# What is Jazz?



## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

*What is Jazz?* 
Simple question but I bet the answers are far from simple. 
To start with for me it has to be improvised. 
Go for it……...


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## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

Even if all jazz has improv, so can many other genres, and likewise with syncopation.


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## yetti66 (Jan 30, 2017)

Unless solo - dynamic and tight ensemble playing. Virtuosity.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Jazz can be entertaining but also extremely boring.
Love Ella and Miles to start with.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

It's not one thing, that's for sure. But it's been said many times that the essence of jazz is African derived rhythm married to European harmony with the accent on the 2 & 4. And of course there have been many developments and variations to the basic form.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Pugg said:


> Jazz can be entertaining but also extremely boring.


That's a description of your personal reactions, but is irrelevant to the music itself.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Pugg said:


> Jazz can be entertaining but also extremely boring.
> Love Ella and Miles to start with.


One out of two ain't bad!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

yetti66 said:


> Unless solo - dynamic and tight ensemble playing. Virtuosity.


there are many jazz musicians who aren't virtuosos, and many examples of not so tight playing (even by great musicians)


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## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

norman bates said:


> there are many jazz musicians who aren't virtuosos, and many examples of not so tight playing (even by great musicians)


On top of that, it would seem to exclude jazz before Parker and the advent of bebop.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Lyricus said:


> Even if all jazz has improv, so can many other genres, and likewise with syncopation.


it must be said that swing isn't simply syncopation.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Lyricus said:


> Even if all jazz has improv, so can many other genres, and likewise with syncopation.


Such as? Name a genre. It has to be equal to jazz, if we are to believe your assertion.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Like star thrower, I thought jazz was a music invented by African American musicians in New Orleans.

I'll stay with that, and say "the further away it gets from that, the less "jazz" it is, and therefore gets harder to define.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I enjoy a great melody no matter what the form or genre. I first heard this tune over 30 years ago on Joe Henderson's live album, State Of The Tenor. It was first released by the composer/saxophonist Sam Rivers on his 1964 Blue Note album, Fuschia Swing Song. He wrote it for his wife.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

norman bates said:


> there are many jazz musicians who aren't virtuosos, and many examples of not so tight playing (even by great musicians)


Captain Beefheart comes to mind some would say its blues and Virtuosity- I would say it was sometimes but often not and covered jazz styles at times...............


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Virtuosity gets confused with technique or fast playing, but that's not really what it entails. I'd say a virtuoso is someone who can make good music under any circumstances. Can a musician play in tune, and in time with other musicians? Can he or she play in any key? Can they handle any type of rhythm? Do they listen to the other musicians and hear what's going on in the music? Can they play an inventive solo and say something meaningful, as opposed to running around the instrument and playing licks and exercises?


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> Like star thrower, I thought jazz was a music invented by African American musicians in New Orleans.
> 
> I'll stay with that, and say "the further away it gets from that, the less "jazz" it is, and therefore gets harder to define.


You are right on the historical origins of jazz. But every musical genre developes itself. In my opinion jazz really found it's own essence when it stopped being dance music and developed into bebop and later on gave birth to cool jazz, hard bop and free jazz. After that some parts of jazz developed further into fusion genres several of which in my opinion stop being 'real' jazz. But that of course is my personal definition (based on my liking and preferences) that is difficult to objectify (at least by me). Jazz is what Wittgenstein called a Typusbegriff (based on family resemblances): all features of jazz can be found in other genres of music. It is the combination that makes it jazz. I find Wittgenstein's later work very interesting by the way.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

The interesting thing about bepob is that it is intrnsically linked to popular music. Some of Charlie Parker's famous tunes are re-imaginings of pop songs. He cleverly changed up the rhythm and wrote a new melody to go with the harmonic structure of the song.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

starthrower said:


> Virtuosity gets confused with technique or fast playing, but that's not really what it entails. I'd say a virtuoso is someone who can make good music under any circumstances. Can a musician play in tune, and in time with other musicians? Can he or she play in any key? Can they handle any type of rhythm? Do they listen to the other musicians and hear what's going on in the music? Can they play an inventive solo and say something meaningful, as opposed to running around the instrument and playing licks and exercises?


it can be said that technique has other sides than just playing fast, but even wikipedia says that "A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in a particular art or field such as fine arts, music, singing, playing a musical instrument".


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Norman, are you the one who likes Mick Goodrick? I just stumbled onto this set. Metheny is on the second half.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Jazz is an accident waiting to have happened...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

starthrower said:


> The interesting thing about bepob is that it is intrnsically linked to popular music. Some of Charlie Parker's famous tunes are re-imaginings of pop songs. He cleverly changed up the rhythm and wrote a new melody to go with the harmonic structure of the song.


I agree with star thrower that jazz is linked to pop songs, like "I Got Rhythm," "Sweet Georgia Brown" and other harmonic changes which served as "templates" with new melodies put on.

In this sense, bebop was the apotheosis of the _harmonic_ aspect of jazz.

At the same time, be-bop could be considered a break, a departure from the original roots of jazz, towards something more Western. Be bop was the peak of the developing great departure from the _blues roots _of jazz. It changed many aspects of jazz. Some people liked this change (TV and movie composers, popular music, generally 'white' audiences), while some black musicians eventually resisted (Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins), wanting to reclaim jazz as a black man's music.

In be-bop, a soloist was now dealing with fast, constantly changing chords and root movement, so it was an unsettling music. Technically it was now more complex, since players were either changing chords (piano and guitars) or soloists were playing over changing roots, which necessitated playing _arpeggiated outlines of the chords_ instead of sustained "bluesy" notes. In other words, single-note soloists were now serving the chord changes, instead of being melodically independent. 
(This is what Ornette Coleman finally did away with, and let us see what jazz had become.)

Blues is all b7s, which derived from *African* harmonic sounds of mouth bows and xylophones; popular music is, harmonically, *Western,* with "I" chords being maj7, and dominants chords being b7. 
So with be-bop and before, jazz became less African and more Western, harmonically speaking.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I have Mick Goodrich's book "The Advancing Guitarist." It's a very enjoyable book, even if you are not a guitarist. He is a real "outside the box" thinker.


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## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> Such as? Name a genre. It has to be equal to jazz, if we are to believe your assertion.


You mean like rock guitar or drum solos?


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## yetti66 (Jan 30, 2017)

Lots of virtuosos before Bebop - Louis Armstrong mastered his instrument in the 20"s. Art Tatum was a phenomenal pianist - not just a "stride player" - just to name 2. Getting to the late 50's and 60's, all of the Blue Note/ Impulse/ Atlantic session players were virtuoso players. The Bassist "Mr PC" - Paul Chambers, Elvin Jones drummer...on and on...


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

starthrower said:


> Norman, are you the one who likes Mick Goodrick?


I'm much more a fan of Joe Diorio, who's one of my guitar heroes, but I've liked a lot certain things of Goodrick (especially a fantastic solo played by him on Colours of Chloe on the album Ring of Gary Burton... and Metheny is there too) but I've listened very few things with him, so thank you.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I get those two mixed up sometimes. They are both teachers and musician's musicians.

Here's a very exciting concert from an out of print DVD. Recorded in 1990. I love the way the show starts off with each musician joining in after DeJohnette's drum into.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

This one's pretty exciting too. Dolphy w/ Donald Byrd


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Love Dolphy, and Mingus even more. Both Very highly original and creative, but There is a concert with the both of them that wasn't nearly as creative or mind blowing as I was expecting.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Be Bop Tango


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## quietfire (Mar 13, 2017)

When you play random notes on the piano.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Do any of you still listen to or even remember George Shearng and his quintet I have a few LP's of his but no CD's he was one of my favourites when I first got into jazz in the 50s he had Peggy Lee doing the vocals on quite a few recordings. The first clip Lullaby of birdland was a big hit and one of his many compositions, I realise he may sound dated to day but I still enjoy his sound, and as heard in the second clip 'conception' another of his compositions, he could really push a tune.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

Jazz is an accidental side-effect of Brahm's cello sonatas.

Just joking of course.

I don't know what exactly is jazz, but at some level is it the opposite of CM. In my imagination, jazz represents freedom, and CM is more towards rules and order. Both are good and necessary, of course.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Lenny said:


> I don't know what exactly is jazz, but at some level is it the opposite of CM. In my imagination, jazz represents freedom, and CM is more towards rules and order. Both are good and necessary, of course.


I think you have it there Lenny "freedom" due to improvisation.


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

Lenny said:


> Jazz is an accidental side-effect of Brahm's cello sonatas.
> 
> Just joking of course.
> 
> I don't know what exactly is jazz, but at some level is it the opposite of CM. In my imagination, jazz represents freedom, and CM is more towards rules and order. Both are good and necessary, of course.


Well, I somehow make the connection too. Brahms really swings sometimes, for instance in the second piano concerto. I think I should listen to his cello sonatas as well then.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

JAZZ music often use brasswinds ,some woodwinds & percussion instruments.There are some with piano electric bass & guitar.
the music is often not written down.The music often have names unlike concertos & symphonies back then well certain ones.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Dan Ante said:


> Do any of you still listen to or even remember George Shearng and his quintet I have a few LP's of his but no CD's he was one of my favourites when I first got into jazz in the 50s he had Peggy Lee doing the vocals on quite a few recordings. The first clip Lullaby of birdland was a big hit and one of his many compositions, I realise he may sound dated to day but I still enjoy his sound, and as heard in the second clip 'conception' another of his compositions, he could really push a tune.


I have a great Shearing album with Gary Burton on vibes called Out of the Woods. Brilliant stuff.


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