leads. Under his auspices pianists Marcus Roberts and Eric Reed, saxophonist Wes "Warmdaddy" Anderson, trumpeter Marcus Printup and vibraphonist Stephen Harris grew up to be 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 to young talent include pianist Chick Corea, and now deceased drummer Alvin Jones and singer Betty Carter. The potential opportunities for the further development of jazz are currently quite large, since the ways of developing talent and the means of expressing it are unpredictable, multiplying by the unification of efforts of various jazz genres encouraged today.

The content of the article

JAZZ(English jazz), a generic concept that defines several types of musical art that differ from each other in style, and in artistic tasks, and in their 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 - "bullshit", "nonsense"), and from what -or words in one of the African languages, which had a certain erotic meaning, especially since in the natural phrase jazz dance ("jazz dance") the word dance carried the same meaning since Shakespeare's times. In the highest circles of the New and Old World, the word, which later became a purely musical term, was associated with something noisy, rough, dirty. English writer Richard Aldington in the introduction to the novel Death of a hero, in which he describes the "trench truth" and moral losses of personality after the First World War, calls his novel "jazz".

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 widespread form of everyday music (brass band), and rural folklore (among blacks - skiffle), and most importantly - salon piano music ragtime - ragtime (literally "ragged rhythm").

Minstrel show.

This music was distributed by the traveling "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 the musical by Jerome Kern Showboat... The troupes of the mineshot show, in which the Negro life was depicted in a caricatured form, consisted of both whites (the first sound film also belongs to this genre Jazz singer, in which the role of a Negro was played by a 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 mineshot show, the audience of European descent learned about what would later become jazz, and they adopted piano ragtime as their own art. It is no coincidence that the writer E. Doktorow and the film director M. Forman turned the actual musical concept of "torn rhythm" into "torn time" - a symbol of those changes that in the Old World were designated as "the end of the century." By the way, the drumming nature of ragtime (coming from the typical European late romantic pianism) is greatly exaggerated due to the fact that the mechanical piano became the main means of its dissemination, which did not convey the subtleties of piano technique. Among the black 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 works of Joplin.

Blues.

Finally, there would be no jazz without blues (blues is originally a collective plural, denoting a state of sadness, longing, despondency; the concept of “suffering” acquires the same double meaning in our country, however, denoting a musical genre that is completely different in character). Blues is a solo (rarely - duet) song, the peculiarity of which is not only a specific musical form, but also a vocal and instrumental character. The formative principle inherited from Africa - the short question of the soloist and the same short answer of the chorus (call & response, in chorus form it manifests itself 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 a guitar (less often on a banjo or piano). Blues is a 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 were arbitrarily connected to each other: so, according to one of the African traditions, brass bands played funeral marches on the way to the cemetery, and funny dances on the way back. In small pubs, wandering blues singers sang to the accompaniment of the piano (the manner of playing the blues on the grand piano in the late 1920s would turn into an independent musical genre of boogie woogie), typically European saloon orchestras included songs and dances from their ministries show in their repertoire. keykuoks (or cake-walk - a dance to the music of ragtime). Europe recognized ragtime precisely as an accompaniment to the latter (the famous Puppet cake Claude Debussy). And typically African-American plastic produced at the turn of the 20th century. no less, if not more, impression than syncopated salon music). By the way, the records of a brass band of one of the Russian imperial regiments with a keyquoc have been preserved sleep Negro... All these combinations are conventionally called archaic jazz.

If necessary, the ragtime pianists, together with brass bands, accompanied the blues vocalists and vocalists, who, in turn, included an entertainment and salon repertoire in their programs. Such music can already be considered jazz, even if the first collectives called themselves, as in the famous song, and then in the film musical by Irwin 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 it must be borne 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 Creoles who enjoyed relative freedom (French-speaking Negroes, usually Catholics) and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant slaves liberated after the American Civil War. Although the civil liberties of the French-speaking Creoles were also relative, they still had access to classical culture of European origin, which, say, in Puritan New England, even immigrants from Europe were denied. The opera house, for example, opened in New Orleans much earlier than in the puritanical cities of the North of the United States. In New Orleans, public entertainments were allowed on holidays - dances, carnivals. Not the last role was played by the presence in New Orleans of the mandatory for the port city quarter of "red lights" - Storyville.

Brass bands in New Orleans, as well as in Europe, were an integral part of urban life. But in the African-American environment, the brass band has radically changed. 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 between the three instruments: all three played the same theme - the cornet (trumpet) led it more or less close to the original, the movable clarinet seemed to wriggle around the main melodic line, and the trombone from time to time inserted rare but compelling replicas. The leaders of the most famous not only in New Orleans, but throughout the state of Louisiana ensembles were Bank Johnson, Freddie Keppard and Charles "Buddy" Bolden. However, the original records of that time have not survived, and it is no longer possible to verify the authenticity of the nostalgic memories of the 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 letter "j"). The fact that New Orleans enjoyed the fame of the center of "resort" entertainment is at least proved by the fact that the New Orleans Kings of Rhythm ensemble was popular in Chicago with the popular pianist-composer Elmer Schebel, but there was not a single New Orleans in it. Over time, "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 could definitely be considered jazz in more than just name. A record was released with two things: Livery Stable Blues and Dixieland Jass Band One-Step.

Chicago.

At the same time, a jazz environment was forming 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. Trumpet player Joe "King" Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was especially famous (although there was only one real Creole among its members). The "Creole Jazz Band" became famous due to the well-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 cornet, - became classics of jazz.

"The Age of Jazz".

In the 1920s, the Jazz Age begins. Louis Armstrong asserts priority as a soloist-improviser with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles; in New Orleans, pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton becomes famous; another New Orleans, Creole clarinet saxophonist Sidney Bechet, spreads the fame of jazz in the Old World (he toured, among other things, in Soviet Russia in 1926). The famous Swiss conductor Ernest Anserme Besche was impressed by that characteristic “French” vibration, which the whole world would later recognize in Edith Piaf's voice. 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 beginning to take pride in its own jazz forces - the Harlem orchestras of Fletcher Henderson, Louis Russell (both of whom Armstrong worked with) and Duke Ellington, who moved here in 1926 from Washington and quickly gained a leading position in the famous Cotton Club.

Improvisation.

It was in the 1920s that the main principle of jazz was gradually formed - not dogma, not form, but improvisation. It is believed to be collective in New Orleans Jazz / Dixieland, although this is not entirely accurate as the actual source material (theme) has not yet been separated from its development. In essence, New Orleans musicians repeated by ear the simplest forms of European song, dance, and black blues.

In Armstrong's ensembles, with the participation, first of all, of the outstanding pianist Earl Hines, the formation of the jazz form of the theme with variations began (theme - solo improvisations - theme), where the "unit of improvisation" is chorus (in Russian terminology "square"), as if a variant of the original themes of exactly the same (or later - related) harmonic construction. Whole schools of black and white musicians took advantage of Armstrong's discoveries of 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 hazy haze). Virtuoso pianist Art Tatum relied more on the harmonic scheme of the square than on the melody of the original theme. Saxophonists Columen Hawkins, Lester Young, Benny Carter transferred their achievements to monophonic wind instruments.

Fletcher Henderson's orchestra was the first to develop a system of "support" for the solo improviser: 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 short, repeating "formulas" - riffs developed in the practice of folk blues. The riff was both harmonic and rhythmic.

1930s.

This formula was adopted by virtually all large groups 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, which was originally composed of white musicians, played better than Henderson's own. One way or another, the interaction between the negro swing orchestras of Andy Kirk, Jimmy Lunsford, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and the white orchestras was improving: Goodman played Count Basie's repertoire, Charlie Barnett copied Ellington, and the group of clarinetist Woody Herman, even called the "bluesy orchestra" ... There were also very popular orchestras of the Dorsey brothers (the black Cy Oliver worked there as an arranger), Artie Shaw (he first introduced the fourth group - strings), Glenn Miller (with the famous "crystal chord" - crystal chorus, when a clarinet is played along with saxophones; for example, in the famous Moonlight serenade - the leitmotif of the second film with Miller, Orchestra members' wives). First film - Sun Valley Serenade - was removed even before the United States entered the Second World War and was among the trophies of the Red Army in Germany. Therefore, it was this musical comedy that was destined to personify almost all the art of jazz for two or three generations of post-war Soviet youth. The fact that the completely natural combination 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, it became clear that creativity in large orchestras - big bands - was giving way to a standardized routine. Goodman reduced the number of his musicians to six and began regularly inviting black musicians to his sextet - the trumpet player Kuti Williams from the Ellington Orchestra and the young electric guitarist Charlie Christian, which at that time was a very daring 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, but in his instrumentation he proceeded not so much from the scheme as from the capabilities of the musicians themselves (they said about him: in the jazz score, instead of the names of the instruments, there are the names of the musicians; even his three-minute virtuoso pieces Ellington called Concerto for Cootie, mentioned by Kuti Williams). It was in the work of Ellington that it became clear that improvisation is an artistic principle.

The 1930s were also the heyday of the Broadway musical, which supplied jazz with the so-called. evergreens (literally "evergreens") - individual numbers that turned into a standard jazz repertoire. By the way, the concept of "standard" in jazz does not contain anything reprehensible, this 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 "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), was at least created under its influence.

Naturally, the creativity that developed within swing orchestras of improvisational musicians, by definition, could not be realized in entertainment swing orchestras such as the Cab Calloway Orchestra. It is no coincidence that jam sessions play such an important role in jazz - meetings of musicians in a narrow circle, as a rule, late at night, after work, especially on the occasion of colleagues' tours from other places.

Bebop - bop.

At these gatherings, young soloists from different bands - including Charlie Christian, guitarist from Benny Goodman's sextet, drummer Kenny Clark, pianist Thelonious Monk, trumpet player 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 was 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” to dancers 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 improvisation. It is believed that the trumpeter Gillespie was 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 transform from an entertainment musician into a figure of social significance, which coincided with the birth of the beatnik movement. Gillespie introduced into fashion glasses with massive frames (at first even with glasses without diopters), takes instead of a hat, a special jargon, in particular the still fashionable word cool instead of hot. But the main impetus for the young New Yorkers came when the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker from Kansas City (played in Jay McShann's big band) joined the bopper company. Brilliantly gifted, Parker went much further than his colleagues and contemporaries. By the end of the 1950s, even innovators like Monk and Gillespie returned to their origins - to black music, 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 lawsuits, the musicians' union banned instrumentalists from making records; in reality, only recordings of vocalists accompanied by one piano or a vocal ensemble were released. When the ban was lifted (1944), it became clear that the "microphone" singer (for example, Frank Sinatra) became the central figure of pop music. Bebop attracted attention as a "club" music, but soon lost the audience. But in a softened form and already under the name "cool" new music took root in elite clubs. Yesterday's boppers, such as the young Negro trumpeter Miles Davis, were assisted by respectable musicians, in particular Gil Evans, pianist and arranger of Claude Thornhill's swing orchestra. In Capitol-Nonet by Miles Davis (named after Capitol, who recorded this nonet, later republished as Birth of the cool) White and black musicians - saxophonists Lee Konitz and Jerry Mulligan, as well as the Negro pianist and composer John Lewis, who played with Charlie Parker and later founded the Modern Jazz Quartet, also "went through practice" together.

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

West Coast.

Many of Kenton's orchestras served Hollywood, so the more Europeanized cool style (with academic instruments such as French horn, oboe, bassoon, and the appropriate sounding style, and to some extent the use of polyphonic imitation forms) was called the West Coast. ). Shorty Rogers' octet (highly praised by Igor Stravinsky), ensembles of Shelley Mann and Bud Shank, quartets of Dave Brubeck (with saxophonist Paul Desmond) and Jerry Mulligan (with white trumpeter Chet Baker and Negro - Art Farmer).

Back in the 1920s, the historical ties of the African-American population of the United States with the black population of Latin America affected, but only after the Second World War jazzmen (primarily Dizzy Gillespie) began to consciously use Latin American rhythm, even talked about an independent direction - African 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 New Orleans and Dixieland (and even swing) were later called, became widespread in Europe and almost merged with the urban everyday music of the Old World - the famous three Bs in Great Britain - Acker Bilk, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball (the latter became famous for its Dixieland version Moscow evenings at the very beginning of the 1960s). In the wake of the Dixieland renaissance in Great Britain, there was also a fashion for archaic ensembles of homemade instruments - skiffles, 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 formed) the idea of \u200b\u200b\\ u200b \\ u200bthe mainstream - classical jazz, built according to a proven scheme (collectively played theme - solo improvisation - a 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 the Granz enterprise "Jazz at the Philharmonic". In a broader sense, mainstream is virtually all jazz prior to 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: clubs appeared in which it was customary to listen more than dance (one of them was even called "Birdland" , nicknamed Charlie Parker), festivals (often in the open air), record companies created special branches for jazz - "labels", an independent recording industry emerged (for example, the "Riverside" company, which began with a brilliantly composed anthology on the history of jazz). Even earlier, in the 1930s, specialized magazines began to emerge (Down Beat in the USA, various illustrated monthly in Sweden, France, and in the 1950s in Poland). Jazz seems to split into light, club, and serious, concert. The continuation of the "progressive" was the "third movement", an attempt to combine jazz improvisation with the forms and performing resources of symphonic and chamber music. All trends converged on the "Modern Jazz Quartet", the main experimental laboratory for the synthesis of jazz and "classics". However, the "third stream" enthusiasts were in a hurry; they passed off wishful thinking, believing that there was already a generation of symphony orchestras who were sufficiently familiar with jazz practice. The "third movement", like any other direction in jazz, still has its own adherents, and in some music schools in the United States and Europe, performing groups are created from time to time (Orchestra USA, American Philharmonic "Jack Elliot") and even read the corresponding courses (in particular, the pianist Ren Blake). The "Third Current" found apologists in Europe, especially after the performance of the "Modern Jazz Quartet" at the center of the world musical avant-garde Donaueschingen (FRG) in 1954.

On the other hand, the best swing big bands have been competing with pop in the dance music field. New directions in light jazz music also appeared. For example, 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 rhythm of the Brazilian samba. However, only after the tour of the Stan Getz quartet in Brazil does the "jazz samba" appear, which in Brazil is called "bossa nova". Bossa nova actually became the first sign of the future New World music.

Bebop remains the mainstream in jazz of the 1950s – 1960s - under the name hard bop (heavy, energetic bop; at one time they tried to introduce the concept of "neo-bop"), updated by the improvisational and composer finds of kul. In the same period, an event took place that had very serious aesthetic consequences, including for jazz. Singer-organist-saxophonist Ray Charles is the first to combine the incompatible - the structures (in vocal music also of lyrical content) of the blues and the question-and-answer microstructure associated only with the pathos of spiritual chants. In Negro culture this trend is called "soul" (a concept that in the radical 1960s became synonymous with the words "negro", "black", "African American", etc.); the concentrated content of all African-American traits in jazz and black pop music is called "funky".

At that time, hard bop and jazz soul were opposed to each other (sometimes even within the same group, for example, the Adderly 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 academy of the modern mainstream, was (until his death in 1990, drummer Art Blakey) the Jazz Messengers quintet.

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

Free jazz.

Already in work on one of the orchestral albums of trumpeter Davis ( Porgy & Bess, 1960), arranger Evans suggested that the trumpeter improvise on the basis of not a harmonic sequence of a certain duration - a square, but a certain scale - a fret (mode), also not random, but derived from the same theme, but not a chord accompaniment, but rather the melody itself. The principle of modality, lost by European music back in the Renaissance, but still underlying all professional music in Asia (mugam, raga, dastan, etc.), opened up truly endless 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 (i.e., essentially Euro-Asian) flamenco, which was ideally suited for this purpose.

Davis' companion saxophonist John Coltrane turned to India, Coltrane's colleague, early deceased and brilliantly gifted saxophonist and flutist Eric Dolphy, to the European musical avant-garde (the title of his play 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 bass players Charlie Hayden and Scott La Faro) - recorded the album Free jazz (Free jazz), demonstratively decorated with a reproduction of a painting White light the famous abstractionist Jackson Pollock. The stream of collective consciousness lasting about 40 minutes was a spontaneous, demonstratively not rehearsed (although two versions were recorded) improvisation of eight musicians, and only in the middle did everyone converge for a short time in the unison previously written by Coleman. After "summing up" of modal soul jazz and hard bop in a very successful album in all respects A love supreme (including commercially - 250 thousand records were sold), John Coltrane, however, followed in Coleman's footsteps, recording the program Ascension (Ascension) with the black avant-garde team (including, among other things, the Negro saxophonist from Copenhagen, John Chikai). Black West Indian alto saxophonist Joe Harriott also became the promoter of free jazz in the UK. In addition to Great Britain, an independent free jazz school has developed in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. In other countries, spontaneous collective improvisation turned out to be a temporary hobby, a vogue for the avant-garde (the 1960s was the last period of experimental avant-garde and in academic music); at the same time, there was a transition from the aesthetics of innovation at any cost to a postmodern dialogue with the past. We can say that free jazz (together with other movements 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, “disappeared” in Europe for a long time (practically until the end of the 1960s). A team of European avant-garde artists recorded a project that was far ahead of its time in 1968 Machine gun, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble was born in the UK and the principles of spontaneous improvisation were first theoretically formulated (by the guitarist and leader of an ongoing project Company Derek Bailey). The Instant Composers Pool was active in the Netherlands, the Globe Unity of Alexander von Schlippenbach in Germany, the first jazz opera was recorded by international efforts Escalator over the hill Carla Bley.

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

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

Jazz rock.

The symbiosis of the "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 bands" Chicago ", British bluesmen led by guitarist John McLaughlin. Jazz-rock was independently approached outside the English-speaking countries, for example, Zbigniew Namyslowski in Poland.

All eyes were on the trumpet player Miles Davis, once again leading jazz down a perilous path. During the second half of the 1960s, Davis gradually moved into electric guitar, keyboard synthesizers, and rock rhythms. In 1970 he released the 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 on a new level, is moving closer to soul and funky (Hancock and Corea, for example, take part in the recordings of singer Stevie Wonder). Even the preeminent 1950s pioneer tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins temporarily switches to funky pop.

However, by the end of the 1970s, there was also a "counter" movement towards the restoration of "acoustic" jazz - both the 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 In the 1960s, they reassemble, but without Davis himself, his place is taken by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.

With the emergence of such an influential figure as Winton Marsalis in the early 1980s, neo-mainstream, or, as it is also called, neoclassicism actually occupies the dominant positions 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 became more and more noticeable - for example, hard bop and electric funky in the New York association "M-base", which included singer Cassandra Wilson, saxophonist Steve Coleman, pianist Jeri Ellen, or the light electric fusion of guitarist Pat Metheny, who has collaborated with both Ornette Coleman and his British counterpart Derek Bailey. Coleman himself unexpectedly assembles an "electric" ensemble with two guitarists (including prominent funk musicians - guitarist Vernon Reid and bassist Jamaladin Takuma). However, at the same time, he does not abandon his principle of collective improvisation according to the method of "harmonoly" formulated by him.

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

End of the 20th century

American-centrism is giving way to a new information space driven, among other things, by new means of mass communication (including the Internet). In jazz, as in new pop music, knowledge of the musical languages \u200b\u200bof the “third world” and the search for a “common denominator” becomes mandatory. This is Indo-European folklore with Ned Rotenberg in the "Sync" quartet or a Russian-Carpathian mixture in the "Moscow Art Trio".

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

If earlier it was possible to become famous in jazz only "through America" \u200b\u200b(as became known, for example, Austrian Joe Zawinul, Czechs Miroslav Vitous and Jan Hammer, Pole Michal Urbaniak, Swede Sven Asmussen, Dane Nils Hennig Oersted-Pedersen, who emigrated from the USSR to 1973 Valery Ponomarev), now the leading trends in jazz are taking shape in the Old World and even subjugate the leaders of American jazz - such as, for example, the artistic principles of the ECM company (folklore, composer-polished and typically European in "sound" stream of consciousness), formulated by the German producer Manfred Eicher on the example of the music of the Norwegian Jan Garbarek, now Chick Corea, pianist Keith Jarrett and saxophonist Charles Lloyd profess, even without being associated with this firm by exclusive contracts. Independent schools of folklore jazz (world jazz) and jazz avant-garde are also emerging 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 character of the mainstream and free jazz, the openness of the civilized world lead to the emergence of, for example, the influential Polish-Finnish grouping Tomasz Stanko - Edward Vesal or the strong Estonian-Russian duet Lembit Saarsalu - Leonid Vintskevich, “over the barriers” of statehood and nationality. The boundaries of jazz expand even more when attracting the everyday music of different peoples - from country to chanson in the so-called. jam-bands.

Literature:

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



Jazz as a form of musical art appeared in the USA at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, incorporating the musical traditions of European settlers and African folklore melodic patterns.

The characteristic improvisation, melodic polyrhythm and expressiveness of performance became the hallmark of the first New Orleans jazz bands (jazz-bands) in the first decades of the last century.

Over time, jazz has gone through periods of its development and formation, changing the rhythmic pattern and stylistic orientation: from the improvisational style of ragtime, to the dancing orchestral swing (swing) and leisurely soft blues (blues).

The period from the early 1920s to the 1940s is associated with the flourishing of jazz orchestras (big bands), which consisted of several orchestral sections of saxophones, trombones, trumpets and a rhythm section. The peak of popularity of big bands came in the mid-30s of the last century. Music performed by the jazz bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman sounded on dance floors and on the radio.

The rich orchestral sound, bright intonations and improvisation of the great soloists Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, Benny Carter and others have created the recognizable and unique the big band sound, which is a classic of jazz music.

In the 40-50s. the last century, the time has come for modern jazz; such jazz styleslike furious bebop, lyrical cool jazz, soft west coast jazz, rhythmic hard bop, soulful soul jazz captured the hearts of jazz music lovers.

In the mid-1960s, a new jazz direction appeared - jazz-rock, a kind of combination of energy inherent in rock music and jazz improvisation. The founders jazz style - rock is considered Miles Davis, Larry Coryell, Billy Cobham. In the 70s, jazz-rock became extremely popular. The use of the rhythmic pattern and harmony of rock music, the shades of traditional oriental melody, and the harmony of the blues, the use of electric instruments and synthesizers, eventually led to the emergence of the term jazz fusion, which underlines the combination of several musical traditions and influences with its name.

In the 70s and 80s, jazz music, while retaining an emphasis on melody and improvisation, acquired the features of pop, funk, rhythm and blues (R&B) and crossover jazz, significantly expanding the audience and becoming commercially successful.

Contemporary jazz music that emphasizes clarity, melody and beauty of sound is usually characterized as smooth jazz or contemporary jazz. Rhythmic and melodic lines of guitar and bass guitar, saxophone and trumpet, keyboard instruments, in the sound frame of synthesizers and samplers create a luxurious, easily recognizable colorful smooth jazz sound.

Despite the fact that smooth jazz and contemporary jazz both have a similar musical style, they are still different jazz styles... As a rule, it is argued that smooth jazz is "background" music, while contemporary jazz is more individual jazz style and requires close attention of the listener. Further development of smooth jazz led to the emergence of a lyric directions of modern jazz - adult contemporary and more rhythmic urban jazz with shades of R&B, funk, hip-hop.

In addition, the emerging trend to combine smooth jazz and electronic sound has led to the emergence of such popular areas of modern music as nu jazz, as well as lounge, chill and lo-fi.

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

One should make judgments about new phenomena with caution, or as South Panassier, a 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 tacit 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 remembered - it would seem that you cannot be mistaken here. But such remarks betray the neophyte. These are emblematic figures, and if Fitzgerald can still be spoken of in a suitable context, Armstrong is the Charlie Chaplin of jazz. You won't be talking to an art house movie lover 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 other than these two aces, hold them and wait for a suitable situation.

In many directions, there are phenomena that are fashionable and not very much, but to the greatest extent this is characteristic of jazz. A mature hipster, accustomed 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 one's "deep erudition". To understand the style in general terms, you should list its main directions since the end of the 19th century.

Ragtime and blues are sometimes called protojazz, and if the former, being not quite a full-fledged form from a modern point of view, is interesting simply as a fact of the history of music, the blues is still relevant today.

Scott Joplin Ragtimes

And although the researchers cite the psychological state of Russians and the total feeling of hopelessness as 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 music belonged to the second.

Spirituals are stricter than gospels and are performed by a chorus of believers, often accompanied by even-beat claps - an important feature of all styles of jazz and a problem for many European listeners who clap out of place. Old world music most often makes us nod to odd beats. In jazz, the opposite is true. Therefore, if you are not sure how you feel these second and fourth beats, unusual for a European, it is better to refrain from claps. Or watch the performers themselves do it and then try it again.

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

Modern spiritual performed by Take 6

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

Classic gospel by Mahalia Jackson

Modern gospel from the movie "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 increases sharply, an important event of the era - the emergence of jazz bands, small orchestras of 9-15 people. The success of the Negro collectives motivated white Americans to create 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 stable position of the banjo, the leading position of the trumpet and the full participation of the clarinet. In the course of time, the last two instruments will replace the saxophone, which will become the permanent leader of such an orchestra. Traditional jazz is more static in nature.

Jazz Band Jelly Rolla Morton

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 defended their right to this style, it is still widely believed that African Americans have a special sense of rhythm, which allows them to create the 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 the present day became famous for their direction or intellectual improvisations that betray deep musical erudition.

Therefore, if in a conversation you mentioned a white jazz player, you shouldn't say something like "how great he is swinging" - after all, he swings either normally or in no way, such is reverse racism.

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

Every 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 one of the first.

In the Mood. Performed by Glenn Miller Orchestra

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

George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Summertime aria. Academic performance by Maria Callas

George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Summertime aria. Jazz performed by Frank Sinatra

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

George Gershwin. Rhapsody in the blues style. 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 players are convinced that a written piece without improvisation is no longer jazz "by definition", and academic composers consider jazz means of expression 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 display have long been a meme in jazz circles.

Since the 1920s, the number of iconic and iconic figures in the history of the direction of figures has been growing, and it becomes more and more difficult to put these numerous names in mind. However, some can be recognized by their characteristic timbre or manner of performance. Billie Holiday was one such memorable singer.

All of Me. Performed by Billie Holiday

In the 50s, a new era dawned, called "modern jazz". The above-mentioned musicologist Yug Panasier denied herself from her. This direction opens with the bebop style: its characteristic feature is high speed and frequent changes in 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 musicians from the street could always come to a jam session - an evening of improvisation - so the pioneers of bebop introduced a fast pace to get rid of amateurs and weak professionals. This snobbery is partly inherent in fans of such music, who consider their favorite direction to be 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

It is especially chic to admire the shocking, deliberately rude manner of performance of Thelonious Monk, 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 deep involvement and hints at a long 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 John Coltrane church in San Francisco.

The Dancing Saints mural from a church in San Francisco.

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

Take Five. Performed by Dave Brubeck's Ensemble

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

Granados. Jazz arrangement of the piece "Mach and the Nightingale" by the Spanish composer Granados. Performed by Bill Evans with Symphony Orchestra

Malaguena. Performed by Stan Kenton Orchestra

Girl from Ipanema. Performed by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Goetz

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

Thanks to its unobtrusive and "neutral" sound, Brazilian jazz has made 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 well.

An important turn was outlined in the popular orchestral style - symphonic jazz. In the 40s, jazz, powdered with academic symphonic sound, became a fashionable phenomenon and the 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 60s, the sound of the symphonic jazz orchestra lost its novelty, which led to experiments with Stan Kenton's harmony, Bill Evans adaptations and Gil Evans themed albums such as Sketches of Spain and Miles Ahead.

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

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

Breathe. Performed by The Cinematic Orchestra

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

The traditions of bebop and cool jazz have merged in such a direction as hard bop, an improved version of bebop, although it is rather difficult to distinguish one from the other by ear. Outstanding 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

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

So What? Performed by Miles Davis

While great-minded jazz musicians were figuring out how to further complicate the already complex music, blind authors and performers Ray Charles and walked the road of hearts, 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, playing music on Hammond's electric organ, are loudly making themselves known.

Jimmy Smith

In the mid-60s, soul jazz appeared, which combined the democracy of soul with the intellectualism of bebop, but historically it is customary to associate it with the latter, keeping silent about the meaning of the former. Ramsey Lewis became the most popular figure in soul jazz.

The 'In' Crowd. Performed by Ramsey Lewis Trio

If from the beginning of the 50s the division of jazz into two branches was only felt, then in the 70s this could already be spoken of as an irrefutable fact. The pinnacle of the elite trend was

Apr 16, 2013

"Authentic jazz opposes stamped musical artifacts."

Sergey Slonimsky

Main currents

Jazz is many-sided and versatile. It has many shapes and styles due to its improvisational focus. One can distinguish such movements as traditional or New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, big bands, stride, progressive jazz, cool and many, many other directions.

Jazz is music that enriches, fills and develops us. This is history, people, names, great personalities who created and performed it, who dedicated their whole life to it ...

A jazz musician is not just a performer. He is a true creator, creating his impulsive art in front of the audience - instant, fragile, almost elusive.

Today we will talk about such a truly extraordinary musical genre as jazz, about its styles and directions, and, of course, about the people, thanks to whom we can enjoy this delightful music ...

“Don't play, what is already there! Play what doesn't exist yet! "

These words of the great American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis perfectly demonstrate the essence of jazz, its specificity.

Jazz, as a form of musical art, was formed in the late 19th - early 20th centuries in the United States of America. This genre is the original shake of European and African culture.

Jazz cannot be confused with other styles, because its character is unique - magical polyrhythm, inexhaustible improvisation, which is based on a hot rhythm.

Throughout its history, jazz has often changed, transformed, opened up to performers and listeners from previously unknown sides due to the development of new harmonic models and musical techniques by composers and jazz musicians.

"First Lady of Jazz"

As we said earlier, speaking of jazz music, it is impossible to ignore its authors and performers. One of the most iconic people in the history of jazz, this Ella Jane Fitzgerald is the owner of a magnificent voice with a range of three octaves, a master of scat and unique vocal improvisation. She is a legend and the "first lady of jazz".

"If jazz has a female face, then this is the face of Ella," one of the most respected critics in the world of academic music once said. And indeed it is!

Ella Fitzgerald had a kind and compassionate heart. She has helped those in need at the City of Hope National Medical Center and the American Heart Association. And in 1993, the great vocalist opened the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, which provides assistance to young musicians and supplies them with everything they need.

This greatest vocalist in the history of jazz music is a 13-time Grammy winner, winner of the National Medal of the Arts, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as the Knight of the Order of Literature and Arts and many other awards.

Jazz in Russia

Along with the development of the jazz scene in the United States of America, jazz began to develop in the USSR from about the 1920s.

The starting point for Russian jazz can be called October 1, 1922. It was on this day that 1 concert of a jazz orchestra conducted by Valentin Parnakh, a great theatrical figure, dancer and poet, took place.

Soviet jazz bands mainly specialized in performing compositions for such fashionable dances at that time as Charleston and Foxtrot. This is how jazz began to gain popularity.

The composer and musician Eddie Rosner made a great contribution to the development of Russian jazz. Having started his career in European countries such as Poland and Germany, he later moved to the USSR, becoming a swing pioneer in the country.

Eddie Rosner, Joseph Weinstein, Vadim Ludvikovsky and other outstanding domestic jazzmen brought up a whole galaxy of endlessly talented soloists-improvisers and arrangers, whose work subsequently brought jazz in the USSR closer to world standards and brought it to a qualitatively new level. For example, Alexey Kozlov, being the founder of the legendary jazz group "Arsenal" and a composer, performer of many virtuoso jazz compositions, became the author of music for many theatrical performances and films.

The birth of jazz

Jazz came to us from African lands. And, as you know, traditional African music is characterized by a very complex musical rhythm. On the basis of this spontaneous and, at first glance, chaotic sound at the end of the 19th century, an interesting and unusual musical direction was born - ragtime. This style developed, intertwining with elements of classical blues, absorbing them into itself, as a result, it became the "parent" of such a now well-known musical direction as jazz.

Among the many wonderful musicians performing jazz, one can also highlight the work of Igor Butman - People's Artist of Russia, an excellent saxophonist and jazzman. He graduated from the renowned Berkeley College of Music in Boston with two majors: composer and concert saxophonist. In the early 90s he moved to New York and became a member of the legendary Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

Since 1996 Igor Butman has been living in Russia. This jazz musician has received many awards to date. And since 2009, he has been the owner of his own record label Butman Music. A year ago, he headed the Moscow Jazz Orchestra. His musical works boggle the imagination with their liveliness and versatility of sound. Unusual jazz notes can be heard in almost every work of his. He works miracles!

An endless source of inspiration

Jazz is music that gives pleasure. She always inspires, helps to find meaning, teaches important and meaningful. Many books have been written about this musical genre, many films have been shot and many words have been said ...

"Jazz is ourselves in our best hours ... when we have spiritual uplift, frankness and fearlessness ..." - these words of Alexander Genis, a famous literary critic and writer, in our opinion, best demonstrate the essence of jazz music, its specificity and beauty.

True love for jazz cannot be measured, it can only be felt. This is complex and at the same time incredibly beautiful music, deep and emotional. Jazz is an art to which our heart responds.

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