Introduction to Jazz
Towards the end of the 19th century, a new, original musical style developed in the United States. Jazz grew out of spirituals, gospel music, and the blues, evolving into ragtime, Dixieland, swing, and bebop in hardly more than half a century. Jazz incorporates a variety of stylistic characteristics including the ostinato rhythms and call and response singing style of African folk music, as well as European harmony, marches, waltzes, and church music. From around 1900-1960, composers like Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein fused elements of the uniquely American blues with the Tin Pan Alley era song forms, Broadway show tunes, film music themes, and dance tunes.
In addition to the above mentioned jazz standards, at times called the American Songbook, starting in the 1940s original jazz scores emerged from composers like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy GiIlespie, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Quincy Jones, to name a few. By the 1950s and 60s, jazz left behind its dance music and entertainment roots, becoming concert music in its own right and incorporating many 20th century compositional techniques. The influence of jazz was significant on composers like Gershwin, Milhaud, Stravinsky, and Copland, and it permeates today’s popular, dance, Latin, rock, and hip hop styles.
The most innovative feature of jazz is improvisation, whereby after the initial statement of the tune (head), the musicians improvise while adhering to the harmonic structure of the tune. Jazz arrangements are performed in a pulse-driven, emotional manner called swing.
This chapter provides a basic introduction to the harmonic and formal structures of jazz standards.