Jazz/Words

Jazz > Words

A jazzy wiktionary for cats

Jazz has its slang, and its own corpus of formal and informal concepts, sub-genres and styles denominations, etc... This page is a modest attempt at listing these jazzy terms and stuff, givin' some (subjective) explanations about them, and of course link to MusicBrainz artists entries, releases and tracks.

Fine Jazz

"Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air."

Good Jazz

"Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells."

Great Jazz

"Great jazz is when a tenorman heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees."

Jazz

Introduction

• Jazz is a musical art originating from New Orleans, at the dawn of the 20th century. Mostly played and developed by African Americans, it's supposed to take its roots into Western music (both classical music [1] and military band music [2]) and possibly African traditional music [3] (although this last point is somewhat contested). The word jazz itself probably originates from New Orleans slang (meaning "sexual intercourse", apparently initially spelled "jass"), and may be related to the fact the first jazzmen were hired in brothels. It then evolved into a variety of acceptations, and depending on the context, jazz may mean: * stuff:
  • "What's that jazz you were talkin' about on the style mailing list?"

  * thingy: 
  

  • "Hey Nikki, you know... jazz!"

  * remarquable stuff (or remarquable thingy): 
  

  • "Wooo! The new server release is just jazz!"

  * crap: 
  

  • "Hey! Quit talkin' jazz to newbies on irc, would you?"

History

• The first truely jazz music (roughly what was played in New Orleans during the first 20 years of the last century), is referred to as Dixieland. During the 20s and 30s, jazz spread all over America, disseminated notably by Pullman porters, King Oliver, Sidney Bechett. Concurrently the size of the bands grew up. Key figures emerged (Louis Armstrong, Dizzie Gillespie) and the singing style moved to scat, with the legendaries Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday. The 40s saw the emergence of a new revolutionary style (bebop), with a new breed of geniuses: Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and to some extent Thelonious Monk. Bebop would then give birth to hardbop (all the rage in the 50s-60s), then to modal jazz. The next major revolution came in the early 50s, with the advent of free jazz, a new rich and complex music form deriving from hardbop. Pioneering geniuses in this new field of experiment included Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor... and later during the 60s, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Sam Rivers, Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton and many others. The 60s decade also saw the emergence of crossover new genres (latin jazz, fusion), while of course hardbop and freejazz were at their highest. Some editors at MusicBrainz think this is the best jazz decade ever. Early 70 saw jazz disseminating all over the world, and spreading in a lot of different directions. To some extent, it's also the end of jazz as a somewhat unique entity (both from a sociological and musical point of vue). Consequently, the community shrank, and interest for jazz somewhat faded out (most historical labels went dormant and/or bankrupt), although many exceptional records were published until the dusk of the 70s. The last part of the century saw both the deep influence of jazz on music in general (be it on funk, acid jazz, pop music, hip-hop, electronic), a revived interest for the old labels (thanks to the sampling efforts of the hip-hop community [4]), and a new interest for the "traditional" jazz-es, with both old veterans re-emerging, and a bunch of new young cats doing quite decent efforts (although the most grumpy hardbop fans may miss the soul of the old days). Ultimately, there's no real definition of what jazz is. Some think It Doesn't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing, while others drew their pleasure from atonality and breaking fixed chord changes. Some think it's a very intellectual form of expression, others want it to be primal, a Love Cry from soul to soul [5]. Certainly, jazz is just all that.

Notes

• [1] As an example, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus among others confessed they were influenced by Claude Debussy
• [2] You may listen to Blues March for Europe (The Jazz Messengers, live at Saint Germain), or consult Albert Ayler discography
• [3] While Dizzie Gillespie strongly contested this filiation, and while indeed the African roots of Jazz are difficult to clearly identify, a number of jazzmen looked into traditional music (including, but not limited to, African music) and incorporated it into their experimentations - check Archie Shepp and Don Cherry
• [4] See De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest
• [5] TODO: link AA and Mingus quote
• You may additionally read the Jazz article at Wikipedia

Not jazz

"I don't know what it is, but it's not jazz." (TODO: dig DG/OC)

Stating that something is not jazz is possibly the most insulting comment one can make about a jazz musician work.

It has been used each and every time jazz suddenly evolved in an unexpected direction.

Strangely enough, these who used it to disregard one of these new evolutions (say: free jazz) were in their time pioneers, and suffered themselves from such disdain :).

Pure Genius of Jazz

"A pure genius of jazz is manifested when the leader and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments"