Improvised style, exciting rhythm and distinctive syncopation are exquisite and wonderful music that cannot be accurately recorded.
Among many popular music, jazz is the first music that has a wide influence in the world. Jazz is actually American folk music. European church music, American black violin and banjo traditional music combined with African singing and American black labor horn to form the original "folk blues", while "ragtime" and "folk blues" formed early jazz.
I watched a Japanese movie recently, which was about high school students' love for jazz music & gt not bad.
Today's American music scene is full of various elements in the development of musical form, rhythm and other structures. In pop music, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, R&B and other musical styles emerge one after another, which is inseparable from the popularity of jazz. Most music with dance elements makes it spread quickly and be well known to the public. In terms of professional music, the style of jazz music also contributed. Its rhythm and unique sound form have been used for reference by local composers, and American music with elegant characteristics has been developed. Some elements were absorbed by foreign musicians and became experimental music works in the development of European romanticism to modern music in the early 20th century. Jazz music has left its footprints in both popular and professional fields because of its comprehensive content, which can be said to be an art form parallel to the development history of the United States.
The emergence of jazz
Jazz is a comprehensive music, which mainly comes from three aspects: American native music, black music and European classical music. Jazz is obviously a mixture in a melting pot.
/kloc-American native music in the 20th century is very distinctive, and there have been many excellent American composers, such as stephen foster. His sentimental pop music works and narrative songs have been greatly welcomed, showing the universal characteristics of American music in that period: catchy tunes, simple tonality, sad and simple lyrics, regular harmony and repetitive and single rhythm, which are unforgettable. Therefore, his songs were far more popular than the "art songs" in Europe at that time, and the most famous one was "Relatives in My Hometown". By the end of19th century, various popular songs in the United States had not changed this form greatly, thus forming a musical atmosphere that permeated the whole country ―― the style of reciting melodies, the beats of 44 and 44, and regular clauses ... all of these can be found in the later jazz styles. Early jazz transplanted the simple and unified melody and basic sound form of American music.
At the same time, black people also have a great influence on jazz, and there are obvious differences between American black folk songs and white songs. In the humming of folk songs, there are often tone sandhi, subtle rhythm, unique treble, overtone and timbre. There are many musical elements of African ancestors, such as black soul songs and blues. In black society, soul songs are almost their ideological and emotional pillars. It condenses the expectations and disappointments of almost all African-Americans about their life experiences, history, experiences and sufferings. Black music blues is the most important factor in the formation of jazz. Its music is as sad as a soul song, showing the typical emotions and psychology of the oppressed and exploited black class, and it is a direct talk and vent of life troubles. Originated in the late19th century, Bruce combined the African-style battle cry with the sweet singing of the church choir. At first, there was no accompaniment, and later, there was a single instrument accompaniment such as violin, guitar and banjo, which produced a performance form in which instruments and singers alternated. This is the original structure of jazz. Standard blues music generally has a structure of 12 bars, which is divided into three lines with 4 bars each. The lyrics are two corresponding sentences. The first sentence is repeated, each sentence is about 2-5 bars long. The remaining four bars are generally improvised by performers. Black people living in America inherited the performance style of their African ancestors. Sometimes the performer will insert a dialogue, but usually some music language is added by the accompanying guitar or piano. This is a typical expression of "shout and answer" in African music-the singer sings "shout" and the guitar plays "answer". At the same time, when musicians sing or play, they closely develop melody with rhythm as the center, not just rhythm, which is also a typical African style. However, blues is not African music after all, because American slaves were deeply influenced by American life and changed their original African style, making the black music at that time gradually become a combination of American and African music.
/kloc-In the second half of the 9th century, European music was in The Romantic Period. Various fancy and dazzling performances emerge one after another; Every composer tries to integrate his emotions into music with the most exaggerated expression. Although they inherited classicism in mode system, harmony system, rhythm and formal norms, composers made great exaggeration and free changes in melody, harmony and rhythm out of rebellious spirit. At that time, European colonists in the United States, out of their love for music, established conservatories and concert halls in several urban centers in the eastern United States, gradually making the traditional harmony system and melody style of European music familiar to Americans. The civil war overthrew slavery, and the newly liberated blacks gradually entered the music schools run by European colonists and obtained diplomas. Many blacks have even made extraordinary achievements on the world art stage with superhuman talent. The blues we mentioned above only lingered in the vocal music field, and instrumental music also included primitive jazz-that is, "ragtime" which appeared almost at the same time as Bruce. In the most typical form, it is a kind of piano music. Generally speaking, left-handed strike is a continuous and relatively fixed rhythm, similar to marching. At the same time, the right hand plays an extremely fast and complicated sequence, which is intertwined with the fixed rhythm of the left hand. Its way is syncopation, which brings strong rhythm interest to the rhythm, which is very dramatic and cheerful. It is particularly noteworthy that Ragtime, unlike Bruce, can be recorded by music. Scott Jopling, a black musician, made it popular. He was trained in classical music since he was a child, so his ragtime music was quite European at that time.
There are few materials and music left before 1923, so we can't use a specific time to define when jazz was formed and what the music style was like at that time. But through other pictures and physical materials, we can know that the development of jazz is closely related to the social life at that time. The new apartheid policy forced many Creoles with higher education (descendants of blacks and whites) to live with blacks, which also prompted the collision between European classical music and African traditional music. Black people play classical music in various entertainment places in a way that tends to African style, and improvise with a lot of blues style and ragtime rhythm. Therefore, while American composers in the same period borrowed from the characteristics of European music creation and absorbed the romantic music factors, a few music pioneers combined the characteristics of American native pop music such as fluency and single beat with the improvisational factors of American black traditional music tonality, which contributed to the birth of jazz.
New Orleans jazz, the first real jazz style in classical jazz, was born around 19 10. Many romantic elements such as hymns, wandering poems and casual beats are integrated into it. There are two common rhythms in rhythm: first, when playing discontinuous fixed rhythms, the first beat of each bar or every other bar is played as a jumping chord, which is usually used as the background effect of instrumental solo, which comes from the accompaniment sound type of tap dance; The second is to repeat the rhythm and sound pattern of the melody line in the impromptu repetition section, which leads to stress and produces strong rhythm power in the impromptu polyphony music. The difference is that the former produces tonic music, while the latter is polyphonic music (A History of Jazz-Frank Tiro). This jazz music blends Bruce's deep feelings into the rhythm of ragtime. Pay attention to the division of the former, advocate the latter a lot of solo and impromptu decorative melody variation, and the atmosphere is warm and cheerful. With the development of jazz in New Orleans, white musicians in New Orleans and Chicago began to develop their own jazz, which produced Dixieland jazz, a branch of traditional jazz in New Orleans. It came into being in the 1920s of 19. Dixieland means "Dixie's land" in English, so we can guess that it is related to music such as March. Most of its styles come from blues, marches and pop music at that time, and even a short piece of music can be extended and improved. This also caused the origin of improvisation at that time. However, although white musicians can approach the jazz played by black musicians in rhythm, tone and counterpoint, they lack excellent solos.
The development of jazz
During this period, jazz music experienced the most popular process and began to develop on the road of professional music. Because the early classical jazz itself contained a lot of techniques and contents of European classical music, jazz developed into professional music more easily and quickly than other popular music at that time.
The Great Depression of 1930s is coming to an end, and young people have enough money for entertainment. At the same time, the government's lifting of the ban has made them more enthusiastic. They danced and swayed with the band, and their madness also reflected the prosperity of swing music at that time. Perhaps the dynamic beat of this kind of music catered to the involuntary swaying of people's bodies when dancing at that time, so it got its name. Benny Goodman is an important figure in the history of swing music. At that time, the performing group was a "big band", which was the situation of bands in the early days of the Great Depression. It is composed of some famous jazz musicians, aiming at facilitating people to arrange and compose music, and at the same time achieving the same effect as jazz solo style. Goodman actively recruited musicians in the "big band" and was the first white musician to accept black musicians. With the help of the "swing" technique in the black belt, there is a strong tension between the basic rhythm and the actual melody; At the same time, he hired someone to arrange music for him, but it happened that because of his early classical music training, he gave up the basic treatment of being too barbaric in black bands and brought the unique accuracy of classical music into performance. Black musicians often distort exaggerated music in their performances, while Goodman insists on expressing music in a straightforward way, which also leads to his softening of African style in large black bands while maintaining the rhythm of swing style. This move made swing music quickly accepted by white people. Therefore, when classical jazz declined due to the Great Depression, swing music became active, and gradually evolved into accompaniment music and concert music for song and dance performances with the footsteps of black musician Duke Ellington. It was from this period that the road of jazz specialization began to sprout. The theme and content of jazz have been determined in its early days, but its performance and form do not have style characteristics. Entering the "swing" period, jazz began to consciously and gradually establish its own style, which has artistic significance from the standardization of rhythm, the mode of melody, the choice of musical instruments, and the scale and structure of the band. The Rise and Fall of Jazz in One Hundred Years, Qin Luo, August 2002.
During this period, jazz developed in two different ways. One was to continue its original pop rhythm to find different fresh materials to survive, and the other was to gradually penetrate into the professional music field from the rhythm and sound types.
In pop music, the performance form of large bands makes impromptu soloists have almost no place. The same swing is empty in harmony; Chord progression is limited to triad and seventh chords, and at most, chords are occasionally increased or decreased or notes are added; Simple syncopation combination with the same rhythm; Melody is too bound by tradition, sticking to dance music with 4 bars and 8 bars as the phrase structure. (The Rise and Fall of Jazz in a Hundred Years, Qin Luo) Soon some people began to lose the novelty of swaying and began to seek a breakthrough. By adding some transmitting chords, they added a second harmonic progression rhythm activity to the original structure. On this basis, Charlie Parker and dizzy gillespie established the "bebop/bop" style in a unique and incomprehensible improvisation way contrary to the tradition, which became the pioneers of innovation and created modern jazz. At first, the word "Bibopop" only describes some syllables that have no clear meaning when musicians practice vocalization or hum the melody of instrumental works, but it also embodies the characteristics of free and unrestrained new music style. Compared with swing, the melodic phrases of pop are different in length and the structure is not so uniform and symmetrical. Harmony is complex, disharmony and frequent changes; The rhythm is changeable, emphasizing irregular stress and full of contrast. The performance abandoned the huge organization of big bands and consisted of 3~6 people. The new rule of not using music scores has brought improvisation back to the main position. Because the emergence of Pop was a subversion of big bands and swing at that time, it was regarded as an unpopular alternative. At the same time, Bibopo musicians tried to upgrade the quality of jazz from the utilitarian level of dance music to the artistic level of chamber music, and to upgrade jazz musicians from the status of entertainment to the status of artists. They consciously establish a new elite class and exclude those who do not meet their predetermined artistic standards. This led to the gradual separation of pop music from society and audience, and even made other traditional jazz musicians question it, which led to the split period of jazz popularity in history.
Traditional musicians began to miss the concept of unity and collectivity in the big band period, and they reorganized their staff, hoping to carry it forward again. However, the performance of big bands may violate the essence of jazz improvisation after all. Therefore, with the changes of the times, the way of dozens of musicians performing on the same stage gradually withdrew from the historical stage, the enduring aura of big bands disappeared, and the remaining pioneer musicians continued to develop modern jazz. Just as pop music soon replaced swing music, people constantly like the new and hate the old, and various jazz styles followed. Cool jazz has absorbed the characteristics that pop and swing music have been abandoned, and is famous for its softness, elegance and emphasis on arrangement, which embodies the influence of classical jazz and is experimental and caters to the tastes of the public. However, it didn't take long for the rise of hard bop to drown out cold jazz, and its emphasis on percussion laid the foundation for drums to play in jazz in the future. After that, people kept trying new ways to stimulate jazz. For example, michael davis's "Modal Jazz" limited jazz music to a few fixed modes, but it gave musicians more room to play.
1959 Another revolution in the history of jazz started in Onete Coleman's Extreme Freedom. He and his partner walked into the recording studio and started their journey of freedom without knowing what to play. Free jazz tries to destroy the sense of structure, direction and tonality, and the orchestration method is closer to the rhythm group of ordinary jazz bands, that is, melody instruments. However, these traditional musical instruments gave way to Indian sitar, tabula double drum, thumb piano, alarm, electronic octave stop device, illusion light and a large number of substandard electronic equipment and percussion instruments. Therefore, some free jazz bands look like an avant-garde band without jazz. (Frank Taylor's History of Jazz) Free jazz, like pop music, was regarded as a "mistake" at the beginning of its appearance, which trampled on jazz art. However, many jazz musicians themselves have received professional classical music training. They don't know how to compose music, but express their inner feelings while getting rid of traditional patterns and norms. Therefore, free jazz is not only a kind of pure music that people appreciate, but also an expression of people's inner thoughts and a spiritual explosion.
Since the rise of rock music in the late 1960s, the end of jazz began. More and more people began to flock to The Beatles and put jazz aside. However, jazz musicians don't want to give up their beliefs easily. Michael davis is such a persistent person. He observed that although rock music has different races and styles, its essence still incorporates almost all the popular factors. Therefore, when jazz declined, Davis made bold improvements in structure and timbre, adopted the Rondo style in classical music, and constantly repeated musical thoughts and paragraphs, making each work full of vitality and clear structural tendency, and boldly used electronic instruments to create and obtain various acoustic colors, so that lyricism and fantasy were fully exerted in performance and creation. It is particularly noteworthy that he initiated "fusion" in his exploration, that is, combining pop factors such as rock music with jazz to promote the development of jazz. Until the 1980s, all this type of jazz was called jazz-rock-fusion. However, the great fusion of jazz also reflects its decline. It began to develop without its own personality and relied on other popular factors, losing its own cultural soil and the inherent foundation of spirit and soul.
As for professional music, at that time, western music obviously formed two tendencies: demanding rich music language and demanding innovative music language, and different aesthetic opinions on music creation appeared. Generally speaking, there are three aspects: 1. Use domestic materials for creation; 2. Make bold attempts to reform without losing tradition; 3. Twelve-tone music and sequence music are developed on the basis of German post-romantic creation. The real rise of American professional music creation was between the two world wars. The United States did not suffer direct economic losses in the First World War. The rapid economic development has led to the establishment of a large number of conservatories, and the immigration of European musicians to the United States because of the war has also made professional music popular among the public. In this increasingly prosperous era, music, opera and fine arts have all reached the world level, and the movement to establish American style has gradually started. American professional music has different reactions and applications to European characteristics. Some composers strive to establish their own style and characteristics in their creation out of national pride, while others are engaged in experiments and explorations of various new sounds with the fate of new music popular in Europe. What is mainly involved here is the professional creation of ethnic materials.
Next, let's talk about george gershwin, who has made immeasurable contributions to the professional field of jazz music. Although many European and American composers noticed jazz before him, they occasionally adopted some elements, such as Gottschalck's banjo, Debussy's Black Puppet Gait Dance, Children's Home, Carpenter's concertino and Stravinsky's Ragtime Dance for Piano. None of their works has received as much attention as Gershwin's. Gershwin began to compose pop music and gradually developed into professional music. He used his expertise in pop music and folk music to apply jazz, ragtime music and blues music to the creation of serious music. His music with American characteristics has been widely accepted by the public, including rhapsody in blue, Piano Concerto in F Major and the opera Poky and Bess. Among them, Wave is a striking work reflecting the life of black people. Go down in history because of its jazz and blues style. Basket madness is a historical masterpiece of Gershwin at the peak of jazz development and the golden age of his own creation, aiming at overthrowing the wrong view that jazz must keep a strict beat and adhere to the dance beat. This work is similar to piano concerto, which is a common form of jazz; The works highlight the use of melody, which is easy to remember, and the rhythm and syncopation are distinct. The handling of motivation, theme, short sentences and other materials is basically not developed or expanded, and it is repeated, which makes the music have the nature of improvisation in repetition, which happens to be a common technique in jazz. Musically, it also adopts the free segmentation form commonly used in jazz. "Crazy in the Basket" opened the way for the first American pop musician to succeed in professional music. It was the first successful work of jazz on the stage, which made serious musicians close to the broad audience, and also made art music gain a wider audience and become the representative of American professional music literature. Gershwin emphasized that the only important thing in music is thoughts and feelings, so black emotional music using blues or jazz catered to his ideas.
At the same time, there are other composers who associate jazz with professional music. Copland was influenced by Debussy, Ravel and others on the choice of jazz rhythm, and also used jazz as the material for cooperation. His aim is to write an American-style work in the language of serious music, which makes people realize that jazz contains a natural and exploratory rhythm. But he gradually realized that his limited improvisation ability could not really control jazz and blues, so he gradually gave up the idea of using jazz to direct professional music. The other is the black composer Steele, who takes the black genre, especially jazz, as his vocation. He believes that jazz is one of the minority music languages developed in the United States, which belongs to the United States rather than other countries in the world. Many of his works reflect his democratic thoughts. With the maturity of age and creation, Steele's music style began to tend to Europe, and folk materials were more widely used, so I won't go into details here.
final result
The history of jazz, like many music, has experienced rise, prosperity and decline. It has formed different forms in different periods. Although there seems to be a tendency to obliterate oneself in the end, its past spiritual connotation and essence reflect a persistent belief and create a number of household names. Although jazz was mixed with the surviving free jazz in the early 1980s, it seems that jazz has reached the end of its tether, and jazz that wants to weaken has lost its original focus and center of gravity. However, in the face of the situation that every musical form has been explored by our ancestors, jazz musicians still adhere to the jazz spirit left by our ancestors, return to the past, and seek new themes and creative inspiration from classical jazz: a so-called "neoclassicism" based on pop, New Orleans jazz, swing and soul music, with a high emphasis on playing skills and elegant melody, was created and became the mainstream style in the 1980s. Moreover, passionate rhythms and fascinating tunes can always be heard in professional music, which has become an important symbol of the increasingly blurred popularity and professionalism of modern music. The development of jazz depends on constant freshness and excitement. Whether jazz can reproduce its former glory in an era full of impetuousness and popularity remains to be witnessed by history.