THE BEATIFUL JAZZ...

The jazz is a form of musical art that originated in the United States by means of the confrontation of the blacks with the European music. The instrumentation, melody and harmony of the jazz stem principally from the musical tradition of West. The pace, the phrasing and the production of sound, and the elements of harmony of blues stem from the African music and from the musical concept of the Afro-Americans.

Three basic elements that distinguish the jazz of the classic European music:

• A rhythmic special quality known since swing: The Africans have reached very much, a style of doing musical, freely, rhythmically with swing, the emotion with which they interpret his folklore music that transformed later in jazz. In the new world they absorbed the harmony and the concept of the western form and condensed the musical African and European ideas, giving a musical style that can be called an Afro-American. It seems that they end up by predominating over the European scales but interpreting with style blues, deeply, obsessively.

• The paper of her improvisación: Was a music that was moving away from the classic western one, was not read, was appearing of inside, was not copied, was taking place in every moment and was counting very much the implication of the interpreters.

• A sound and a phrasing that they reflect the personality of the musicians ejecutantes: In the USA there were slaves in the colonies of the north, and when workforce needed in those of the south, they began to populate these colonies. It belonged to these populations of African slaves wherefrom there arise the spirituals, the blues and the first sounds of the music of jazz.

Half a century after the foundation of the city of New Orleans in 1764, France her yielded to Spain for later, in 1801, to recover her until 1803, moment in which it happened to be a part of The United States. For it, the Frenchmen and Spanish, together with Germans, Italians, english men, Irishes and Scots contributed widely to the cultural scene of the city. The inhabitants of black race were also diverse, being many of them fundamentally of the western zone of Africa or Caribbean. It is in this heterogeneous cultural context where his origin has the appearance of musical styles as diverse as the jazz.

The festivals with music of drums and African dances were organizing often at the beginning of the 19th century so much in New Orleans, in the known one as Plaza of the Congo, since in Memphis, Kansas, Dallas or San Luis, using instruments of percussion and of rope similar to the used ones in the African indigenous music. The slaves were in the habit of having on the free Sunday and were organizing holidays in the Plaza of the Congo, which they prolonged approximately until 1885, coinciding with the emergence of the first bands of jazz. The songs and interpreted dances were to a great extent functional, already it was for the work with songs or field shouts, or used for rituals. Nevertheless, the principal characteristic is his great rhythmic wealth.

Styles of the jazz

• Ragtime (1890-1900)
• Nueva Orleans (1890-1910)
• Dixieland (1910-1920)
• Swing (1930-1940)
• Bebop (1940 - 1950)
• Cool Jazz (1950-1960)
• West Coast jazz
• Hard bop
• Funky jazz
• Free jazz (1960 -1970)

Instruments

Piano, trumpet, trombonist, clarinet, saxophone, double-bass and electric bass, battery, guitar, organ, keyboard and synthesizers, percussions, flute, violin.

Artists

Entre the first singers of blues that began to incline for the sounds of the jazz it is necessary to emphasize to Jimmy Rushing, the first one who began to sing displacing the rhythmic accent to create this way the own tensions of the jazz. Rushing was followed by Jimmy Witherspoon, by Big Miller and by Joe Williams.

Louis Armstrong represented a line different from that of the musicians of the blues, exemplifying the influence that the instrumentalists were exercising on the vocalists of jazz. In this line Grady Tate placed also Hots Lips Page, Jack Teagarden, Richard Boone, George Benson, George Adams, Chet Baker or Clark Terry, whereas Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, Perry Como, Matt Dennis or Mel Tormé are kept in a tradition more removed from the influence of the instrumentalists and simultaneously more commercial.