African American Musicians in
American Popular Culture
Presented by:
Ryan Tarjanyi
Jasen Dodds
Diversity/Black History Month
• Age Group: High School
Objective
• Teach students about African-Americans’
contribution to the first real “American
Music”.
• Teach students about the rich cultural
heritage of this art form.
Materials Needed
• Attention Span
• Notebook/ writing implement
Activity
• Ask students the question, what is jazz?
– Have students tell you the first thing that
comes to their mind when you ask this
question.
Different Styles of Jazz
• Early Jazz (Dixieland)
Time period: Cir. 1900-1928
• The Swing Era
Time Period:
1920-1935 Beginning of swing bands
1935-1945 The Swing Era
• Bebop
Time period: 1940 - 1955
• Cool
Time Period: 1950 - 1955
• The Return to the Hot: Hard Bop and
Funky Jazz
Time period: 1951-1958
•
Post Bebop Straight-Ahead
•
Time Period: 1959 to present
•
Style characteristics and performance practices:
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Complex harmony, melody, and rhythm
Forms became increasingly complex, asymmetrical, and unpredictable
Expanded use of different time signatures
Expanded scale vocabulary
Required great technical skill and facility
A small group music
Tune sources included the following:
–
blues
–
I Got Rhythm tunes
–
original tunes (contrafacts and others)
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modal tunes
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jazz tunes
Important players in this style include Miles Davis, John Coltrane,
Sonny Rollins, George Russell, Cannonball Adderley, and
numerous others.
• The Breakthrough Year into the
Contemporary Period: 1959
– 1959 was the year in which a number of major events in jazz
history took place, among them the following:
– The arrival of Ornette Coleman, one of the founding fathers of free jazz, on the
East Coast at the Lenox School of Jazz; also the year of his heralded and
controversial opening at the Five Spot in New York City
– The release of Miles Davis' groundbreaking and influential album Kind of Blue
– The awakening of interest in Latin and Latin-derived music, primarily due to
these 1959 events:
– The film Black Orpheus, with music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa,
reached America
– The first major album in the bossa nova style, Chege de Saudade by Joao
Gilberto, was recorded.
– The term "bossa nova" was first used, in the song "Desafinado"
– Sketches of Spain, a collaboration between Gil Evans and Miles Davis, was
recorded. This was Miles' most popular album in the 1960s.
– This high level of interest in Latin music opened the door for explorations into
other ethnic music, resulting in experimentation with the elements of the music of
India and Africa (among others)
•
Ethnic Jazz
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Time Period: 1959 to present
Style characteristics and performance practices:
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Draws heavily on the identifiable musical characteristics of other ethnic
musics
Utilizes the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic characteristics of other
ethnic musics
Uses the compositions of other ethnic musics
Makes use of the instruments, instrumental concepts, and often the
musical philosophy of other ethnic musics
Activity
• Have students listen to several different
recordings spanning the different styles
and decades of jazz.
• Have students verbalize what sounds
different about each.
Activity
• Have Students select a famous recording,
listen to it and then write a few paragraphs
describing what they heard.
Activity
• Have students write a report on the life of
a famous jazz musician.
Activity
• For extra credit encourage a student to
transcribe an improvised solo from one of
the recordings we listened to. To do this,
the student will listen to the performer and
then write down note-for-note what the
performer is playing.
Five Websites
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http://www.monkinstitute.com/
http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/
http://www.iaje.org/
http://www.kennedycenter.org/programs/jazz/
• http://www.apassion4jazz.net/