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Jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a type of music that soothes mind, body, and soul. Jazz has many subgenres such as New Orleans music from the early 1910s, Big Band Swing from the 1930s to the 1940s, Bebop from the mid 1940s to the 1950s, a variety of Latin jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1960s and 1970s, Jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and later developments such as Acid jazz.

The origin of jazz dates back to the 19th century when slaves were brought to America. They used to sing slave work songs in the form of “call-and-response.” Soulful songs called “spirituals” were also sung by slaves. Both work songs and spirituals are a part of the foundation of jazz. In the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments.

These types of music later develop into ragtime. Ragtime was a fast tempo beat music written in 2/4. The classically-trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his "Original Rags" in 1897, and then in 1899 had an international hit with "Maple Leaf Rag." He was known as the “King of Ragtime.”

New Orleans played a great role in evolution of jazz music in the 20th century. Rhythms reflected African speech patterns, and the African use of pentatonic scales led to blue notes in blues. African American musicians merged European musical tradition with such music as blues, ragtime, and marching band to create a new style of music—jazz.

In the 1920s, African Americans began migrating to northern cities like Chicago and New York in search of better opportunity. With them they brought the sounds of jazz and blues. Young Americans began to embrace this new style of music by listening and dancing to jazz and blues. Jazz started to get a reputation as being immoral and many members of the older generations saw it as threatening the old values in culture and promoting the new decadent values of the Roaring 20s.

The 1930s belonged to popular Swing Big Bands in which some...