The ‘two-page’ history of jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a genre of music consisting of several distinctive styles. Next to the genre of jazz, there are three other the genres: classical music, popular music, and world music.
The two main characteristics of jazz are improvisation and swing.
Jazz originated in the United States of America around 1915. Songs, rags, and blues melted together into jazz.
The history of jazz can be divided into three periods: the historical period, the institutional period and the digital period.

The historical period

The historical period runs from 1917 to 1977. This period contains a succession of seven jazz styles. These styles emerged one after another: New Orleans Style Jazz in the 1920s; Swing in the 1930s; Bebop in the 1940s; Cool Jazz and Hard Bop in the 1950s; Free Jazz in the 1960s; Rock Jazz in the 1970s.
In every style in the historical period, the relation between the melody section and the rhythm section is different. Improvisation, swing, as well as the instrumentation, were shaped differently from style to style as well.
Jazz evolved from simple to complex. In the New Orleans Style and Swing, was based on tonal harmony. Improvisation was restricted to melodic variation. In Bebop, Cool Jazz and Hard Bop, improvisations became more complex. Modal harmony came into use next to the existing tonal harmony. In Free Jazz, sometimes a-tonal harmony was used. In Free Jazz and Rock Jazz improvisation became even more complex. As the styles evolved, ‘swing’, the rhythmical flow, became more complex as well. The role and influence of jazz musicians from Europe increased in developing and defining Free Jazz and Rock Jazz.

The institutional period

The institutional period runs from 1977 to 2007. There were no new styles that came up. In the three decades that followed the historical period, jazz became institutionalized in non-for profit and in for-profit institutions.
Non-for-profit institutions are academies, conservatories, universities, music archives and music schools from all over the world. The seven styles from the Historical Period were simultaneously studied, rediscovered, and re-defined in these institutions.
For-profit institutions are festivals, publishers and record companies. Jazz was well promoted and distributed by for-profit organizations. A new medium, the compact disk, helped to produce and distribute jazz in a much faster way than the LP. Most attention and commercial support went to jazz musicians from the USA. Jazz musicians in Europe, as well as elsewhere in the world, developed personal ways of playing, and often were weaving their musical background into jazz.
At first, in the institutional period, the emphasis was on Bebop and Hard Bop. At the end of the century, all historical styles in jazz were re-discovered and re-invented. For jazz musicians who came up at the end of the 1970s and later, jazz was no longer a genre of music in which one style came up after the other. Jazz was now considered to be a canon of music with seven different styles that could be reinvented, broadened and further developed. In the first decade of the 21st century, an eclectic mixing of all style elements of jazz and non-jazz started to take place.

The digital period

In the digital period starts around 2007. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the notion of jazz is expanded. There are two poles in the opinions of what belongs to jazz and what not. On one side, there is the conviction that for jazz to be jazz, it has to have a clear relation to the historical period of jazz, and has to have improvisation and swing. On the other side, there is the belief that jazz can only flourish and develop if elements of all other genres of music, classical, world and popular, are woven into jazz, either with or without improvisation and swing.

The future of jazz

From the start, jazz was popular everywhere in the world. In the historical period, jazz was dance music first, and later developed into art music. Efforts were made outside the USA to imitate and assimilate the jazz from the USA. Until the end of the 1950s, jazz musicians in Europe did their best to sound as good as their colleagues from the USA. In the early 1960 and on, European musicians were part of the creation and developing of the upcoming styles Free Jazz and Rock Jazz. In the institutional period, both musicians from Europe and the USA reinvented, and broadened the styles from the historical period. At the end of the historical period and in the institutional period, innovations in jazz came from jazz musicians from the USA, from Europe and elsewhere in the world.
In the second decade of the 21st century, in the digital period, the various new technologies are causing paradigm shifts in the production-distribution-reception chain. Now, musicians from all over the world, play key roles in the development of jazz.

Wouter Turkenburg