 M.Socrative.com
– Room 38178
 Question:
• 1. Name the THREE events that we talked about yesterday, that will
directly affect visual art, music, dance, and drama this period.
I’m going to call people up to my desk that are taking their test today. You can sit at your seats in
here and take it – please put it on my desk when you’re done.
Jazz and the Rest
 Undoubtedly
the most significant African American
contribution to American music (and a unique American
contribution to the world) is jazz
 Jazz
began near the turn of the century and from there
went through many changes and forms
 Jazz
includes many sophisticated and complicated
styles, but all of them feature improvisation
 Jazz
harmonies are very different from anything we’ve
heard before.
• Even now, jazz harmonies are very identifiable.
 They
were influenced by the harmonies of Impressionist
music – dissonant, but not tense
• Debussy like – somewhat relaxing (blues)
• Stravinsky influences will come in a later style called “free jazz.”
 Key
element of jazz - improvisation
 Where
earlier music was the “composer’s medium”
where the performer’s primary goal was to play a
composition as it was written, jazz is characterized as a
product of group creativity, interaction, and
collaboration.
 The
performer interprets a tune in an individual way –
compositions are never performed the same way twice.
 The
origins of jazz are poorly documented
 The
blues started around 1890, but was poorly documented
due in part to racial discrimination with the American
society
• Civil Rights movements don’t come until the 60s…
 Newspapers
and magazines began to report about blues
music in the Deep South at the start of the 20th century
 The
word “jazz” first appeared in 1915 in the Chicago Daily
Tribune
 Considered
to come from…
• Impressionist Music (harmonies only)
• Slave Songs
• Church Hymns
• African Influences (rhythm)
 Jazz
is mostly an African American form of music, but
white musicians were intrigued.
 The
first white jazz musicians appear in the early 1920s
in the Midwestern US.
 Blues
– jazz’s earliest form
 Went
back to the rhythmic music of the slaves
 Started
in the deep south
 Consisted
line (AAB)
 It’s
of a repeated line, with a second concluding
music of oppression, feeling “blue”
 The
singer improvised freely, with limited melodic
range (sounded like a holler in a field)
 Slurred
between major and minor (mostly dissonant)
 The
12-Bar Blues
 Twelve
measure progression of chords (repeated over
and over in a blues tune)
 Evident
in almost EVERY blues song that exist!
 The
term “the blues” refers to melancholy and sadness
 Hart Wand’s “Dallas
Blues” became the first copyrighted
blues composition (1912)
 Early
blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative
 The
singer voiced his/her “personal woes in a world of
harsh reality”
 There
are few characteristics common to all blues music
because the genre took shape from its individuals
 Lyrics
would often relate to troubles experienced within
African American society.
 Blind
Lemon Jefferson’s “Rising High Water Blues”
(1927) tells about the Great Mississippi Flood
• “Backwater rising, southern peoples can’t make no time.
I said, backwater rising, southern peoples can’t make no time.
And I can’t get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine.”
 Lyrics
could also, though less often, be humorous and
raunchy as well.
 Big
Joe Turner’s “Rebecca”
• “Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me.
Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me.
It may be sending you baby, but it’s worrying the hell out of me.”
 1894-1937, born
in Chattanooga TN
 Evoked
an emotional quality that
instruments tried to imitate
 Nicknamed
the Empress of the Blues,
and was a major influence on
subsequent jazz vocalists
 By
age 9, Bessie lost both her mother
and father, and was under the care of
her older sister.
 To
earn money, her and her brother
would perform on the streets – she
sang and danced while her brother
played guitar
 She
eventually started singing in
chorus lines, and took on a recording
career in Philadelphia
 She
was the highest paid black
entertainer of the time
 In
1923, she was signed by Columbia
Records
 She
made 160 different recordings for
Columbia, accompanied by the finest
musicians of the time
 Her
career was cut short due to the
depression – it nearly put the recording
industry out of business
 Bessie
 Bessie
Smith – Downhearted Blues
Smith (Nobody Knows You When
You're Down And Out, 1929) Jazz
Legend - YouTube
 At
approximately the same time came ragtime – a piano
style with a strict two-part form
 The
abolition of slavery led to new opportunities for the
education of freed African Americans
 Segregation
limited employment opportunities, so
several found employment in the entertainment industry
• Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels as ragtime
developed
 Began
as dance music in the red-light districts of
African American communities in St. Louis and New
Orleans years before getting published
 It
was a modification of the march – simply with
additional polyrhythms (from African music)
 Very
syncopated
 Scott
Joplin: “King of Ragtime”
 Most
popular hits: “Maple Leaf Rag” & “The Entertainer”
 Maple
Leaf Rag Played by Scott Joplin – YouTube
 Ragtime
Piano : SCOTT JOPLIN . " The Entertainer "
(1902) - YouTube
 Scott
Joplin got the Maple Leaf Rag published in 1899.
 Ragtime
fell out of popularity around 1917 (bigger
bands took over)
• In the 40s, big bands brought ragtime back
 The
music of New Orleans had a huge effect on early
jazz
 New
Orleans Early Jazz = Dixieland
 Many
jazz performers were regulars in the “red-light
district” known as “Storyville”
• Performing in brothels and bars
 The
style combined brass band marches, ragtimes, and
blues, with polyphonic improvisation
 The
Dixieland sound is created when one instrument
(usually trumpet) plays the melody, and the other lead
instruments improvise around it
 The
basic instruments of jazz originally came from the
marching bands performing at various events around
town: brass and reeds
• Trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and a rhythm section (guitar/banjo,
string bass or tuba, piano, and drums)
• No saxophone yet
 Small
bands that mixed self-taught and well educated
African American musicians
 Groups
traveled across the Deep South as parts of
traveling shows (took jazz to the Western and northern
cities)
 One
performer who toured with these groups was Jelly
Roll Morton
• From Storyville – started touring in 1904
• Travelled to Chicago and New York
 Jelly
Roll Morton’s “Jelly Roll Blues,” which he composed
in 1905, was the first jazz arrangement (jazz piece for full
jazz band) published in 1915
 Introduced
 Original
more musicians to this style
Jelly Roll Blues by Jelly Roll Morton
 Swing, invented
by Jelly Roll Morton, was the most
important, and enduring African-based rhythmic
technique used in jazz.
 “Swing
your 8th eighth notes” (Long-short, instead of
even)
 You
have to “feel” it; abandoned the “stiffness” of
ragtime
 The
Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the music’s first
recordings in 1917
 Their “Livery
Stable Blues” became the earliest
released jazz record
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WojNaU4-kI
 In
1918, James Reese Europe’s “Hellfighters” infantry
band took ragtime and Dixieland to jazz to Europe
during World War I
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMHJ8PgVatk
 Jazz
in New Orleans helped black children escape
poverty.
 Jazz
musicians would teach younger children how to
play
 10
minutes short