The History and Impact of Jazz
Excerpt from original article
By Nadia Halim
One of the greatest contributions African Americans have made to the world is the
exceptional quality of their music, especially the highly skilled art of jazz. While the
ancestors of today’s African Americans were living in Africa, music was a vital part of
their culture. Ancient African religions heavily emphasized improvisation of lyrics,
call-and-response patterns, rhythmic complexity, and vocal styles that included great
freedom of vocal color in their songs. When these native Africans were brought as
slaves to North America, they brought their music with them. This music provided the
slaves with a means of effectively pacing their work in addition to psychological relief
from the degradation of slavery.
Because many white slave owners disapproved of African Americans singing in their
native languages, early African American music was interwoven with African musical
practices and the vocabulary and structures of Euro-American music. Following the
American Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves, rhyme songs, ballads, and the
blues became plentiful.
The blues is a form of secular solo folk song in which the performer translates emotions
into music by crying, humming, moaning, and howling lyrics and wordless sounds while
creating instrumental echoes of his emotions (Encarta). The blues was played in
outdoor gatherings as dance music and had a strict oral tradition (Peretti 16). During the
late 19th century, this consoling form of art was not considered a legitimate genre of
music. However, current historians have realized that many elements of the blues were
critical in the development of gospel music, soul, rock and roll, and jazz.
The blues and jazz can be considered musical cousins because their origins and
characteristics are very similar. Both of these forms of music originated in the “Delta”
(along the Mississippi River between Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana)
and both have specific harmonic pitches and instrumental improvisation (Peretti
16). When the genre of jazz materialized during the first decade of the 20th century, each
of its performers strived to develop a personal sound or tone color (an idiosyncratic
sense of rhythm and form and an individual style of execution).
This was done by creating rhythms characterized by constant syncopation (the placing
of accents in unexpected places, usually on the weaker beat) and by swinging (Ogren
163). This swinging is achieved by alternately hearing a melody together with, then
slightly at variance with, the regular beat. The major difference between the blues and
jazz is that jazz is defined as instrumental blues with a unique “swinging” of the beat in
which an infinite number of melodies can fit the chord progressions of any song.
The musician improvises new melodies that fit the chord progression, which is repeated
again and again (Encarta).
Most early jazz was played in small dance bands or by solo pianists in New Orleans,
Louisiana. The genre of jazz, however, was established when nearly one million
African Americans left the cities, towns, and farms of the South during 1916 to 1930 to
seek improved economic and political conditions. Jazz was created because America
was urbanizing on a massive scale. The education of jazz musicians, their economic
subsistence, their audience, and their specific personal and career aspirations would
never have materialized if the United States had not urbanized as it did after 1900
(Peretti 3). This migration, more than any other historical event, defined the social and
intellectual significance of jazz for African Americans. Many of these jazz musicians
moved to Chicago or to New York where the benefits of performing as a talented
musician were great.
Among the most important jazz innovators during the first half of the 20th
century were Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and
Dizzy Gillespie. Many current historians will agree that Armstrong’s diligence in
emphasizing the soloist, improvising new melodies while performing, and including the
saxophone, banjo, clarinet, and trombone in the jazz concerts set appealing standards for
later jazz musicians (Encarta). Due to the accomplishments of Henderson, Holiday, and
Ellington, large groups of jazz players began playing together and included the piano in
their concerts. These big-bands were popularly known as “swing bands” in the United
States and Europe during the WWII era. Gillespie made brilliant contributions to jazz in
the post-war era by displaying his formidable speed and range and daring harmonic
sense. The pioneering achievements of these individuals helped make jazz the dominant
influence on American music during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s while revealing this
new form of art to the rest of the world.