For my musical “artifact�, I’ve decided to get ambitious and try to condense the history (and the significance) of the American Jazz genre into five paragraphs. This feels like trying to condense all of Shakespeare’s works onto a post-it note, but it also sounds like something fun to try. I have watched all 12 videos of Ken Burns Jazz and I’ll be using Wikipedia to help refresh my memory, but, but, but I am no jazz expert and I’m sorry if I offend anyone with my ignorance.
Since jazz has different historical significance based on the era and type of jazz music, I’ll go through a quick timeline of jazz and talk about historical significance along the way. The origins of jazz came from the American South and the African slaves. Slaves began learning to use European musical instruments in the early 19th century, and they integrated African music and rhythms. This integration led to jazz often being recognized as the first (and most important) musical genre created in the United States.
After emancipation, this new music (often called “Dixie�) gained in popularity in the South (especially New Orleans) and coincided with the rise of “Ragtime� music in the North. African-Americans at the time were not free to work where they wanted, and entertainment professions for blacks were restricted to vaudeville and other more “blue-collar� venues. Much of the mainstream “jazz� music of this time was performed by white musicians, reflecting the public’s wariness of enjoying music by black performers.
That began to change in the 1920s as prohibition led more Americans into the “speakeasies� and other venues where African-Americans performed. The popular style of jazz at this time was Swing and big bands were the most popular way to play Swing. Many of the jazz pioneers were gaining mainstream popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, including Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Ella Fitzgerald. These masterful performers impressed the average American with his or her skills, and also made many Americans more comfortable with the notion of a famous black person.
World War II and the growing Civil Rights movement led to new forms of jazz. Be-Bop gained popularity in the 1940s and 1950s as a counter movement to the popular swing songs. Musicians such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis broke the mold from the standard jazz sound, reflecting growing African-American discontent with the American establishment that restricted equal rights for all races. This break with the establishment was reflected in the sharp staccato sounds of be-bop compared to the drawn-out swings sounds. The song “Salt Peanuts� is a good example. Unfortunately for jazz, this was also the period that rock and roll music started gaining popularity – popularity that would ultimately take jazz out of the mainstream music scene.
But jazz was still popular in the mainstream throughout the 1960s with the rise of “cool jazz.� Miles Davis expanded beyond his be-bop roots to innovate in many jazz sub-genres (cool jazz, jazz fusion, etc.), and had the biggest selling jazz album of all time with “Kind of Blue� (released in August 1959). Performers such as Ornette Coleman tested the limits of what could actually be considered jazz music with the “free jazz� movement. These “revolutionary� performers reflected the politics of the 1960s and 1970s where many mainstream standards were questioned. Jazz has not made much noise or news since the 1960s and 1970s though. It was watered-down by “shopping-mall-muzak� versions and now is a genre listened to by fewer and fewer Americans. I think it’s more popular and entertaining for most people to watch documentaries about jazz then to actually listen to the music itself.