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It Dont Mean a Thing(If It Aint Got that
Swing)

• Jazz in America
• The Curious Students Guide

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What Is Jazz?

• If you have to ask, youll never know. An
  Early Jazzman

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Jazz swings! Jazz improvises!
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Jazz Is

• One of Americas greatest contributions to the
  arts.
• A handy window into American history.

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Jazz is emotional! Jazz is fun!
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Jazz Is

• Grounded in swinging 4/4 time with the blues as
  a touchstone.
• A musical reflection of defiance or at least of
  antagonistic cooperation.
• A music formed by the marriage of black and
  white musical traditions in the United States.

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Jazz is popular music! Jazz is changing music!
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Jazz Is

• An art form that is constantly inspiring and
  renewing. Patricia Barber

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What Makes Jazz?
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Improvisation

• Instead of being played strictly from written
  notes, much of jazz is improvised, or made up as
  the musicians go along.

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Syncopation

• In syncopated music, rhythms are created in which
  the emphasis shifts from the strong beat to the
  weak beat, or so that the different rhythms play
  with each other.

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Blue Note

• A bent or slurred note. Playing blue notes will
  create unique harmonies and often will convey a
  deeply emotional feel.

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Complex Rhythm

• Rhythm is made not only by a drum, but by the
  accents played by different members of a jazz
  ensemble.

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The Drums of Congo Square

• The rhythms that the drummers beat out in the
  dusty sunlight made the people standing around
  want to move their heads in time, tap their feet,
  and dance, too. That is one of the things about
  jazz it always makes people want to move. Jazz
  music is music to move to, to dance tonot just
  to listen to. Langston Hughes

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The Story of Jazz
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• Jazz is a music that first took shape in the
  cosmopolitan and musically sophisticated milieu
  of New Orleans in the early part of the twentieth
  century.

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• Jazz grew out of the many strands of vernacular
  American music that had found a home in New
  Orleansamong them ragtime and blues.

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• Jazz was brought to life and nurtured by
  African-American musicians.

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• African Americans incorporated Western and
  African instruments and dances into new musical
  styles.

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• The musical styles and traditions of Africa have
  made jazz music what it is today.

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• While the roots of jazz are indelibly vocal, it
  evolved into primarily an instrumental genre,
  with its long series of innovations coming from
  instrumentalists.

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• Jazz is a music in which theme and variations
  play a large role, and in which each player has
  the potential role of composer.

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• Jazz can be played on any instrument and by
  ensembles of any size.

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• Jazz evolved with American culture.

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• America was determined to have fun after World
  War I and wanted to cheer itself up during the
  Great Depression.

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• Jazz caught the mood of the times, and radio
  broadcasts and phonograph records brought it into
  almost every home.

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Varieties of Jazz
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Swing

• A style of jazz in the 1930s characterized by a
  steady, lively, and fluid rhythm.

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Big Band

• A style of jazz of the 1930s and 1940s played by
  large orchestras, which relied on written music.

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Bebop

• A style of jazz pioneered in the 1940s and 1950s
  marked by rhythmic accents and a jagged beat.

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Cool Jazz

• A lyrical type of jazz that became popular in the
  late 1940s and 1950s also called West Coast jazz.

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Free Jazz

• A style of jazz of the early 1960s marked by a
  sense of mysticism and a return to African roots.

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Fusion

• A musical style of the late 1960s and early 1970s
  that blends elements of jazz with rock music.

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Soul Jazz

• A gospel-influenced style of jazz also called
  funk.

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Legends of Jazz Music

• Two Pioneers

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Louis Satchmo Armstrong

• Armstrongs influence was, and remains, so
  seminal that any study of Jazz must inevitably
  return to the work of this master trumpet player
  and vocalist.
• He mesmerized New York with his trumpet playing,
  singing, and scatting, the vocal technique he
  invented that used nonsense syllables to imitate
  instruments.

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Louis Armstrong
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Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington

• Ellington expanded the scope of jazz numbers,
  paving the way for his trademark symphonic jazz
  as well as proving himself a sensitive and
  imaginative pianist.

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Duke Ellington
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Legends of Jazz Music

• Instrumentalists

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Count Basie
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Benny Goodman
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Dizzy Gillespie
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Charlie Parker
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Thelonious Monk
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Legends of Jazz Music

• Vocalists

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Ella Fitzgerald
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Billie Holiday
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The Language of Jazz

• Ballad
• A slow song or musical composition.
• Blues
• A type of music in which rhythmic phrases are
  repeated also characterized by songs about hard
  times and bad luck.
• Call-and-Response
• An African song type in which a lead singer calls
  out and the group answers with a repeated phrase.

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• Improvisation
• When musicians invent things as they go along.
• Ragtime
• A type of piano music marked by a jumping,
  syncopated rhythm.
• Riggs
• Single rhythmic phrases repeated over and over,
  used in blues and jazz.

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• Syncopation
• When the accent of a rhythm shifts from the
  strong beat to the weak beat used in ragtime.

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Resources for Curious Students

• Books
• The History of Jazz, Ted Gioia
• Jazz A History of Americas Music, Geoffrey C.
  Ward and Ken Burns
• Visions of Jazz, Gary Giddins
• The Library of Congress
• William Gottliebs Photographs from the Golden
  Age of Jazz (All the images in this slide show
  are from this collection.)

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• Websites
• All About Jazz
• All Music Guide
• Downbeat
• JazzEd
• Jazz Online
• Jazz Times

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Bibliography

• Carlin, Richard. Jazz. New York, NY Facts on
  File, 1991.
• Hayes, Malcolm. 20th-Century Music 20s
  30sBetween the Wars. Milwaukee, WI Gareth
  Stevens, 2002.
• Lee, Jeanne. Jam! The Story of Jazz Music. New
  York, NY Rosen, 1999.
• Schoenberg, Loren. The NPR Curious Listeners
  Guide to Jazz. New York, NY Perigee, 2002.