Research Paper

Carlos Aguilar
Bette Petrides
English 101
December 14, y
Evolution of Jazz Music in the U.S.
Abstract:
Jazz is a synonym of blending different music styles and cultural roots, which
were combined during early 1900 in a melting pot called New Orleans. Jazz has
evolved from then until today through four different stages: born as underground
music in New Orleans and migrated to the northeast coast, through a mainstream style
as swing, a sharp shift to innovation into modern jazz, and the current millennium
jazz. The underground music of New Orleans increased in popularity through
bordellos or pleasure houses where mainly piano musicians played their melodies to
match the rhythm of girls nude dancing. Once bordellos closed down, musicians felt
the necessity to migrate northward and start a popular musical movement known as
swing, during what was labeled as the Golden Stage of jazz. However, swing began
its decline when musicians started to make a name for themselves by playing more
complex music and breaking away from big dance bands unique for the swing style.
As a result of this, bebop emerged, which was known for complex music accompanied
by continuous improvisations. Eventually, bebops popularity declined, but created a
path for modern jazz, which was highly fragmented and complex, unlike swing, and
based on extensive improvisation. Yet, today we live in the era called Millennium

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jazz ,which is characterized by the impact of technology on music. In this era,
musician can record, promote, and sell their music themselves instead of depending on
a record company.
Jass or Jazz?
The exact etymology of the word jazz is impossible to establish, but its early
connotations were undoubtedly sexual. The most likely derivation is from orgasm,
which in slang usage was shortened to jasm or jism. The word jass had become
synonymous with fornication, and its original application to the new musical genre
was decidedly uncomplimentary. Around 1915, several bands provocatively adopted
the expletive in their names, and it immediately caught on. Legend has it that the
Original Dixieland Jass Band changed the spelling because pranksters often deleted
the letter j from their posters!(Cooke 9).
The African roots
When brought to America as slaves, West African people were disbanded by
slave owners from their tribes to weaken their morale. Slaves were also unable to keep
their rich musical traditions because slave owners were afraid that they would use
these as a source of secret communication. However, West African musical traditions
were kept alive by slaves in U.S. plantations and progressively mixed with European
classical music to create a new American art form in late nineteenth century. Ragtime
was born in the deep south through slaves that began to play European musical styles
and became proficient on western instruments in order perform popular white dance
music. Ragtime was characterized by light music based on catchy rhythms and
appealing melodies. The first rag piece is acknowledged to be Mississippi Rag,

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composed by William Krell. Although ragtime compositions emphasized vocal works
and band arrangements, rag reached its highest pitch as a form of solo piano music.
Scott Joplin was a musician who revolutionized this form of piano playing and
contributed to the style by composing an opera called, Treemonisha. This later
became a blue-print for talented musicians, such as Benny Goodman and Wynton
Marsalis, who would impact jazz tradition. As the ragtime began to lose popularity, a
new form known as blues emerged. The birth of jazz is the result of the borrowing and
mix of ragtime, blues and military marches. Also one of the main elements of jazz is
blue notes, which were considered impure have given jazz most of its melodic
originality, and the use of the four-beat measure has contributed to the creation of
something new called swing. Blue notes are thought to be originated in the African
technique of bending pitches for expressive effect (Cooke 18). Unlike ragtime,
blues was improvised music and did not initially circulate in printed form. Blues
derived also from plantations songs. Blues is highly characterized by the use of calland-response patterns which are typical of slave music and one of the most important
components of jazz music. Jazz music has not stayed within the New Orleans music
culture, in fact, it has fluctuated to different cities such as Chicago and New York
where it has become the second melting pot and capital for this form of music.
From Storyville for the world
[New Orleans] was named after a debauched noble (Philippe Charles
dOrlans, Duke of Orlans), populated with prisoners and prostitutes (Louisiana
became a French penal colony in 1719), financed by a charismatic adventurer and
swindler (John Law, famous instigator of the Mississippi Bubble), and came of age as

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the Big Easy, a place where the rest of world flocks for a fast and loose time. Given
this quasi-mythic history, who can be surprised that music writers have been tempted
to describe the birth of jazz as a product of vice, paying more attention to bordellos,
gambling, and liquor than to the contingencies of culture and economics?(Gioia 171).
The beginning of jazz starts in the outskirts of New Orleans in a city called Storyville,
a red-light district that existed for roughly twenty years (Ted). This movement started
in pleasure houses. One that was commonly known was Funk Butt Hall which was
located in the outskirts of Storyville. These houses were one of the few places that
provided employment for ragtime and early jazz musicians. Two musicians who
started their career here were King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. However, it was
common that musicians from respectable backgrounds kept their place of work a
secret like Jelly Roll Morton and Sydney Bechet did. Conversely, with the close down
of bordellos musicians felt encouraged to migrate northward (Cooke 38). This new
wave of musicians who migrated north were the key to the later fragmentation of jazz.
Satchmo: the King of Jazz
For jazz to develop from its tentative beginnings into an intellectually satisfying
and commercially viable art form, two things were needed by musicians: an ability to
create varied and coherent musical structures, and a keen business instinct. The
individual who took charge of this was, in fact, a product of the bordellos of Storyville
in New Orleans: Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton who referred to the mixing of these as
crucial to musics evolution. He based his music on the structure of ragtime. Morton
was an important character in jazz history because he was the first jazz musician who
approached jazz from an intellectual point of view and sought to improve its artistic

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standing. Similarly, Louis Armstrong, who adopted the nickname of Satchmo, stood
out as the face of jazz. His music defined the contours of traditional and swing era
New Orleans jazz. He codified the concept of a jazz soloist on his 1920s recordings,
then in later years became even more famous for his singing (Swenson). Although
Satchmo was loved for his unique style of playing and singing, he was also widely
criticized by some African Americans who disliked his attitude and condemned that
his lack of personal appearance in politics to help his people. He clearly had a
meaningful impact on the history of jazz and led to its fragmentation of various
elements. According to Swenson, [Armstrong] represented everything you need to be
a trumpet player, his attitude, his technique and his ability as an entertainer. Satchmo
had all of the characteristics to make name for himself and to become one of the most
admired musicians ever in the history of jazz.
The Harlem Stride piano
Leading musicians converged in New York, the capital of the jazz world. At one
point in history Harlem was a nice place to live, but the turning point began after
World War I when thousands of African Americans started to take over this place,
which was originally inhabited by the Dutch. In the late 1920s, there was such
movement that almost seventy percent of Harlems real estate was under black control.
Harlem then became a slum. Harlem had harsh economics, low salaries, and looming
rent payments. This is where blacks experienced the difference of their wages
compared to those of whites. At this place, black independence came at a cost.
However, it is here where jazz sprang up the most. Here, some people accepted
payments as rent parties. On the other hand, one would think that those living in

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Harlem were friendly to those coming from the south, but in fact, they were not.
Northeastern blacks looked down on blacks from the south. However, the piano was
the mediator between these two groups of rivals. This instrument represented a
pathway for assimilating the highbrow and lowbrow culture. This is when the piano
became the center of a new type of music such as the Harlem Stride piano. This style
stood as the bridge between the ragtime idiom of the turn of the century and the new
jazz piano style that was in the process of evolution (Gioia). One stride musician who
captivated wide audiences unsurpassed by any jazz musician was Fats Waller. The
style of piano set a blue-print on jazz and on the development of future styles of jazz.
The establishment of this style became crucial to jazz music and led to the
fragmentation of jazz, which gave birth to one of the most important eras of jazz,
swing.
Swing as the mainstream
By the late twenties, musicians had begun modifying the forms of "jazz." In the
1930s a new form of jazz emerged, called "swing." Swing music was characterized by
very large bands, and solos by individual musicians in turn instead of group
improvisation. Swing bands typically used an upright or double bass. Swing appears to
have emerged from an adaptation of the commercially successful but bland, neo-jazz
played by show and dance orchestras like Paul Whitemans. Swing combined
harmonic sophistication with danceable rhythms and compelling individual
improvisations. For many students of American music, "big band" swing represents a
highpoint of American musical form, combining harmonic sophistication,
improvisational brilliance, and danceable accessibility. Swing music characterized the

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popular culture of the 1930s. The music was constantly played on records and on
radio, and reached every city in America through swing bands continuous touring.
Historians have seen in "the swing era" not just music but culture, a distinctive,
generational culture of swing jazz with its own dances, clothing styles, and slang. Like
much of American popular culture, swing music crossed ethnic and racial lines freely.
White, black and Latin musicians borrowed from each other constantly. For example,
Benny Goodman became widely referred to as "the King of Swing" and known for his
crossover appeal. He created the first white dance band. His music attracted a mix
audience. During his not so famous years, some white audiences were surprised to
learn that Benny Goodman was, in fact, a white musician because during this time
swing was mostly played by black musicians.
The origin of modern jazz
The swing bands of the time were centered on the bandleader, who served as the
representative of the band. At the same time, talented players within these bands
sought to make a name for themselves, and the most effective way to accomplish this
was to impress the audience with improvised solos. Qualities of bebop are its solos,
which were technically demanding, featuring a high density of notes and a high tempo.
Bebop also commonly featured complex harmonies which changed frequently. Chords
were often altered from their standard forms as notes were removed and added.
However, by the mid-forties, swing began to decline in popularity and a new style
would emerge from the virtuoso styles of younger musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and
Charlie Parker who wanted to strive to break away from the rigid and danceable music
of swing bands which led to the creation of bebop. This new form of jazz was based

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around small combos, as opposed to the large ensembles of the swing era. Considering
that many musicians who joined the bebop movement left swing ensembles so they
could be featured more importantly. Bops style severed jazz from its connections to
dance and cast it further into the sphere of art music. Bebops effects on
improvisation, group structure, and harmony would be felt throughout jazz for decades
to come, and the best known musicians of the bebop era are still regarded as some of
the finest jazz musicians to ever take the stage. Dizzy Gillespie was, along with
Charlie Parker, unquestionably bebops great musician. Gillespie is considered to be
not only one of the greatest bebop musicians, but also one of the greatest musicians to
ever play jazz. Bebop, on the other hand, was art music, intended to satisfy the jazz
musician with its technical complexity and focus on improvisation. Bebop would
serve as an influence for every genre of jazz that followed, despite its remarkably short
lifespan, and would be the start of a new style of jazz: modern jazz.
Innovation as tradition
It is essential to mention that traditional and cool jazz played a key role in that of
modern jazz. Traditional jazz was awakened by swing veteran musicians who resented
bebop and created their own music that went back to the roots of jazz that of New
Orleans. In the contrary, cool jazz was like bop, modernist music with radical
implications. Cool was an allegiance to contemporary music, predilection for
experimentation, distaste for conformity, and view of jazz as an underground
movement (Hodier 291). Many musicians had been part of this movement including
Miles Davis and Charlie Parker also known as the Bird. Miles Davis, as a cool
musician, refined his sound even more which led to his own conception of jazz which

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influenced later on jazz musicians. At the same time of this development, there were
other artists who also refined the cool that resulted in modern jazz. Modern jazz
involves the whole spectrum of fragmented parts of jazz such as hard bebop, soul jazz,
latin jazz, third stream, and soul jazz. This period required creativity from musicians
which led to the concept of free jazz that was so important to this period.
The jazz of the 21st century
Today, jazz is limitless. The music and musicians that have left a legacy in the
world of jazz are now imitated by different artists. The millennium jazz or the jazz of
today keeps evolving and is the result of technological revolution that has a direct
impact on jazz. According to Gioia, jazz musicians have been forced to become
entrepreneurs and savvy managers of their own careers(371). There is such emphasis
on the use of internet that jazz musicians do not even need to rely on an agent to
promote or sell records.
Nowadays, jazz is not in authentic form and it has never been because its styles
have always derived from previous ones. It is almost impossible to listen to jazz
musicians today who have not been influenced by previous virtuoso musicians from
the New Orleans music melting pot, Harlem, swing style, or bebop. Yet, jazz music
today is still clearly rooted in vital early forms of jazz. Musicians in this era borrowed
elements of music from other musicians because musicians still try to refine their
sound just like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker did.
Coda

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The way jazz has been demonstrated to evolve provides evidence that jazz is
destined to be fragmented again. As to what can happen to jazz music next; it is hugely
unpredictable. Jazz music will keep fragmenting into distinct forms of music due to
musicians obsession with new sounds and experimentation. Also, musicians who are
not delighted with the path of jazz will want to break away and start a new movement
leading into more diverse styles and a new wave of inspired artists. Therefore, jazz
will never stagnate in one direction or taste because jazz is shaped by its environment.
This music exerts a sheer of elements that result in symbiosis or continued birth of
new styles.

Bibliography

Cooke, Mervyn. The Chronicle of Jazz. London: OUP, 1997. Print.

Mervyn Cooke has written and edited many books on the history of jazz, film music and
the music of Benjamin Britten. He is a professor of Music at the University of Nottingham. This
source is completely up to date, which covers the evolution of jazz from its roots in Africa and
the southern United States to the myriad urban styles heard around the world today. This source
provides readers with biographies and discographies of musicians, musical terms, jazz festivals,

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and further readings. This book has a lot of information on the evolution of jazz, which is
implemented in my introduction, origins, and throughout most of my paper. (112 words)

Gioia,Ted. History of Jazz. New York: OUP, USA, 2011. PDF. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Ted Gioias History of Jazz has been a widely appraised book by critics. He is a musician
and an author who has published nine non-fiction books. He has served on the faculty of
Stanford University, and published in many of the leading newspapers, periodicals and websites,
including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The American Scholar,
Music Quarterly, Dallas Morning News, Popular Music. His book, History of Jazz has ranked as
one of the bestselling survey books sold in the last quarter century. This source will be used to
emphasize the roots of jazz through the insight information provided by Gioia. (142 words)

Hodeir, Andre. Jazz its Evolution and Essence. New York: Grove, 1956. 291. Print.
Hodeir was a French violinist, composer, arranger, and musicologist. He studied at the
Conservatoire de Paris, where he took Olivier Messiaen's analysis class, and won first prizes in
fugue, harmony, and music history. While pursuing these studies, he discovered jazz, and
embarked on an exploration of all music forms, jazz as well as classical. He wrote the book
called Jazz its Evolution and Essence which provides in-depth information on the evolution of
jazz and the many artists who helped and shaped jazz music. This book is based on factual
information. Hodeirs book covers the origins as well as millennium jazz. This book provided me
with important segments of information, which I incorporated in the paragraph of innovation as
tradition. The information I used was helpful to emphasize how musicians developed new styles
of music based on their environment. (125 words)

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Messinger, Colin. "How Bebop Came to Be: The Early History of Modern Jazz. The Cupula.
Gettysburg College, 5 Dec. 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
Colin Messinger is a Gettysburg college student who wrote a research paper on the
extensive topic of bebop. His paper has been published by the Cupula scholarship of Gettysburg
College. This source provides in-depth information on bebops coming into being. The author
displays no biased information because his paper is reliable due to extensive research on the
topic. I used this material to illustrate the breakaway of the swing era and the new emergence of
bebop as well as the beginning of modern jazz. (87 words).

Patterson, Vincent. "Evolution of Jazz." E-mail interview. 26 Nov. 2015.

Vincent Patterson is a jazz musician and a professor at Montgomery College who teaches
the course called "History of Rock & Roll. He is a connoisseur of jazz music; therefore, a good
source of information for my papers purpose. This is an interview which I did via e-mail. He
provided me with information that is unbiased in some ambits and biased in others. This
information will be used to support some points already made and provide an educated opinion
on the topic of jazz. (93 words)

Swenson, John. "The Armstrong Legacy." EBSCO HOST. OFFBEAT MAGAZINE, 1 Aug. 2007.
Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
John Swenson has been writing about popular music since 1967. He wrote for many
music magazines and has won important prizes due to his writings. He has written for the
OFFBEAT MAGAZINE which is from where I got my information. He provides unbiased
information on the life of Louis Armstrong as well as in-depth information on the life and

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accomplishments of well-known trumpeter player, Louis Armstrong. I have used this source to
show how crucial Louis Armstrong was to the development of jazz music in general and to
provide a quote with his strong opinion about Armstrong. (97 words).

Works Cited
Cooke, Mervyn. The Chronicle of Jazz. London: OUP, 1997. Print.
Gioia,Ted. History of Jazz. New York: OUP, USA, 2011. PDF. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Hodeir, Andre. Jazz its Evolution and Essence. New York: Grove, 1956. 291. Print.
Messinger, Colin. "How Bebop Came to Be: The Early History of Modern Jazz. The Cupula.
Gettysburg College, 5 Dec. 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
Patterson, Vincent. "Evolution of Jazz." E-mail interview. 26 Nov. 2015.
Swenson, John. "The Armstrong Legacy." EBSCO HOST. OFFBEAT MAGAZINE, 1 Aug. 2007.
Web. 26 Nov. 2015.