Jazz is a lively type of music which originated in America amongst the black community about 1900 possessing an identifiable history and describable stylistic evolution. Jazz has borrowed from black folk music, and popular music has borrowed from jazz, but these three kinds of music remain distinct and should not be confused with one another. Since its beginnings jazz has branched out into so many styles that no single description fits all of them with total accuracy. A few generalisations, however, can be made, bearing in mind that for all of them, exceptions can be cited. Performers of jazz improvise within the conventions of their chosen style. Typically, the improvisation is accompanied by the repeated chordprogression of a popular song or an original composition. Instrumentalists emulate black vocal styles, including the use of glissandi and slides, nuances of pitch (including blue notes, the microtonally flattened tones in the blues scale), and tonal effects such as growls and wails. In striving to develop a personal sound or tone colour-an idiosyncratic sense of rhythm and form and an individual style of execution-performers create rhythms characterised by constant syncopation (accents in unexpected places) and also by swing-a sensation of pull and momentum that arises as the melody is heard alternately together with, then slightly at variance with, the expected pulse or division of a pulse.
Written scores, if present, are used merely as guides, providing structure within which improvisation occurs. The typical instrumentation begins with a rhythm section consisting of piano, string bass, drums, and optional guitar, to which may be added any number of wind instruments. In big bands the winds are grouped into three sections-saxophones, trombones, and trumpets. Although exceptions occur in some styles, most jazz is based on the principle that an infinite number of melodies can fit the chord progressions of any song. The musician improvises new melodies that fit the chordprogression, which is repeated again and again as each soloist is featured, for as many choruses as desired. Although pieces with many different formal patterns are used for jazz improvisation, two formal patterns in particular are frequently found in songs used for jazz. One is the AABA form of popular- song choruses, which typically consist of 32 measures in 4(over)4 meter, divided into four 8- measure sections: section A; repeat of section A; section B (the 'bridge' or 'release,' often beginning in a new key); repeat of section A. The second form, with roots deep in black American folk music, is the 12-bar blues form. Unlike the 32-bar AABA form, blues songs have a fairly standardised chordprogression.
Jazz is rooted in the mingled musical traditions of American blacks. These include traits surviving from West African music; black folk music forms developed in the New World; European popular and light classical music of the 18th and 19th centuries; and later popular music forms influenced by black music or produced by black composers. Among the African survivals are vocal styles that include great freedom of vocal colour; a tradition of improvisation; call-and-response patterns; and rhythmic complexity-both syncopation of individual melodic lines and conflicting rhythms played by different members of an ensemble. Black folk music forms include field hollers, rowing chants, lullabies, and later, spirituals and blues. European music contributed specific styles and forms- hymns, marches, waltzes, quadrilles, and other dance music, light theatrical music, Italian operatic music-and also theoretical elements, in particular, harmony, as a vocabulary of chords and as a concept related to musical form. (Much European influence was absorbed through training in European music, even when the musicians so trained found work only in low-life entertainment districts and on Mississippi riverboats.)
Black-influenced elements of popular music that contributed to jazz include the banjo music of the minstrel shows (derived from the banjo music of slaves); the syncopated rhythmic patterns of black- influenced Latin American music (heard in southern US cities); the barrelhouse piano styles of tavern musicians in the Midwest; and marches and hymns as they were played by black brass bands in the late 19th century. Near the end of the 19th century another influential genre emerged. This was ragtime, a composed music that combined many elements, including syncopated rhythms (from banjo music and other black sources) and the harmonic contrasts and formal patterns of European marches.
After 1910 the bandleader W C Handy took another influential form, the blues, beyond its previously strictly oral tradition by publishing his original blues songs. (Favoured by jazz musicians, his songs found perhaps their greatest interpreter later, in the 1920s, in the blues singer BessieSmith, who recorded many of them.) The merging of these multiple influences into jazz is difficult to reconstruct, because it occurred before the phonograph could provide valuable documentation. Most early jazz was played in small marching bands or by solo pianists. Besides ragtime and marches, the repertoire included hymns, spirituals, and blues. The bands played this music, modified frequently by syncopations and acceleration, at picnics, weddings, parades, and funerals. Characteristically, the bands played dirges on the way to funerals and lively marches on the way back. Although blues and ragtime had arisen independently of jazz, and continued to exist alongside it, these genres influenced the style and forms of jazz and provided important vehicles for jazz improvisation. Research Jazz
Jazz dance is a broad term for a style of American social and stage dance employing jazz or jazz- influenced music. As a social dance, jazz dance originated in black social dances of the 19th century and earlier; around 1910, beginning with the cakewalk and turkey trot, such dances became the dominant form of white social dance. Some social jazz dances, such as the Charleston, jitterbug, and twist, have movements traceable to African and early slave dances; others, such as the fox-trot, can be seen as European couple dancing adapted to jazz rhythms. As a stage dance, jazz dance is rooted in these social dances and also in 19th- and early 20th- century theatrical dance (in minstrel shows, vaudeville, revues, and early musical comedy). After about 1940 American theatrical dance underwent a major development, and in the 1950s and 1960s a style emerged that drew as needed on elements of ballet, modern dance, and tap dance. It emphasised body line and flexible torso; fast, accurate footwork with the feet basically parallel (unlike the turned-out feet basic to ballet); and exaggerated movements of individual body parts, such as the shoulders. In general, it concentrated on floor work as opposed to high lifts or leaps. Research Jazz Dance
A jew's harp is a musical instrument in which a small frame flanks a narrow, flexible tongue attached at one end to the frame. The frame is held against the teeth near the free end of the tongue, which is set in vibration by various methods. The tongue produces only one tone; when the shape of the player's mouth cavity is altered, various harmonics of this fundamental tone are made prominent. The harmonic series produced is the same as that of a trumpet. Jew's harps of India and, at least since about 1350, of Europe have onion-shaped forged-iron frames that narrow to two protruding arms; a separate tongue is affixed to the frame. The player twangs the free end of the tongue with a finger. Clothespin-shaped jew's harps with the frame and tongue cut of the same piece of bamboo are found in Oceania (often sounded by jerking a cord attached to the instrument). In South-east Asian jew's harps, probably the oldest form, the narrow, rectangular frame (of bamboo or, rarely, sheet metal) completely surrounds the free end of the tongue, which is vibrated by plucking a tab on the flexible frame. In New Guinea jew's harps are made from a live beetle tied to a small splinter of wood and held to the mouth. The beetle buzzes at a constant pitch and the notes are formed by the movements of the player's lips. Research Jew's Harp
A jig is a lively folk dance, a step dance in which one or two soloists perform rapid, intricate, hopping steps to music in 6 (over) 8 time or (a ' slip-jig') in 9(over)8 time. Surviving most strongly in Irish folk tradition, jigs were also popular in Scotland and England in the 1500s and 1600s. Related to modern English clog dances, they were often used as stage dances. The English Bacca Pipes Jig, danced over two crossed clay pipes, closely resembles the Gillie Callum sworddance of Scotland. The jig was adopted in France at the court of Louis XIV, where, as the gigue, it became a more subdued dance for couples. In the baroque suite by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, the gigue is the final movement. Jig also refers to any country dance tune in jig time and to any set dance (a country dance for a group of couples) to a jig tune. Research Jig
The jitterbug was an American couple dance, popular in the 1930s and 1940s, typically danced to big- band swing or similar syncopated music in 44 time. Descended from the similar lindy hop, it has a variety of steps and sometimes acrobatic swings, usually executed while holding one or both of the partner's hands. During the Second World War the jitterbug was spread world-wide by the American armed forces. Research Jitterbug
Jodel is a manner of singing which consists of changing suddenly from the chest voice to the falsetto. It is much used by the Tyrolese in singing their native melodies, and is frequently introduced as a form of refrain after each verse of a song. Research Jodel
In music, just intonation is the giving all chords and intervals in their purity or their exact mathematical ratio, or without temperament; it is a process in which the number of notes and intervals required in the various keys is much greater than the twelve to the octave used in systems of temperament. Research Just Intonation
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