Jazz
...history and describable
stylistic evolution. It is rooted in the mingled musical traditions of
American blacks. More black musicians saw jazz for the first time a
profession. Since its beginnings jazz has branched out into so many
styles that no single description fits all of them with total accuracy.
Performers of jazz improvise within the conventions of their chosen
style. Improvisation gave jazz a personalized, individualized, and
distinct feel. Most jazz is based on the principle that an infinite
number of melodies can fit the cord progressively of any cord.
The twenties were a crucial period in the history of music.
Revolutions, whether in arts or matter of state, create a new
world only by sacrificing the old. By the late twenties, improvisation
had expanded to the extent of improvisation we ordinarily expect from
jazz today. It was the roaring twenties that a group of new tonalities
entered the mainstream, fixing the sound and the forms of our popular
music for the next thirty years. Louie Armstrong closed the book on the
dynastic tradition in New Orleans jazz.
The first true virtuoso soloist of jazz, Louie Armstrong was a dazzling
improviser, technically, emotionally, and intellectually. Armstrong,
often called the "father of jazz," always spoke with deference,
bordering on awe, of his musical roots, and with especial devotion of
his mentor Joe Oliver. He changed the format of jazz by bringing the
soloist to the forefront, and in his recording groups, the Hot Five and
the Hot seven, demonstrated that jazz improvisation could go far beyond
simply ornamenting the melody. Armstrong was one of the first jazz
musicians to refine a rhythmic conception that abandoned the stiffness
of ragtime, employed swing light-note patterns, and he used a technique
called "rhythmic displacement."...
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