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Jazz Music from Elliott Small
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Jazz music classic standards and an emerging hit blues song (I Left My Baby) - music arranged by Will Scruggs, the Winner of 2005 Future of Jazz Competition - heard on the radio and in leading venues - sung by baritone/tenor Elliott Small, featuring brilliant saxophone and/or guitar solos in each song with saxophone, guitar, bass and drums.
Reviews
WPFW 89.3 - Washington DC's premiere jazz music station - [Listen to 1 minute excerpt from 5 minutes coverage.] Robin Holden: “The music of a very talented young artist, Elliott Small ... Twins Jazz [Club] ... going to be a nice performance ... great young artist, Elliott Small ... before that Bobby Blue Bland ...”
WPFW 89.3 Interview Excerpts on the music: [Listen to 8 minute excerpts from 27 minute interview.] Will Scruggs: “The thing that impressed me ... he had so much character in his voice and it wasn't like anybody that I had heard before.” WPFW's Yolanda Turner: “Yes, it sounds really nice. Really nice.”
WPFW's Carol Tyson: [Listen to 1 minute excerpts from 7 minutes air time.] “I can't even call it perspiration. Nothing but sweat falling off of every brow up there in the B. B. King Blues Room. Closing out things in the B. B. King Blues Room, Elliott Small with the Will Scruggs Quartet. I Left My Baby. We've all been there. Before that T. Bone Walker, Good Boy, before that ..."
WPFW's Robin Holden and Carol Tyson: [Listen to 1 minute excerpts from 4 minutes air time.] “We're hanging out in the Frank Sinatra Room right now and Elliott Small coming to the stage ...”
This jazz music was arranged by Will Scruggs especially for this CD. He performs his music on the saxophone with the legendary skill that enabled him to be voted the best college jazz player in Georgia and Alabama and the first student to graduate from the prestigious Emory University with honors in jazz performance. There is a brilliant guitar performance of Ave Maria by Sid Woolfolk with Elliott as the vocalist.
Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship, copyright 2005: Will Scruggs, can be heard at WillScruggs.com.
Background
Elliott Small graduated from Harvard College where he was selected for the chorus (Harvard Glee Club) and the Harvard Drama Club. Major was Biochemical Sciences. His career has included work as a chemist, government employment, business ownership, social projects and travel to 30 countries in 5 continents as a computer consultant.
Based in Washington, DC, Elliott Small was born in Chicago where he was high school valedictorian, voted most likely to succeed and later elected to the Harlan High School Hall of Fame. He graduated from Harvard College where he was selected for the chorus (Harvard Glee Club) and the Harvard Drama Club. His major was Biochemical Sciences.
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Previous Perfomances
Future Performances
Friday, January 12, 2007, 7:00pm to 10:00pm, Producer and Vocalist, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights presents "Speak Truth to Power" at Shepherd Park Christian Church, 7900 Eastern Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20012. Jazz and Gospel Music included in this latest of a worldwide series of productions profiling the courageous efforts of human rights activists in a play written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ariel Dorfman, based on the book by Kerry Kennedy.
2007, dates to be announced, Vocalist, Live Television Broadcast of Annual Evening of Jazz Series, produced by Robyn's Place program host Robyn Holden of WPFW 89.3 FM, Lubber Run Ampitheatre, Arlington, Virginia
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Elliott has been a church choir soloist. He has performed in Jazz Music Clubs in Atlanta, Georgia with the Will Scruggs Jazz Quartet and other groups. Music from his album continues to be on WPFW 89.3, Washington DC's premiere jazz station. In Washington, DC he has performed with Will Scruggs to an enthusiastic audience at Twins Jazz, Washington, DC's premiere jazz club.
Will Scruggs:
Winner of 2005 Future of Jazz Competition in Atlanta, GA, sponsored by the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Cultural Affairs on August 11, 2005
At Emory University, Will was named the top college jazz musician in Alabama and Georgia by the Alabama Jazz and Blues Federation in 2001
Featured as a special guest soloist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 2002
First student ever to graduate from Emory with Highest Honors in Jazz Music Performance
Born in Atlanta, Will Scruggs began playing sax at the age of 8 before going on to be voted Most Outstanding Member of the Enloe High School Jazz Band in Raleigh, North Carolina, and selected as the First Chair Baritone Sax in the 1998 Honor Band of America.
At Emory University, Will was named the top college jazz musician in Alabama and Georgia by the Alabama Jazz and Blues Federation in 2001. While attending Emory he studied saxophone with Nathanael Fareed Mahluli and was also mentored by Gary Motley and Rev. Dr. Dwight Andrews. His greatest influences include John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Johnny Griffin, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, and Stevie Wonder.
"Mr. Scruggs" joined Teach for America and spent a year teaching first grade in Southeast Atlanta.
Will has recorded two full-length albums of original music with Cadillac Jones, an original jazz/funk band out of Atlanta. Their second record, Junk in the Trunk, was released in November 2003 on Harmonized Records, a subsidiary of Leeway's Homegrown Music Network. During his time with Cadillac Jones Will had the opportunity to sit in with both the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth Brass Bands, open shows for Charlie Hunter and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and perform at the Knitting Factory in New York, NY. During this time he also made regular guest appearances with Savannah's Perpetual Groove throughout the Southeast and as far as California, where he shared the stage with Skerik, Jessica Lurie, and Umphrey's McGee's Jake Cinninger at the 2003 High Sierra Music Festival.
As a full-time musician gigging 6 nights per week in Atlanta, Will has performed with some of the city's finest professionals, including Francine Reed, Joe Gransden, Gary Motley, E.J. Hughes, and Dwight Andrews. In 2002 he was featured as a special guest soloist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the Emory Symphony Orchestra, and Emory's University Chorus. In addition to leading the Will Scruggs Jazz Quartet and Jazz Fellowship, he is a member of the roots reggae band Revelation and is working on a Masters Degree in Jazz Studies as a Graduate Assistant at Georgia State University.
Will Scruggs's first solo recording, Jazz Fellowship, contains four original compositions and features Takana Miyamoto, piano, Moffett Morris, bass, and Chris Burroughs, drums.
Will Scruggs plays:
Conn Soprano Sax - late 1920's Chuck Berry
Selmer Mark VI Alto Sax - early 1970's
Martin Tenor Sax - 1935 Handcraft Committee II
"Keilwerth" Bundy Baritone Sax - late 1950's
King Flute
The History of Jazz Music
| Jazz |
| Stylistic origins: |
Blues and other African American folk music, Ragtime, West African music, European marching bands, 1910s New Orleans. |
| Typical instruments: |
Saxophone - Trumpet - Trombone - Clarinet - Piano - Guitar - Double bass - Drums - Vocals |
| Mainstream popularity: |
1920-1935 |
| Subgenres |
| Avant-garde jazz music - Bebop - Cool jazz - Dixieland - Free jazz - Gypsy jazz - Hard bop - Jazz fusion -Kansas City jazz music - Latin jazz music - Modal jazz music - M-Base - Smooth jazz music - Soul jazz music - Swing - Trad jazz music - Third Stream |
| Fusion genres |
| Acid jazz music - Asian American jazz music - Calypso jazz music - Jazz blues - Jazz fusion - Jazz rap - Nu jazz - Smooth jazz - Bossa Nova |
| jazz music around the world |
| Australia - Brazil - Spain - Netherlands - France - India - Italy - Malawi - United Kingdom |
| Jazz musicians |
| Bands - Bassists - Clarinetists - Drummers - Guitarists - Organists - Pianists - Saxophonists - Trombonists - Trumpeters |
| Other topics |
| Jazz standard - Jazz royalty |
Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the start of the 20th century in New Orleans, rooted in African American musical styles blended with Western music technique and theory. Jazz uses blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation.
Overview
Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong is a well-known jazz musician.
Jazz has roots in the combination of Western and African music traditions, including spirituals, blues and ragtime, stemming from West Africa, western Sahel, and New England's religious hymns, hillbilly music, and European military band music. After originating in African American communities near the beginning of the 20th century, jazz styles spread in the 1920s, influencing other musical styles. The origins of word jazz are uncertain. The word is rooted in American slang, and various derivations have been suggested.
jazz music is rooted in the blues, the folk music of former enslaved Africans in the U.S. South and their descendants, which is influenced by West African cultural and musical traditions that evolved as black musicians migrated to the cities. Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis states that "Jazz is something Negroes invented...the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz music has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping.
The instruments used in marching bands and dance band music at the turn of century became the basic instruments of jazz: brass, reeds, and drums, using the Western 12-tone scale. A "...black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of European musical tradition [of the marching bands], even though the performers were using European styled instruments.
Small bands of Black musicians which led funeral processions in New Orleans played a seminal role in the articulation and dissemination of early jazz, traveling throughout black communities in the Deep South and to northern cities. This early proto-jazz music was done primarily by self-taught musicians.
The postbellum network of black-established schools, as well as civic societies and widening mainstream opportunities for education, produced more formally trained African-American musicians. Lorenzo Tio and Scott Joplin were schooled in classical European musical forms. Joplin, the son of a former slave and a free-born woman of color, was largely self-taught until age 11, when he received lessons in the fundamentals of music theory. Black musicians with formal music skills helped to preserve and disseminate the essentially improvisational musical styles of jazz.
History
1800s
African American music traditions had already been a part of mainstream popular music in the United States for generations, going back to the 19th century minstrel show tunes and the melodies of Stephen Foster. Public dance halls, clubs, and tea rooms opened in the cities. Black dances inspired by African dance moves, like the shimmy, turkey trot, buzzard lope, chicken scratch, monkey glide, and the bunny hug eventually were adopted by a white public.
The cake walk, developed by slaves as a send-up of formal dress balls, became popular. White audiences saw these dances in vaudeville shows. The popular dance music of the time were blues-ragtime styles. Tin Pan Alley composers like Irving Berlin incorporated ragtime influences into their compositions.
1910s
Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz
A number of regional styles contributed to the development of jazz. In New Orleans, Louisiana area an early style of jazz music called "Dixieland" jazz developed. New Orleans had long been a regional music center. In addition to the slave population, New Orleans also had North America's largest community of free people of color. The New Orleans style used more intricate rhythmic improvisation than ragtime, and incorporated "blues" style elements including "bent" and "blue" notes, and using the European instruments in novel ways.
Key figures in the development of the new style were trumpeter Buddy Bolden and his band, who arranged blues tunes for brass instruments and improvised; Freddie Keppard, a Creole who was influenced by Bolden; Joe Oliver, whose style was more bluesier than Bolden's; Kid Ory, a trombonist who refined the style; and Papa Jack Laine, who led a multi-ethnic band.
Other regional styles
Meanwhile, other regional styles were developing which would influence the development of jazz music:
In 1891 African-American minister Rev. Daniel J. Jenkins of Charleston, South Carolina established the Jenkins Orphanage. Orphanage bands were trained to perform popular and religious music; members such as William "Cat" Anderson, Gus Aitken, and Jabbo Smith went on to play with jazz bandleaders like Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie.
In the northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime developed, characterized by rollicking rhythms, without the bluesy influence of the southern styles. The solo piano version of the northeast style was typified by Eubie Blake. James P. Johnson developed "stride" piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides the rhythm and bassline. Johnson influenced later pianists like Fats Waller and Willie Smith. James Reese Europe was a prominent orchestra leader. Tim Brymn performed with a northeastern "hot" style.
In Chicago in the early 1910s, saxophones vigorously "ragged" a melody over a dance band rhythm section, blending New Orleans styles and creating a new "Chicago Jazz" sound.
Along the Mississippi from Memphis, Tennessee to St. Louis, Missouri, the "Father of the Blues," W.C. Handy popularized a less improvisation-based approach, in which improvisation was limited to short "fills" between phrases.
1920s
The King & Carter Jazzing Orchestra photographed in Houston, Texas, January 1921.
With Prohibition, the constitutional amendment that forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages, speakeasies emerged as nightlife settings, and many early jazz artists played in them. The inventions of the phonograph record and of radio helped the proliferation of jazz music as well. Radio stations helped to popularize Jazz, which became associated with sophistication and decadence that helped to earn the era the nickname of the "Jazz Age." In the early 1920s, popular music was still a mixture of things: current dance songs, novelty songs, and show tunes.
Key figures of the decade
Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in 1929. Paul Whiteman was a popular orchestra leader
Paul Whiteman, the self-proclaimed "King of Jazz", was a popular bandleader of the 1920s who hired Bix Beiderbecke and other white jazz musicians and combined jazz with elaborate orchestrations. Whiteman commissioned Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," which was debuted by Whiteman's Orchestra. Ted Lewis was another popular bandleader. Some of the other bandleaders included: Harry Reser, Leo Reisman, Abe Lyman, Nat Shilkret, George Olsen, Ben Bernie, Bob Haring, Ben Selvin, Earl Burtnett, Gus Arnheim, Rudy Vallee, Jean Goldkette, Isham Jones, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Sam Lanin, Vincent Lopez, Ben Pollack and Fred Waring.
Influential 1920s Performers:
King Oliver's band played in the New Orleans hot ensemble jazz style.
King Oliver's protege, Louis Armstrong, had a major influence on the development of jazz music, with his extensive improvisations and scat singing.
Sidney Bechet brought the saxophone to prominence.
Bix Beiderbecke was a white, non-New Orleanian whose legato phrasing brought the influence of classical romanticism to jazz.
Fletcher Henderson's arrangements influenced the Big Band style in the following decade.
Pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington's band made many recordings and radio broadcasts. Today he is regarded as one of the most important composers in jazz history.
1930s
Big bands
While the solo became more important in jazz, popular bands became larger in size. The Big bands such as Benny Goodman's Orchestra were highly jazz oriented, while others (such as Glenn Miller's) left less space for improvisation. Key figures in developing the big jazz band were arrangers and bandleaders Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman and Duke Ellington.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraharpist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. During this period, swing and big band music were very popular.
The influence of Louis Armstrong can be seen in bandleaders like Cab Calloway, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and vocalists like Bing Crosby, who were influenced by Armstrong's style of improvising. The style further spread to vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday; later, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan, among others, would jump on the scat bandwagon.
An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump music used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s, with the rhythm section playing "eight to the bar," (eight beats per measure instead of four). Big Joe Turner became a boogie-woogie star in the 1940s, and then in the 1950s was an early rock and roll musician. (Also see saxophonist Louis Jordan).
Kansas City Jazz
Memorial to Charlie Parker at the American Jazz Museum at 18th and Highland in Kansas City
Kansas City Jazz in the 1930's marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. Tom Pendergast encouraged the development of night clubs featuring musical improvisation. In 1936, the Kansas city era waned when producer John H. Hammond began sending Kansas City acts to New York City.
1940s
Bebop
n the 1940s with bebop performers such as saxophonist Charlie Parker (known as "Yardbird" or "Bird"), pianist Bud Powell and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie helped to shift jazz music from danceable pop music to more challenging "musician's music." Other bop musicians included pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Kenny Clarke, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, trumpeters Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, saxophonists Wardell Gray, Sonny Stitt, bassist Ray Brown, drummer Max Roach
Bop musicians valued complex improvisations based on chord progressions over a sophisticated harmonic vocabulary. Hard bop (also known as The Bop Revolution) of the late 1950s used rootless voicings where the tonic or "root" is not included), and an increased use of extensions, non-diatonic notes such as the tritone (flattened fifth), and stacked chords - for instance, playing a E-flat major triad against a C7, making it a C7#9.
1950s
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was a jazz musician during the latter half of the 20th century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s.
Miles Davis during a 1952 recording session
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Dr. Elliott C. Small, Sr., friend and dental school classmate of Dr. Miles Dewey Davis, II
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Miles Dewey Davis was born into a relatively wealthy African-American family living in Alton, Illinois. His father, Dr. Miles Henry Davis, was a dentist from the Northwestern University Dental School class of 1924. Elliott Small's father was a classmate, and he frequently stayed over at the Davis home while in the area on travel during his tenure as the dentist who was second in charge for Dental Programs for the State of Illinois. Dr. Small had his own family late in life, and Elliott, Jr. did not begin his career in entertainment until after Miles Davis death.
In 1927 the Davis family moved to East St. Louis. He played on some early bebop records and recorded the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Free jazz was the only post-war jazz style not significantly influenced by Davis, although some musicians from his bands later pursued this style. His recordings, along with the live performances of his many influential bands, were vital in jazz's acceptance as music with lasting artistic value. A popularizer as well as an innovator, Davis became famous for his languid, melodic style and his laconic, and at times confrontational, personality. As an increasingly well-paid and fashionably-dressed jazz musician, Davis was also a symbol of jazz music's commercial potential.
Davis was late in a line of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. He has been compared to Duke Ellington as a musical innovator: both were skillful players on their instruments, but were not considered technical virtuosos. Ellington's main strength was as a composer and leader of a large band, while Davis had a talent for drawing together talented musicians in small groups and allowing them space to develop. Many of the major figures in post-war jazz played in one of Davis's groups at some point in their career.
Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. There are also plans to make a biopic about Davis starring Don Cheadle.
Free jazz and avant-garde jazz
Free jazz and avant-garde jazz, are two partially overlapping subgenres that, while rooted in bebop, typically use less compositional material and allow performers more latitude. Free jazz uses implied or loose harmony and tempo, which was deemed controversial when this approach was first developed. Avant-garde jazz has more "rules" than free jazz, in that performances being partly composed, but the improvised parts are almost as free as in free jazz.
Early performers of these styles go back as early as the late 40s and early 50s with Lennie Tristano's Crosscurrents and Descent into the Maelstrom credited as being precursors to the movement. Free and avant-garde jazz started to gain popularity in the 1950s with Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, performers included John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Pharoah Sanders, Sam Rivers, Leroy Jenkins, Don Pullen, Dewey Redman and others. Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark, William Parker, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker are leading contemporary free jazz musicians, and musicians such as Coleman, Taylor and Sanders continue to play in this style. Keith Jarrett has been prominent in defending free jazz from criticism by traditionalists in recent years.
1960s
Latin jazz
Latin jazz has two varieties: Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz. Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the U.S. directly after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-'50s. Notable bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands at that time. Gillespie's work was mostly with big bands of this genre. The music was influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as Tito Puente, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo, and much later, Arturo Sandoval.
Brazilian jazz is synonymous with bossa nova, a Brazilian popular style which is derived from samba with influences from jazz as well as other 20th-century classical and popular music. Bossa is generally slow, played around 80 beats per minute with straight, rather than swing, eighth notes, and difficult polyrhythms. The best-known bossa nova compositions have become jazz standards.
The related term jazz-samba essentially describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, and usually played at 120 beats per minute or faster. Samba itself is actually not jazz but, being derived from older Afro-Brazilian music, it shares some common characteristics.
Jazz fusion
Cover of the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew. Bitches Brew is an influential record in the history of jazz fusion.
In the late 1960s, the hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion was developed. Notable artists of the late 1960s and 1970s jazz and fusion scene include: Miles Davis, who recorded the fusion albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1968 and 1969, Chick Corea and his Return to Forever band, ex- Miles Davis drummer prodigy Tony Williams's Lifetime with Allan Holdsworth and Larry Young among others, Herbie Hancock and his Headhunters band, guitarist Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, Al Di Meola, Jean-Luc Ponty, Sun Ra, Soft Machine, Narada Michael Walden, Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, the Pat Metheny Group and Weather Report. Some artists have continued to develop the genre into the 2000s.
1970s
The stylistic diversity of jazz has shown no sign of diminishing, absorbing influences from such disparate sources as world music, avant garde classical music, and a range of rock and pop musics.
Beginning in the 1970s with such artists as Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, the Pat Metheny Group, Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, and Eberhard Weber, the ECM record label established a new chamber-music aesthetic, featuring mainly acoustic instruments, and incorporating elements of world music and folk music. This is sometimes referred to as "European" or "Nordic" jazz, despite some of the leading players being American.
1980s
In the 1980s, the jazz music community shrunk dramatically and split. A mainly older audience retained an interest in traditional and "straight-ahead" jazz music styles. Wynton Marsalis strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. However, Marsalis has been criticized for his dismissal of post-1965 avant-garde jazz and 1970s fusion) and his focus on a narrow portion of jazz's past.
At the same time, other practitioners and fans explored experimental jazz, and musician fused jazz idioms with contemporary popular music genres such as disco (acid jazz) or rap (jazz rap).
Acid Jazz and Nu Jazz
Styles as acid jazz which contains elements of 1970s disco, acid swing which combines 1940s style big-band sounds with faster, more aggressive rock-influenced drums and electric guitar, and nu jazz which combines elements of jazz and modern forms of electronic dance music.
Exponents of the "acid jazz" style which was initially UK-based included the Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, James Taylor Quartet, Young Disciples, and Corduroy. In the United States, acid jazz groups included the Groove Collective, Soulive, and Solsonics. In a more pop or smooth jazz context, jazz enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s with such bands as Pigbag and Curiosity Killed the Cat achieving chart hits in Britain. Sade Adu became the definitive voice of smooth jazz.
Funk-based improvisation
Jean-Paul Bourelly and M-Base argue that rhythm is the key for further progress in the music; they believe that the rhythmic innovations of James Brown and other Funk pioneers can provide an effective rhythmic base for spontaneous composition.
These musicians playing over a funk groove and extend the rhythmic ideas in a way analogous to what had been done with harmony in previous decades, an approach M-Base calls Rhythmic Harmony.
Jazz rap
The late 80's saw a development of a fusion between jazz music and hip-hop, called Jazz rap. Though some claim the proto-hip hop, jazzy poet Gil Scott-Heron the beginning of jazz rap, the genre arose in 1988 with the release of the debut singles by Gang Starr ("Words I Manifest", which samples Charlie Parker) and Stetsasonic ("Talkin' All That Jazz", which samples Lonnie Liston-Smith). One year later, Gang Starr's debut LP, No More Mr. Nice Guy and their work on the soundtrack to Mo' Better Blues, and De La Soul's debut 3 Feet High and Rising have proven remarkably influential in the genre's development. De La Soul's cohorts in the Native Tongues Posse also released important jazzy albums, including the Jungle Brothers' debut Straight Out the Jungle (1988, 1988 in music) and A Tribe Called Quest's debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990, 1990 in music). Guru continued the jazz rap trend with the critically acclaimed Jazzmatazz series beginning in 1993, in which modern day jazz musicians were brought into the studio.
1990s
Electronica
With the rise in popularity of various forms of electronic music during the late 1980s and 1990s, some artists have attempted a fusion of jazz with more of the experimental leanings of electronica (particularly IDM and Drum and bass) with various degrees of success. This has been variously dubbed "future jazz", "jazz-house" or "nu jazz".
The more experimental and improvisational end of the spectrum includes Scandinavia-based artists such as pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer (who both began their careers on the ECM record label), the trio Wibutee, and Django Bates all of whom have gained their chops as instrumentalists in their own right in more traditional jazz music circles.
The Cinematic Orchestra from the UK or Julien Lourau from France have also gained praise in this area. Toward the more pop or pure dance music end of the spectrum of nu jazz are such proponents as St Germain and Jazzanova, who incorporate some live jazz playing with more metronomic house beats.
2000s
In the 2000s, "jazz" hit the pop charts and blended with contemporary Urban music through the work of artists like Norah Jones, Jill Scott, Jamie Cullum, Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse and Diana Krall and the jazz advocacy of performers who are also music educators (such as Jools Holland, Courtney Pine and Peter Cincotti). A debate has arisen as to whether the music of these performers can be called jazz or not (see below).
Improvisation
Reggie Workman, Pharoah Sanders, and Idris Muhammad, c. 1978
Jazz music is often difficult to define, but improvisation is a key element of the form. Improvisation has been since early times an essential element in African and African-American music and is closely related to the use of call and response in West African and African-American cultural expression.
The form of improvisation has changed over time. Early folk blues music often was based around a call and response pattern, and improvisation would factor into the lyrics, the melody, or both. In the Dixieland style, musicians taking turns playing the melody while the others improvise countermelodies. In contrast to the classical form, where performers tries to play the piece exactly as the author envisioned it, the goal in jazz is to create a new interpretation, changing the melody, harmonies, even the time signature. If classical music is the composer's medium, jazz belongs to the performer. On the other hand, rhythmic elements are strictly controlled. The leader sets the tempo, often by snapping fingers or counting off "one, two, three, four." Many jazz performances contain no variation in the basic tempo -- there is no room for rubato.
By the Swing era, big bands played using arranged sheet music, but individual soloists would perform improvised solos within these compositions. In bebop, however, the focus shifted from arranging to improvisation over the form; musicians paid less attention to the composed melody, or "head," which was played at the beginning and the end of the tune's performance.
As previously noted, later styles of jazz music, such as modal jazz, abandoned the strict notion of a chord progression, allowing the individual musicians to improvise more freely within the context of a given scale or mode (e.g., the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue). The avant-garde and free jazz idioms permit, even call for, rhythmic variety as well.
When a pianist, guitarist or other chord-playing instrumentalist improvises an accompaniment while a soloist is playing, it is called comping (a contraction of the word "accompanying"). "Vamping" is a mode of comping that is usually restricted to a few repeating chords or bars, as opposed to comping on the chord structure of the entire composition. Most often, vamping is used as a simple way to extend the very beginning or end of a piece, or to set up a segue.
In some modern jazz compositions where the underlying chords of the composition are particularly complex or fast moving, the composer or performer may create a set of "blowing changes," which is a simplified set of chords better suited for comping and solo improvisation.
Debates over definition of "jazz"
As the term "jazz" has long been used for a wide variety of styles, a comprehensive definition including all varieties is elusive. Some enthusiasts of certain types of jazz music have argued for narrower definitions which exclude many other types of music also commonly known as jazz.
There have long been debates in the jazz community over the boundaries or definition of "jazz". In the mid-1930s, New Orleans jazz lovers criticized the "innovations" of the swing era as being contrary to the collective improvisation they saw as essential to "true" jazz. From the 1940s and 1960s, traditional jazz enthusiasts and Hard Bop criticized each other, often arguing that the other style was somehow not "real" jazz. Although alteration or transformation of jazz by new influences has been initially criticized as "radical" or a "debasement", Andrew Gilbert argues that jazz has the "ability to absorb and transform influences" from diverse musical styles.
Commercially-oriented or popular music-influenced forms of jazz are have long been criticized. Traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed the 1970s jazz fusion era as a period of commercial debasement. However, according to Bruce Johnson, jazz music has always had a " tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form ".
Gilbert notes that as the notion of a canon of traditional jazz is developing, the "achievements of the past" may be become "...privileged over the idiosyncratic creativity..." and innovation of current artists. Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins argues that as the creation and dissemination of jazz music is becoming increasingly institutionalized and dominated by major entertainment firms, jazz is facing a "...perilous future of respectability and disinterested acceptance". David Ake warns that the creation of "norms" in jazz and the establishment of a "jazz tradition" may exclude or sideline other newer, avant-garde forms of jazz.
One way to get around the definitional problems is to define the term "jazz" more broadly. According to Krin Gabbard "jazz is a construct" or category that, while artificial, still is a useful to designate "a number of musics with enough in common part of a coherent tradition". Travis Jackson also defines jazz in a broader way by stating that it is music that includes qualities such as " 'swinging', improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being 'open' to different musical possibilities".
Where to draw the boundaries of "jazz" is the subject of debate among music critics, scholars, and fans.
For example:
Music that is a mixture of jazz and pop music, such as the recent albums of Jamie Cullum, is sometimes called "jazz".
James Blunt and Joss Stone have been called "jazz" performers by radio DJ's, and record label promoters.
Jazz festivals are increasingly programming a wide range of genres, including world beat music, folk, electronica, and hip-hop. This trend may lead to the perception that all of the performers at a festival are jazz artists - including artists from non-jazz genres.
