Jazz history
Introduction
Jazz is the art of expression set to music! Jazz is said to be the fundamental rhythms of human life and
man’s contemporary reassessment of his traditional values. Volumes have been written on the origins of
jazz based on black American life-styles. The early influences of tribal drums and the development of
gospel, blues and field hollers seems to point out that jazz has to do with human survival and the
expression of life.
The origin of the word "jazz" is most often traced back to a vulgar term used for sexual acts. Some of
the early sounds of jazz where associated with whore houses and "ladies of ill repute." However, the
meaning of jazz soon became a musical art form, whether under composition guidelines or
improvisation, jazz reflected spontaneous melodic phrasing.
Those who play jazz have often expressed the feelings that jazz should remain undefined, jazz should be
felt. "If you gotta ask, you’ll never know" ---Louis Armstrong.
The standard legend about jazz is that it was conceived in New Orleans and moved up the Mississippi
River to Memphis, St. Louis and finally Chicago. Of course that seems to be the history of what we now
refer to as jazz, however, the influences of what led to those early New Orleans sounds goes back to
tribal African drum beats and European musical structures.
"Jazz, like any artistic phenomenon, represents the sum of an addition. The factors of this addition are,
to my mind, African music, French and American music and folklore." ---Robert Goffin, 1934.
In reviewing the background of jazz one can not overlook the evaluation over the decades and the fact
that jazz spanned many musical forms such as spirituals, cakewalks, ragtime and the blues. Around 1891
a New Orleans barber named Buddy Bolden reputedly pitcked up his cornet and blew the first
stammering notes of jazz, thereby unconsciously breaking with several centuries of musical tradition. A
half-century later, jazz, America’s great contribution to music, crossed the threshold of the universities
and became seriously, even religiously considered.
Jazz functions as popular art and has enjoyed periods of fairly widespread public response, in the "jazz
age" of the 1920s, in the swing era of the late 1930s and in the peak popularity of modern jazz in the
late 1950s. Beginning in the 20s and continuing well into the 30s, it was common to apply the word
"jazz" rather indiscriminately, melodically or tonally. Thus George Gershwin was called a jazz composer.
For Gershwin’s concert work he was acclaimed to have made a respectable art form out of jazz.
Somewhat similarly, Paul Whiteman, playing jazz-influenced dance music, was billed as the King of Jazz.
Perhaps the broader definition of jazz, such as the one that would include the blues influence as well as
those who shared our understanding of the art form, even if they did not perform it, would be the most
useful historical approach.
"It has always intrigued me, that people like Ma Rainey, Al Jolson and Guy Lombardo are considered a
part of jazz history, but they are!" ---Les Paul, 1994.
The influence and development of the blues can not be over looked when discussing the early years of
jazz.
"The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not. With all its so called blue notes
and overtones of sadness, blues music of its very nature and function is nothing if not a form of
diversion." ---Albert Murray.
Those feelings as expression of blues music fits very comfortably with the strains and phrases of jazz.
Today, Bessie Smith is considered primarily a blues singers, however in the 1920s, she was most often
referred to as a jazz singer. An ability to play the blues has been a requisite of all jazz musicians, who on
first meeting one another or when taking part in a jam session, will often use the blues framework for
improving. Blues, stemming from rural areas of the deep South, has a history largely independent of
jazz. Exponents of blues usually accompanied themselves on guitar, piano or harmonica or were
supported by small groups who often played unconventional or homemade instruments.
A number of the early jazz performers relied on the blues for more than the chord exchanged. Many of
these jazz musicians used the blues for the driving force of their musical emotions, such as the work of
Don Redman, Stuff Smith, Ma Rainey and the early works of Louis Armstrong and Benny Carter.
Pre-Jazz (1850 - 1900)
This time before the conscious recognition of jazz as an individual music is perhaps its most important.
It was then that the musical and cultural influences merged to create the uniqueness and diversity of
jazz. However, because records were not kept and recordings were not available, much of the history of
pre-jazz goes unknown. We can look back and try to recreate it by looking at the writings of the day and
by projecting backwards from what we know now of jazz.
The influences seemed to come from all directions. The African musical practices that remained a part
of the slave culture were superimposed on the dominant white musical culture of western Europe. The
western tradition spanned music as diverse as the songs of Stephen Foster to the operas of Wagner. The
popular music of the day had simple harmonies, simple rhythms, and the form often used was AABA.
The black tradition depended more on oral transmission and was represented by spirituals, work songs,
field hollers, and later the blues. At this same time, four million slaves became American citizens. The
four million, mixing their African background with the popular and church music around them, were to
be the nucleus of jazz.
Early Jazz (1910s-1920s)
Not all jazz performed in the beginning of the 20th century can be described as New Orleans or
Dixieland Jazz. Beginning in the late teens, a rich jazz influence of dance bands and soloists helped in the
development and growth of improvisational music. The stride pianist, the early jazz vocalists and the
horn soloist of this period have been hard pressed to be categorized. Often these performed have been
placed in categories called "Classic Jazz" or "Traditional Jazz" but no matter the term, the sound became
a foundation for the Kansas City, Chicago and Swing styles to follow. Among the artists that had a major
impact on Early Jazz were Clarance Williams, Bessie Smith and Bix Beiderbecke.
Early Jazz is as much a definition of the time (early teens to mid 1920s) as it is a definition of the sound
and style of the music.
Ragtime
Piano ragtime began to be published in the late 1890s. It was immediately successful and subjected to
various kinds of popularization, almost all of which have continued. It was (and is) sometimes played
fast and shallow, with deliberately still rhythms, on a jangling prepared piano -- so much so that it is
difficult to convince some listeners that the early ragtime composers were highly gifted melodists and
serious craftsmen who produced an admirable body of musical art.
Ragtime was basically a piano keyboard music that Gilbert Thomas said was an "Afro- American version
of the Polka." Somewhere in the background of the music is the Sousa style march, thus the first great
ragtime composition, Maple Leaf Rag, by the first great ragtime composer, Scott Joplin, was built on four
melodies, or themes. If we assign a letter to each theme, the structure of Maple Leaf Rag comes out to
ABACD. In ragtime, these themes were sixteen measures like their European counterparts.
There is every reason to believe that a rich body of Afro-American inspired music preceded ragtime,
although there are no recordings from those years. Certainly the cakewalk, an Afro-American dance
initially based on an elegant, stylized parody of Southern white courtly manners, preceded it, and there
was published cakewalk music, although publishers in those days were not quite sure how to indicate its
rhythms properly. But ragtime introduced, in the accents of its right-hand melodies, delightful
syncopation onto the heavy 2/4 oompah rhythm of its cakewalk-derived bass line and almost
immediately became a kind of national, even worldwide craze.
The first true ragtime composition was published by William Krell called "The Mississippi Rag" in 1897.
Tom Turpin, the first published African American composer wrote "The Harlem Rag" the same year.
Over the cores of Ragtime’s initial popularity, a number of composers merged as the voice of this
musical form, namely James Scott, Louis Chauvin, Joseph Lamb and Scott Joplin.
Little is known of the early development of Ragtime, however it is clear that it surfaced after years of
evolution in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Ragtime has been traced to minstrel shows and
cakewalks as early as 1895. The cakewalk, originated in the Caribbean’s, arrived in the United States as a
syncopated music form based on a march, the polka and a two-step. Once Ragtime emerged as a
unquiet musical form, it became a strong base for the music that lay ahead of it, jazz.
By the early 1900s, Ragtime was no longer being performed by a solo pianist. Small orchestras, military
bands and piano-banjo combos were among the earliest recordings of Ragtime, which added elements
that alluded to popular dance bands of the Dixieland, New Orleans and Swing styles yet to be
developed. An individual musical voice was being established in America, it was an exciting era of
development and change.
Dixieland
Dixieland is an umbrella to indicate musical styles of the earliest New Orleans and Chicago jazz
musicians, recorded from 1917 to 1923, as well as its developments and revivals, beginning during the
late 1930s. It refers to collectively improvised small band music. Its materials are rags, blues, one-steps,
two-steps, marches, and pop tunes. Simultaneous counterlines are supplied by trumpet, clarinet, and
trombone, accompanied by combinations of piano, guitar, banjo, tuba, bass, and drums. Major
exponents include; Joe King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory, Johnny
Dodds, Paul Mares, Nick LaRocca, Bix Beiderbecke, and Jimmy McPartland.
Major developers and revivalists include Bob Crosby's Bobcats, Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band, Bob
Scobey, Bob Wilber, Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart (World's Greatest Jazz Band), The Dukes of Dixieland,
Turk Murphy, and James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band. Aficionados make distinctions between various
streams of traditional New Orleans jazz, the earliest Chicago jazz, and the assorted variations that are
performed by revivalist bands. Some historians reserve Dixieland for white groups playing traditional
jazz. Some restrict it mostly to disciples of the earliest white Chicagoans.
Early New Orleans Dixieland (1900-1917)
As rural music moved to the city and adopted new instruments, the polyphony typical of the AfricanAmerican singing tradition found an expression in the style now identified as Early New Orleans
Dixieland. It differed from the later Chicago Dixieland and the even later revival Dixieland in its
instrumentation and rhythmic feeling. These first groups used a front line of a cornet, clarinet, and a
trombone. The rhythm section was made up of banjo, tuba, and drums. The origin of these instruments
was in the marching bands reflected the need to move while playing.
The rhythm section accompanied the front line on a flat-four fashion, a rhythmic feeling that placed
equal emphasis on all four beats of the measure. This equal or flat metric feel was later replaced by
Chicago groups with a measure that emphasized the second and fourth beats and was referred to as 2/4
time (accents on 2 and 4).
Chicago Style Dixieland (The 1920s)
The merger of New Orleans Style Dixieland with ragtime style led to what is now referred to as Chicago
Style Dixieland. This style exemplified the Roaring Twenties, or to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the jazz
age." Chicago was exciting at this time and so was its music. In 1917 with the closing of Storyville in New
Orleans, Chicago became the center of jazz activity. Many workers from the south migrated to Chicago
and brought with them a continued interest in the type of entertainment they had left behind.
The New Orleans instrumentation was augmented to include a saxophone and piano and the influence
of ragtime added 2/4 backbeat to the rhythmic feeling. The banjo moved to guitar and the tuba moved
to string bass. The tempos were generally less relaxed than New Orleans Dixieland, and the music
seemed more aggressively performed.
There was jazz activity in other cities as well, mainly New York and Kansas City. These centers would
later claim center stage as they moved toward a definition of swing, but during the 1920’s Chicago
remained the hub of jazz.
During this time in Chicago, Louis Armstrong’s influence as a soloist was influencing the fabric of
otherwise democratic ensemble. His individual style started the trend toward the soloist being the
primary spokesperson for jazz.
Tin Pan Alley
"Tin Pan Alley was a real alley on East Fourteenth Street near Third (in New York). But it was never just
a place, Tin Pan Alley has come to be known for an era of songwritting when many musical ideas mixed
together to form American Popular Music. Tin Pan Alley brought together many styles, blues, jazz,
musical scores and ragtime." - --Burton Lane, 1995.
A new breed of popular music publishers were established in New York in the 1890s. These publishers
were, essentially, salesmen who didn’t sit in their offices waiting for performers to come to them, but
went out to the entertainment palaces and badgered not only the singers but also the orchestra leaders,
dances, and comedians to use their numbers. This act developed into the profession of song-plugging.
They hustled themselves, as well as their hired singers and whistlers into the finest theaters and lowest
dives. After a few years on creation, Tin Pan Alley published its first song in 1892, "After The Ball" by
Charles Harris, selling six million copies of sheet music!
This sale of millions of copies marked a significant development in the publishing industry and in the
way music was being presently to the public. Music publishers were surprised to learn that popular
tunes were being sold to individuals with the hopes of playing the songs at home. Up to that point,
sheet music was almost exclusively sold to professional performers. Beginning around 1910, Tin Pan
Alley found a great resource in sheet music, resulting in the sales of millions of copies. Not only was the
Music Chart created (A tracking system of the country’s most popular songs), but the sale of sheet music
put enormous resources (cash) into Tin Pan Alley. Music publishing companies skyrocketed and, as
Johnny Mercer once recalled, "those composers all whistle a happy tune on the way to the bank,
because America was whistling their some tune!"
American Popular Music had arrived!
Within a year, Irving Berlin published "Alexander’s Ragtime Band," which mixed the popular beat of the
day along with the legend of Ragtime. The song gave Tin Pan Alley its crowning achievement and Berlin
his first million. The song also changed the way America listened to music, "Alexander’s Ragtime Band"
has often been credited, in part, for the increase in the sales of radios and phonographs, both rather
new to the buying public.
Soon the attention of Tin Pan Alley shifted from Ragtime to other popular topics such as dances (The
Charleston, the Fox Trot) and other music forms (Blues, jazz).
Towards the end of World War I, Tin Pan Alley’s publishing companies moved closer to the Broadway
and vaudeville districts. Once the American Society of Composers,Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was
formed, Tin Pan Alley became a mega force in popular music, producing over 90% of the commercial
songs and inspiring the sales of millions of copies of both sheet music and 78 recordings.
Within just a few short years a shift occurred in the make-up of composers and performers of American
Popular Music. Inspite of the terrific interest in African American music, ASCAP’s membership remained
predominantly white, there were only a half dozen African Americans in the organization by 1925. Dr.
Billy Taylor once referred to this era as, "the first concert example of musical segregation in American
Popular Music." As the boon of jazz and blues crept into the consciousness of America, a number of
African American composers gained their long awaited recognition. Among these composers some of
the best known were, Eubie Blake, W. C. Handy, Clarence Williams, James P. Johnson, Cecil Mack, Perry
Bradford and Henry Creamer.
These and other African American song writers respected their musical heritage and referred to black
oral traditions of themes, melodies and song structures. In doing so, their white counterparts gained
their techniques and generated a mix of pop-culture and the traditions of jazz and blues. A number of
white members of ASCAP emerged as the first to combined these mixes, songwriters such as George
Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Arlen.
Tin Pan Alley became a melting pot for culture and musical tastes, despite racial lines, and although
limitations still existed, the art of the music was still able to emerge!
Boogie-Woogie
Boogie-woogie is a jazz style that seems quite accessible to the listener. It is a piano style that was
occasionally orchestrated successfully. This full-sounding style came into existence when it became
necessary to hire a piano player to substitute for an orchestra. The resulting "barrel-house" piano which
could be found in rural southern juke joints tried to imitate the sound of three guitars: one playing the
chords, one melody, and one bass.
Most boogie-woogie is played on the blues chord progression with a repeated ostinato. The definite
feeling of eight beats to the measure is the signature of this style.
During the 1930s, the strict blues form was being used more in jazz recordings as the tempos were
speeding up. In the years just before 1940, the primitive blues form of boogie woogie became a popular
fad. Music historians have credited Meade Lux Lewis for the boogie woogie craze. All during the 40s
boogie influenced a number of arrangements within the big bands. The swing bands found great success
when they added the element of boogie, such as the case of Will Bradley’s "Beat Me Daddy, Eight To
The Bar," and Tommy Dorsey’s "Boogie Woogie."
Of the boogie woogie players who came to promeinence during the boogie fad; seven stand out as the
major contributors and influences: Pine Top Smith, Albert Ammons, Jimmy Yancey, Joe Sullivan,
Clarence Lofton, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. In later years Freddie Slack, Cleo Brown and Bob
Zurke came to promidence as the younger generation of boogie woogie players.
The blues based boogie would later merge with the stride style to became the main line of
development of jazz piano playing, a form that would lead to a major movement in jazz, led by the
"Fatha," Earl Hines.
Swing
Swing is the jazz style that emerged during the early 1930s and emphasized big bands. It spilled into the
late 1940s and then remained popular in recordings, film, and television music long after its main
proponents had disbanded. Most swing-style groups had at least 10 musicians and featured at least
three or four saxophones, two or three trumpets, two or three trombones, piano, guitar, bass violin, and
drums. Guitarists, bassists and drummers offered repeating rhythms that were sufficiently simple,
buoyant, and lilting to inspire social dancers, the style's largest audience. Musicians strove for large, rich
tone qualities on their instruments. Solo improvisers did not seek intricacy in their lines so much as
lyricism and a hot, confident feeling that was rhythmically compelling. For these reasons, the musical
period of the 1930s and 1940s has been called the swing era and big-band era. Not all dance music
played by big bands of the 1930s and 1940s was jazz. A large segment of the public, however considered
almost any lively, syncopated popular music to be jazz.
Journalists and jazz fans drew distinctions between bands that conveyed the most hard-driving
rhythmic qualities and extensive solo improvisations and those that conveyed less swing feeling and
improvisation. The former were called swing bands or hot bands (for example, the bands of Count Basie,
Jimmie Lunceford, Andy Kirk and Duke Ellington). The latter were called sweet bands (for example the
bands of Glenn Miller, Wayne King, Freddy Martin, and Guy Lombardo). Many listeners, however, did
not make such distinctions. They considered all the big dance bands to be swing bands. This is not
surprising because all the bands (even Guy Lombardo's) did play some jazz and even the honest of swing
bands (like Duke Ellington's) featured some sweet numbers. Conversely, some of the biggest hits by
Glenn Miller's sweet band contained brief jazz improvisations and conveyed quite danceable swing
feeling. An instructive illustration for this confusion regards Tommy Dorsey's immensely popular bands
of the 1940s. The groups had first-rate jazz oriented accompanists, swinging arrangements, and a
number of top-notch jazz improvisers. Yet huge portions of their repertory were composed of ballads
and vocal features. Therefore, though jazz historians don't usually give Dorsey's bands much attention,
jazz musicians generally confer high respect upon them.
Though there were large dance bands before the swing era, big-band music as a concept for music fans
developed most firmly during this era and persisted for decades thereafter. This has caused ambiguity in
labeling because, for example, record store clerks often catalog big-band music as though it were a
single style, despite the many different harmonic and rhythmic approaches that new ensembles of
similar instrumentation have used dance the swing era. Large ensembles have performed almost every
kind of jazz: swing, bebop, cool, hard bop, free jazz and jazz-rock fusion. Not all big bands are swing
bands and so big-band style should not be used routinely to designate the jazz of all large ensembles.
But many consider big band to denote an idiom, not just an instrumentation. Also note that there were
important jazz improvisers in the swing era, such as Art Tatum and Django Reinhardt, who did not earn
their reputations in the context of big bands and there were others, including Lester Young, Charlie
Christian, and Coleman Hawkins, who often made their best recordings in small-band formats, though
most of their livelihood and exposure came initially as soloists in big bands.
Swing Style
The swing players, generally speaking, were more schooled than their predecessors. Playing exactly in
tune was often a more important issue than the feeling of the part. In early New Orleans Dixieland for
example, the feeling of the phrase was of much more concern than any other aspect of playing. Some
distinction should be drawn between the African-American and white bands in this matter. The white
bands tended to avoid inflections that would disturb the ensemble’s blend. Because of their size and the
nature of the sectionalization, everyone in the ensemble had to conscientiously start and stop each note
together. There was a protocol that was silently agreed upon. Some bands played a bit on top of the
beat and some played a trifle behind the beat. A newcomer to a band would do well to listen intently to
the rhythmic approach of that particular group in order to fit well into the ensemble. The AfricanAmerican bands generally had a looser ensemble style that reflected more individual inflections. The
Count Basie band became an ensemble machine. Its controlled balance among players has seldom been
rivaled. However, even that balance was a result of listening more than reading. The musical reading
skills of the players were not necessarily their strong point. The notation of the arrangements could not
possibly reflect such nuances of performance interpretations.
Progressive Swing:
Progressive swing, also known as Progressive Jazz was an extension of the jazz orchestras following the
decline of the big band era. The style is closely associated with the output of Stan Kenton beginning in
the late 1940s, however, the term applied to a number of bands and small groups who played a darker
sound than their big band era counterparts. Moreover, Progressive Swing was modernistic with a more
dissonant harmonic turbulence, as rebellious as swing could get.
The term, Progressive Swing, is referred to in the post-bop era as Progressive Jazz and hence has
become synonymous with modern jazz. A few examples of Progressive Swing are Stan Kenton’s "Chorale
for Brass, Piano and Bongos" recorded in 1947 and "Invention for Guitar and Trumpet" in 1952. Boyd
Raeburn also performed Progressive Swing for a short time with output that included "Boyd Meets
Stravinsky" which his orchestra recorded in 1946.
Scat
"Anyone who attempts to sing extemporaneously, that is scat, will tell you that the hardest aspect of
that kind of singing is to stay in tune. You are wondering all over the scales, the notes coming out of
your mouth a millisecond after you think of them." ---Mel Torme.
Scat is the art of creating an instrumental-style improvisation vocally. This requires a vocabulary of
vowels and consonants related less to identifiable words and more to the tone and articulation of jazz
instrumentalists such as in the trumpet-like "Oop-Pop-a-Da" by Babs Gonzales or Sarah Vaughan's
saxophonic "Shulie-abop." first done on records by Louis Armstrong.
Scat is most closely associated by the general public with Ella Fitzgerald and her many imitators.
Brought to an early peak of perfection by Leo Watson who, by introducing occasional real words
inspired the development of a vocal-orchestra.
Louis Armstrong’s improvisational approach to written lyrics, mixing, jumbling, and reinventing the
words along expressive musical lines, echoed new directions in jazz. As early as 1926, Armstrong
dropped the lyrics to "The Hebbie Jeebies" and spontaneously substituted scatting for the words. The
technique was copied so often that an actual jazz form develpoed. Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys,
featuring Bing Crosby, were thought to be the first white group to use the scat style. Whiteman’s
national radio programs promoted scat, however, it wasn’t until Ella Fitzgerald adopted the styles that
scat became a house-hold word.
Ella seemed to add dazzle to scatting and clearly defined it as a vocal improvisation using phonetic
sounds similar to the instrumental sounds of jazz. To paraphrase a popular song, if Louis named scat,
Ella claimed it! With her recording of "Flying Home" (thought to be her first scat based song, released in
1947) she introduced variations of scat which showcased a segment of songs made famous by other
performers. These sampling, variations included the works of Lionel Hampton, Chick Webb, Slam
Stewart and Dizzy Gillespie. In fact the recording also showed that Ella was already educated on the fast
emerging bebop movement.
Other singers added to the early ideas of scat including Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. During the
bebop era, Sarah Vaughan was able to vocalize much of the notes that Charlie Parker was playing.
Vaughan was also key in bringing jazz, and scat into the American home, with a number of radio and TV
programs beginning in the late 1960s. In more recent years, Mel Torme gained fame as a scat singer,
again keeping the style alive, thanks to his recordings and world tours. Today scat has scaled new
heights of virtuosity with such performers as Bobby McFerrin, who was even able to put a few scat
songs on the Top 40 Charts during the late 1980s and early 90s.
BeBop
Although the swing style may have launched the art status of jazz by placing it in the ears and the minds
of the world, it was its successor, bop, which claimed mainstream status. More significant changes, both
musical and nonmusical, occurred in jazz with the advent of bop than at any other time in jazz history.
The military service draft of World War II brought about the dissolution of the big bands and the rise of
small combos. The country was nervous, and the music was nervous and agitated. Because many wellknown players were in the military, new, young players and their ideas were able to get exposure.
There were considerable changes in techniques and attitudes toward performances. There also were
changes of attitude toward audiences. Bop became the first jazz style that was not used for dancing.
Consequently, there were great changes in the repertoire. There was also a shift away from the
popularity that swing enjoyed to a more elite listening audience. The elitism also expanded to the
players. If you were an accomplished swing player, there was no guarantee that you would be able to
survive the expectations of the bop musical world. The music’s complexity required players to extend
their former playing knowledge. A theoretical underpinning began to emerge as players stretched the
harmonic boundaries of early jazz styles. Players had to have a greater and more immediate sense of
chord recognition, as well as their extensions and possible substitutions. The music was generally fast,
demanding execution on individual instruments seldom required by previous styles. It is interesting that
bop is today considered the mainstream of jazz style, yet it was not enthusiastically accepted by the jazz
community at the time of its emergence.
BeBop Era
The BeBop era, 1944-1955, represents for many the most significant period in jazz history; several
consider it the time when musicians began stressing artistic rather than commercial concerns, put
innovation ahead of convention, and looked toward the future instead of paying homage to the past.
Others view bebop as jazz's ultimate dead end, the style that instituted solemnity and elitism among
the fraternity stripped jazz of its connection with dance, and made it im- possible for anyone except
hard-core collectors, academics, and other musicians to enjoy and appreciate the music. Each
assessment contains enough grains of truth to merit closer, more extensive examination, and there have
been many studies, dissertations and essays, devoted to addressing and evaluating these contentions.
But it's undeniable jazz changed forever during the bebop years. This chapter looks at the musicians
who made these sweeping changes and what they were.
Afro-Latin
The term Afro-Latin covers a huge variety of music, resulting from the combination of elements of
African styles with the Spanish, Portuguese, and even French cultures transplanted to South and Central
America. The blend was achieved earlier and more thoroughly than any such hybrid in North American
music before the 1970s - indeed, watered-down South American music was being successfully exported
to the USA (and Europe) from the time of the tango in the l910s.
However, there were of course hints of African polyrhythms in ragtime and early New Orleans jazz, not
to mention occasional borrowings from South American rhythms such as the habanera. So it was only to
be expected that, by the 1930s jazzman including Duke Ellington were becoming interested in new Latin
imports like the rumba and that bands from those countries who settled in the USA began incorporating
jazz-induced improvisation. In this way, the stage was set for the first real collaborations, joining the
innovators of bebop such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker with the innovators of the mambo such as
Machito.
For a while, progress in this direction was sporadic, but since the early 1960s, with the introduction of
the bugalu (and its soft-core contemporary, the bossa nova), there has been a continuous interchange in
the USA between jazz and Afro-Latin musicians. As with any fusion, the lowest common denominator
often seems to predominate but it's increasingly the case that the creative performers who have
emerged on each side have real knowledge of both fields. What may be even more significant in the
long run is that in the last three decades especially in Paris and London, musicians from Africa have been
collaborating with players of a jazz/Afro-Latin background, and the latest fusions from various African
counties have achieved some success in the USA.
Africa and Latin America are vast areas, and both still distinct regional styles in the way that North
America used to before it became so homogenized. Possibilities for interaction are therefore endless
and it has even been suggested that Latin jazz will eventually become the mainstream. John Storm
Robert’s The Latin Tinge gives some idea of the ground covered so far.