Jazz performance requires dynamic creativity, great knowledge of the jazz forms, and an incredible ability to distill life experience into musical expression.
Jazz as a type of music was first developed by African Americans around the first decades of the 20th century with an identifiable history and distinct stylistic evolution. Jazz music developed alongside blues and other popular music classes with these genres overlapping in many ways.
Early jazz was played in small dance bands or by solo pianists. The band played dirges on the way to funerals and lively music on the way back. It was not until 1917 that jazz music started being appreciated by many.
Buddy Bolden was one of the earliest jazz artists who popularised jazz music.
Jazz originated from West Africa during the slave trade. Millions of West Africans were taken away as slaves to Europe and America, and were subjected to inhuman conditions and treatment on the plantation farms, with little or no food. Through gospel and inspirational songs while working in the farms. These gospel songs became a guide to the blues and jazz we listen to today.
After the abolition of slavery, most African Americans migrated to Chicago in large numbers during World War I (1914 - 1918). They came from the rural south to work in the city's factories and mills. It was these black residents that made Chicago famous for jazz and blues. Today, African Americans make up more than one-third of Chicago's population.
The likes of Louis Armstrong, a trumpeter, singer, band leader, and popular entertainer in the 20th century, was one of the earliest jazz and rhythm and blues (R&B) singers. Ray Charles, cannot be forgotten along side popular B.B. King, the guitarist and singer, the greatest blues artist of all time as well as Miles Davis, the trumpeter. All these were great men of the jazz musical genre. No wonder jazz is referred to as the music of the mature mind.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
