America’s Musical Landscape
6th edition
Part 4
Vernacular Musics Since Rock
and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Jazz Since 1960

Emerging new styles joined without replacing established
jazz trends

The jazz experience increased in complexity and sophistication


Although hardly in popularity
Starting from bebop, jazz has belonged to the classical as
well as popular music world

Jazz is “America’s classical music”—Billy Taylor
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Jazz in the 1960s

Jazz musicians explored relationships between
classical and popular music

Less emphasis placed on outstanding solo
performances accompanied by other players

More emphasis on collective improvisation by several, or
even by all, ensemble members at the same time
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Free Jazz

During the 1960s jazz musicians sought new approaches to
improvisation

Improvisation remained at the core of the concept of jazz

Some believed that jazz was not primarily about individual
solos, but best expressed by collective improvisation – the
simultaneous improvisation of some or all members of a combo

1960: The album Free Jazz, by Ornette Coleman,
introduced free collective improvisation
 Free Jazz defied the perception of jazz as accessible to
the ordinary listener
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Free Jazz: Characteristics
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No familiar chord changes
No references to popular songs or blues
No steady beat
Each musician improvised independently, but aware of others
Initial phrases of a piece were played together by soloists yet not
necessarily in unison
Released musicians from the strictures of tonality, recurring
rhythmic patterns, fixed pulse, predetermined themes
There were short melodic motives—riffs—that could be inserted
Free jazz uttered musically the sorts of freedom African Americans
demanded and finally were achieving in many areas of life
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Free Jazz and its Relationship to NonWestern Music

Having no chord changes relieved free jazz ensembles of the
need to include piano
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With its restrictive keyboard limited to the tones of the black and
white keys
This freed musicians to explore non-Western scales
Musicians were able to include instruments from other cultures
 And play Western instruments in nontraditional ways
Ornette Coleman’s free jazz performances used

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Microtones (lying between the tones of a piano keyboard)
Certain rhythmic techniques from the music of India
 Heightened emotions and intellectual challenges
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Free Jazz:
John Coltrane (1926-1967)

Saxophonist, spiritual leader of free
jazz during the last years of his
short life


His free spirit caused him to change
stylistic preferences throughout his
career
Early in his career

Known for producing “sheets of
sound” because of playing so many
notes at rapid-fire tempos

Example: His 1959 Giant Steps
saxophone
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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John Coltrane
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Later areas of interest

Modal music, working with Miles Davis

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Indian music
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The influential album Kind of Blue
The 1960 album My Favorite Things
As a saxophonist on tenor and soprano
saxophone
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Admired for his beautiful tone and effects
Countered Ornette Coleman’s concept of collective
improvisation by playing extremely long individual solos

“Chasin’ the Trane” (1961) is the most famous of these
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Listening Example 57
A Love Supreme, Part I
“Acknowledgment” (excerpt)
By John Coltrane
Performed by the
John Coltrane Quartet
(Coltrane on tenor sax, plus piano, bass, drums)
Listening Guide page 259
Produced in 1964, the very
spiritual and emotional album
A Love Supreme seems to
identify with rebellious youth of
the 1960s seeking new cultural
and spiritual identities based on
non-Western traditions.
Combining religious ecstasy with
tranquility and meditation, this
hypnotic mixture of music and
chanting became one of the
best-selling jazz albums of all
time.
Acknowledgement is the first of
four sections, which make up a
suite. The other three parts are
Resolution, Pursuance, and
Psalm.
Meter: An improvised introduction, then quadruple meter that is free and
flexible, changing as the piece progresses, with skillful polyrhythms.
After the brief opening passage, bass introduces the four-note main theme,
based on the words “a love supreme.”
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
9
Third Stream
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Third stream combines jazz and classical
music in a manner that—unlike the blending of
classical and jazz effects in symphonic, cool,
and progressive jazz—allows each style to
retain its characteristic qualities

John Lewis first attracted attention to this new idea
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Third Stream:
John Lewis (1920-2001)

Classically trained, this African American pianist was interested in
Renaissance and Baroque European art music

Founded the Modern Jazz Quartet

Wrote jazz pieces for the MJQ using classical forms of
earlier periods
 Some pieces were performed with the MJQ and
symphony orchestra or other classical ensemble
 MJQ improvised, while the classical ensemble read
and played the notes;
 Both ensembles remained true to their traditions
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Third Stream:
Gunther Schuller (b. 1925)

Introduced the term “third stream”

Believed that jazz and classical music should be
treated as separate but congenial entities

In 1957 he referred to


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Classical music as the “first stream” of music
Jazz as the “second stream”
Their combination in a manner allowing each to retain its
characteristic qualities as “third stream” music
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Third Stream remained in vogue for
only a short time

Yet its influence persists

Example: Ornette Coleman’s 1960s piece “Skies of America”
for symphony orchestra and solo jazz improvisers

In this piece by Coleman, the conductor chooses between
an array of notated inserts to be cued to the orchestra by
hand signals
 Challenges in Coleman’s piece abound for symphonic
players
 New York Philharmonic musicians balked in 1997
when Coleman suggested to play notes other than
notes he had written
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1970s and Prior Decades
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No one style reigned exclusively at any time

All existed concurrently with other important kinds of jazz

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Yet each decade is associated with its own particular
approach to jazz
It is possible to discern an alternation between
classically cool and romantically emotional music
decade by decade
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1970s and Prior Decades
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It is possible to define a dominant style for each
decade
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1920s: The jazz age; emotionally intense
1930s: The swing era; soothing big band music
1940s: Reacting to bebop
1950s: Staying cool
1960s: Exploring relationships between jazz and
classical music
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1970s
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Several important movements coexisted and influenced later jazz
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A comeback of swing, remaining strong today
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European chamber music-style combos appealed to many
musicians and listeners
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Bebop made a powerful and lasting return

Two other movements vied for attention
 World music
 Fusion
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1970s: Fusion (Jazz-Rock)
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Jazz and rock
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Came from the same roots (blues, gospel, work songs)
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Faced crises as the 1970s began
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Jazz losing its identity
 Foundering somewhere between classical and foreign ethnic
musics

Rock, mourning the deaths of some of the greatest stars
 And struggling to find the means to address the tragic social
and political events of the day
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Fusion (Jazz-Rock)

Jazz musicians started incorporating rock
elements into their music in the 1960s
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Example: Miles Davis’s 1969 recording Bitches Brew

Davis then produced On the Corner in 1972, including sitar
and a shocking rock drumbeat
 This was criticized as “antijazz”
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Fusion Defined
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Jazz-rock = fusion = jazz-rock-fusion
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Melds rock rhythms and the use of electronic instruments with
 Collective improvisation
 Extreme ranges of volume
 Rapid shifts in meter, tempo, mood, uncharacteristic of rock
 Instrumental music—no vocals
 Bass guitar or electric bass instead of stand-up bass
 Allowing for faster playing, and…
 Altering of sounds with electronic effects
 Snare drums and bass drums used as the rhythm section
 Raising the rhythm section to unprecedented dominance
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Fusion: Mid-1970s
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Some jazz ensembles used
electronic organs, other
keyboards, synthesizers…
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Electroacoustic instruments =

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Sound is mechanically
generated, then electronically
amplified and altered
The sound engineer as artist
and technician…

manipulated sounds to
musicians’ best advantage
Synthesizer and Keyboard
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Weather Report: A Fusion Band of
the 1970s and 1980s
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One of the earliest and most influential jazz-rock
groups, active for over fifteen years
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Formed by musicians Joe Zawinul and Wayne
Shorter, who had worked with Miles Davis
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This band stunningly presents the virtuosity and
rhythmic complexity associated with jazz-rock
fusion
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Fusion: Two Influential Jazz Pianists
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Herbie Hancock (b. 1940)
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Huge success with electronic instruments
His album Headhunters (1973)
 The first jazz album to be certified gold
 Remained for a time best-selling of all jazz albums
 Electric bass, keyboards, synthesizers gave jazz a radical
new sound called funk (see chapter 13)
Chick Corea (b. 1941)—An accomplished pianist

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Return to Forever was his influential fusion group
Corea played a wide variety of electronic keyboard instruments
Incorporated Latin American rhythms within his music
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1970s:
Integration of Foreign Sounds
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Fusion implies a bringing together, yet brought serious schisms
within the jazz world, as musicians chose
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Between acoustic and electronic instruments
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Between flexible free jazz rhythms and a soul- or gospelinfluenced steady beat
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Among a variety of music from foreign cultures, a concept
sparked by John Coltrane

India, Brazil, Arabia, Bali, Japan, China, African cultures

European concert music was also used by some musicians
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Integration of Foreign Sounds in the
1970s: Don Cherry (1936-1995)
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Worked with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane; performed and
recorded in Europe and New York during the 1960s

Following extensive travel in Asia and Africa, settled in Sweden
 Became active there in music education and performance

Calling himself a “world musician,” Cherry played trumpet, as well
as ethnic instruments from…
 Tibet, China, India, Bali, other countries

1978: He formed a trio, Codona, with a Brazilian percussionist and
an American sitarist
 Performed and recorded ethnic musics for children and adults
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1980s
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A fragmented period of enormous diversity, exploration, discovery
 The range of jazz identity was extended, through…
 New information about other music traditions
 Sophisticated new technology
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World music remained important
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Electronic techniques expanded their applications
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Often musicians participated in a number of kinds of jazz,
establishing no definitive identity in any one

Two fields of interest were characteristic:
 Crossover jazz, and, a revival of interest in traditional styles
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1980s: Crossover Music
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Crossover music = The blending of jazz and various other musics

John Lewis’s Modern Jazz Quartet
 Seen as a black response to the intellectualism of the Dave
Brubeck Quartet
 And as New York’s answer to West Coast cool jazz

Fusion was another form of crossover
 Remained strong in the 1980s; not as popular as in the 1970s
 Herbie Hancock’s album Future Shock (1983) was an example
 Included the piece “Rockit”
 A fusion of jazz, funk, electronics
 A massive hit, inspired an MTV video
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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1980s Crossover Music:
Pat Metheny (b. 1954)
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A jazz guitarist who remains popular today
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Initiated a rock band format
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1985: Composed the score for the movie The Falcon and the
Snowman
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Produced albums of melodious jazz-rock
Led to his recording “This is Not America”—a Top 40 hit—with
David Bowie
Having explored the musical possibilities of the twelve-string
guitar and a digital sampling synthesizer, called the
synclavier, Metheny continues to move between pure jazz
and pop jazz
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1980s: Traditionalism
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Some musicians blended jazz, rock, folk, pop, foreign sounds…

Other musicians resisted such combinations and the white
European concert sounds of much crossover music

They returned to earlier styles, updated to modern tastes

New Orleans, Chicago, and Dixieland jazz became popular

Bop and so-called post-bop offered traditionalists a structured yet
progressive sound—daring but not too new

The return to the traditional was tempered with freely flowing,
flexible rhythms and meters indigenous to much music in Africa
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1990s and Beyond

The 1990s became the first decade in jazz history to have no
defining movement

Relationships to rock loomed ever more important, as well as soul,
funk, world music, and crossover

A new fusion called jazz-rap evolved

Fusion became more complex as musicians explored and
expanded styles, techniques, technology
 Example: British jazz group Us3 released their album
Cantaloop 2004, with “jazz influenced urban sounds leaning
heavily on a Latino R&B vibe”

The recording sampled Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island”
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1990s and Beyond: No Wave or
Noise
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No wave seeks the emancipation of noise
(as per scholar musician John Zorn)

Pieces in this style are extremely brief, very fast,
loud

A collage of very short, isolated sound events
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1990s and Beyond: Musicians

John Zorn is among an impressive number of
contemporary jazz musicians who are…

Following Duke Ellington’s lead in finding ways to
integrate composition and improvisation

Masterful improvisers, interested in putting to their own
various uses many or all of the ethnic, technological,
traditional, and experimental resources available

Several of these people are scholars
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
31
The 1990s and Beyond
Henry Threadgill (b. 1944)

Saxophonist and flutist; toured with gospel musicians, blues bands

1960s: Became associated with the Association for the
Advancement of Creative Music (AACM)
 To help Chicago musicians present their new, commercially
unacceptable music

1970s: Formed the trio Air
 Explored African music, ragtime, assorted traditional musics

Since 1980: Formed groups with unusual instrumentation
 Such as the Very Very Circus, which uses…
 Trombone, two tubas, two guitars, drums
 Fuses avant-garde jazz, funk, salsa, European marches
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1990s and Beyond:
Anthony Braxton (b. 1945)

A former AACM member, Braxton reached a milestone in
jazz history by recording a double album of solo alto
saxophone music For Alto, released in 1971



Other alto sax players soon made their own recordings
A master improviser
An intellectual composer: Devised systems for composing
music, some based on mathematical relationships, diagrams,
or formulas as a means of generating improvisation within the
framework of an orchestral composition


In some pieces, parts can be played by different instruments
Some of his compositions can be played together
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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The 1990s and Beyond:
Anthony Davis (b. 1951)

Sometimes referred to as a crossover musician

Blends jazz and classical styles in his pieces


Pianist and improviser

Writes out most of his own music


Using Eastern musics
He considers improvisation just one compositional tool
Episteme, his avant-garde jazz ensemble, has
been involved in some third stream-style
performances with classical performers
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Anthony Davis:
Classical Compositions

The Life and Times of Malcolm X
 Davis’s first opera, and the first of several American operas
based on a contemporary political subject

Amistad, 1997, his fourth opera, is a story of a slave uprising on a
ship, and the subsequent trial

As a Broadway composer
 1993: Composed music for Tony Kushner’s prizewinning
Angels in America

Davis’s symphonic, choral, and chamber works incorporate jazz
and classical concepts
 Such as improvisatory passages, jazz undertones
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961)

A classicist who believes that bebop is
the foundation of modern jazz

Defends, updates, modernizes early
jazz styles in his own compositions

Juilliard-trained trumpet virtuoso with
extremely beautiful sound

Educator, composer, and artistic
director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, New
York
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Wynton Marsalis

Voiced concern with restoring “respect and seriousness” to
jazz

Believes the future of jazz holds more emphasis on
composition than on soloing

Writes music intended to last

Author of Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, 1994

1998 Pulitzer prize winner for music, for his extended
composition “Blood on the Fields”
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Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Jazz Today and Tomorrow

The important American music we call jazz continues to evolve

Tradition and innovation inspire today’s jazz musicians and fans

The blues was the subject of a celebration in 2003, declared
by Congressional Proclamation, the Year of the Blues
 In remembrance of W. C. Handy’s first hearing, in 1903,
a man playing slide guitar with a knife and singing a
plaintive blues
 He later published commercial blues; established a
relationship between blues and the music business
 Today we recognize the blues as a basic structure, a
feeling, an attitude, an exacting discipline—an
indefinable and indestructible American music
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Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Jazz Today and tomorrow:
Collectives

Important to the jazz business today are the numerous
collectives organized to support jazz musicians

From the start, collective organizations have helped musicians




Make a living
Create jobs (called gigs)
Create new compositions (starting in the 1960s)
Collectives now play a stronger role than ever



Finding grant money for commissioning compositions and
recordings
Sponsoring concerts
Building audiences for new jazz music
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Jazz Today and Tomorrow:
Instrumentation

Jazz instrumentation continues to evolve


Musicians explore new technology and world sounds
The organ and its evolution in jazz:



1920s: Thomas (Fats) Waller played on a giant pipe organ
1940s and 1950s: Jazz organ trios with electric organ,
guitar, drums, at times tenor sax imitated an orchestra
Today: Synthesizers and portable digital organs
 Commercial success of the recent sampling of organ-heavy
soul jazz recordings from the 1960s has created a new
audience for the Hammond (electric) organ
 (Wild) Bill Davis—the creator of the modern jazz organ
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Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Jazz Today and Tomorrow:
Performances

The arranging impulse largely dropped out of jazz
performance from the 1960s through the 1980s


But thanks to Wynton Marsalis and jazz musicians, it is back
The trend is towards less emphasis on virtuosic solos


The bandleader controls the ensemble, in a collective endeavor
shifting focus from one musician to another
Today’s performances often seem to be more about rhythm and
interplay than about solos or even melodies
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Jazz Today and Tomorrow:
Conclusion

The Turtle Island String Quartet fuses the classical string
quartet with popular contemporary American styles

Bluegrass, swing, bebop, funk, rhythm and blues, hip-hop,
salsa, others—plus classical Indian music

Innumerable jazz festivals around the nation and worldwide
celebrate local and international talent

It has become increasingly unrealistic to confine jazz to
narrow definitions

Jazz continues to be a vital feature of the American musical
landscape
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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Image Credits



Slide 7: Saxophone © Getty Images
Slide 20: Music Synthesizer and Keyboard
Royalty-Free/Corbis
Slide 36: Wynton Marsalis
© AP/ Wide World Photo
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Part 4: Vernacular Musics Since Rock and Roll
Chapter 15: Jazz Since 1960
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