Music 80E: History of "Jazz"
Dr. Karlton E. Hester

Study Guide
A Historic Outline (Karlton E. Hester)

Understanding some of the different musical emphases that made it possible to make general distinguished between certain Afrocentric and Eurocentric musical approaches in North America. Can such distinctions be verified? How critical are they stylistically? Additionally, you might evolve a list of musical elements common to both traditions in your "JAZZ" JOURNAL.

Think about conceptual, psychological, and social differences between the captives of war that became slaves in Africa, and the feudalism involved in the epoch of the European slaveholders. Is there a significant difference? What is the history of slavery in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean? How do Mediterranean cultures factor into the European slave trade? What history of slavery do we find in Asia?

Africans involved in the slave trade involving European captives.

1. Egyptians

2. Nubian Sudan

3. The Moors in Spain

4. In Moslem societies

5. Carthage (Hannibal)

European countries involved in the slave trade involving African captives.

1. Portugal

2. Dutch

3. English

4. French

5. Spanish

A. Religious influences on jazz

1. The Great Awakening periods (1700's and the1800's)

2. Voodoo vs. Catholicism and the contradistinction between these and the Protestant religions (especially Methodist and Baptist)

3. Understanding the following terms:

a. spiritual

b. gospel

c. jubilee

d. lining out

e. jerks and jerking

B. The Blues

1. Geographical regions involved in the development

a. Delta (Mississippi - Alabama)

b. The Territories (Texas-Louisiana-Arkansas-Oklahoma-Missouri)

c. Southeastern seaboard (Georgia - Florida)

d. Chicago (urban)

e. Kansas City (Mid and Southwestern - urban)

f. Memphis (urban)

2. Understanding the major types of Blues and the innovators of each.

Question: WHY DO SOME PEOPLE FAVOR THE MUSIC OF THOSE WHO IMMITATE AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSIC (minstrels, Elvis, etc.) WHILE REJECTING THE MUSIC IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM?

C.What are the differences between the various styles in terms of musical elements and sociocultural conditioning.

a. Rural Blues

b. Classical Blues

c. Rhythm and Blues

d. Urban Blues

e. Rock and Roll

f. Blues or Rock revival

g. Rhythm and Blues or Soul revival

h. Blue-eyed soul

D. Minstrelsy and its effect on jazz

1. Geographical areas involved (World's Fairs)

2. Major composers

3. Various parts of the minstrel show

4. Origin of the term "Jim Crow"

5. Origin and use of the Cake Walk

a. Henry "Juba" Lane (artistic integrity of African American dances).

b. Jack Diamond

6. Famous personalities who borrowed from the minstrel show

a. D. H. Lawrence

b. Charlie Chaplin

c. Al Jolson

7. Christies (England's and North America's love of "black face")

8. Hoe-down.

9. Social concepts found in both African-American and European-American minstrel shows.

General Overview: Musicians are listed according to the decade in which their influence first manifested as an evolutionary influence (this influence may have began to form in an earlier period, and may continues into subsequent periods). This music is a continuation of the African American musical involvement in colonial society, work songs, church and camp meetings, rural and antebellum society, spirituals, etc.

1800-1850

Frank Johnson, Bands & Orchestras

The Luca Troupe (touring family of musicians)

Elizabeth T. Greenfield, (The "Black Swan) European concert music

Signor Cornmeali, Street vendor turned minstrel

1850-1890

Joseph W. Postlewaite, published his dances, marches, and piano music

Henry "Juba" Lane, "the greatest dancer known" (changing African American image abroad)

William Appo and Robert C. Johnson, Antebellum Sacred Music Concerts

Henry Brown, dramatic troupe at The African Grove (Bleeker & Mercer, NYC), Shakespeare, music

Questions of the week: Why was a music that could originally only be sold as race records suddenly a highly sought after commodity? How did this powerful new phenomenon (jazz) effect the status and direction of the "serious" composer at the turn of the century? Why might this artistic situation create a "serious" dilemma for some musicians?

A. Definitions - terminology - concepts, places, etc. Think of the effect each has on the evolution of African American art music.

1. Cross fertilization, racism, sexism, artistic pillaging

2. Africanization

3. Swing & Rhythm

4. Origins of the term jazz

5. Polyrhythmical

6. Syncopation

7. Blue Note

8. Cultural function

9. Melody

10. Harmony & changes

11. Blues, & AABA Form

12. Timbre (tone color)

13. Creole, mulatto, etc.

14. Elements of Style

15. Beat-metrical organization & tempo

16. Artistic purpose and/or philosophy

17. Call and response

18. Tunes, arrangements, and compositions

19. Ostinato

20. decorating tones

21. Art, Folk & Popular Music

22. African Griot

23. Storyville & The French Quarters

24. Patting Juba

25. Place Congo (Congo Square)

B. Understanding the history of the original names used (both appropriately and inappropriately) to describe the music we now call "jazz."

1. March music

2. Novelty music

3. Juke music

4. Fun music

5. Ragged music

6. Blue music

7. Folk music

8. Jass

9. The "Devil's" Music

C. Traditional African musical elements frequently retained in the spiritual, blues, "jazz" and other music within the African Diaspora; an adaptation resulting from the distillation of African multi-linguism (etc.), subconscious memory, a social necessity in an environment where communication was severely restricted, and the convergences of cultural traits within an oppressive American society.

1. Call and response

2. Blue notes (microtones)

3. Polyrhythms

4. Street cry - Field hollar

5. Work song

6. Sea shanty

7. Church & Spirituality (ritual)

8. Falsetto Break

9. Signifying songs

10. Bantu Rain songs

11. timbral liberation (natural sounds)

12. Ring shout

13. Oral tradition

14. Interdisciplinary performances

15. Communal participation

16. Sustained intensity

17. Delivery projects over great distance (outdoors)

18. Propensity toward embellishment

19. No musical time limits

20. Metronomic and repetitive

21. Hypermetric, non-periodic, rubato, elastic

22. Tension & release

23. Consonance & dissonance

24. Pitch treatment

25. Display of virtuosity

26. Voice imitating instrument & visa versa

D. The cross-fertilization of African & European music in Pan-America, and the historical connections that account for these mixtures.

1. Haiti ---- French ---- Dahomean

2. Cuba ---- Spanish ---- Yoruban

3. Brazil ---- Portuguese ---- Senegalese

4. Jamaica ---- British ---- Ashanti

5. Trinidad ---- British ---- Yoruba

6. America ---- West African ---- French ---- Spanish ----Amerindian ---- Mexican ----British

{note: New Orleans = Yoruba --- Dahomean --- French --- Spanish ... etc.}

A. Ragtime as an early jazz form

1. Geographical areas involved (The World's Fair)

2. Major Composers and their work

3. Mining camps

4. Relationship to American theater (specific composers)

5. Forms and styles of ragtime

6. Piano "rolls"

7. Major record companies

8. John Phillip Sousa as a ragtime composer

9. Ragtime's relationship to Dixieland

10. Music for silent films

Question of the week: Why are women becoming increasingly more invisible in the music as time marches on in the jazz evolution?

Question of the week: Why are the various forms of African American musical expression usually categorized as though they were unrelated to each other? (Are there more similarities or differences between gospel, blues, jazz, soul, and rhythm 'n blues?)

A. Chicago in the 1920's

1. Phonograph radio talking pictures

2. Prohibition

3. Origin of the term "Jazz - Jazz"

4. Innovators of the styles:

a. Boogie Woogie

b. Urban Blues

c. Society Dance Bands

d. Chicago Jazz

5. The Wolverines and Bix Beiderbecke

6. Sociological concepts and concerns

B. New York in the 1920's

1. Fletcher Henderson and the Harlem Renaissance

2. Was Paul Whiteman an innovator or popular figure?

3. Don Redman

4. Spasm Band (Does this involve the history of Jazz or popular music?)

5. Major innovators from the Harlem Piano School

6. The style of Duke Ellington as opposed to James Reese Europe's

7. Dance Band vs. Jazz Band

8. The Great Depression and its economic and social effect on the jazz scene

Question of the week: Why was the most innovative forms of African American music taken out of African American communities? What effect does this have on the values, economics and education of young African Americans?

A. The territory band period

1. Major innovators and bands

2. Geographical areas

3. Second largest migration of African-Americans in North America

4. Kansas City as a major period in jazz

5. New stylistic changes in the music (shuffle and Southwestern style)

6. Mayor Pendergast and the political machine

7. Count Basie and the riff

8. The Basie Band as major innovators in the Southwestern style

B. The Swing Era

1. Major innovators and big bands

2. New Cultural Languages

3. Role of the British and B. B. C. during the Swing Era

4. Benny Goodman - an innovator or popular figure?

5. John Hammond and Willard Alexander as major figures in jazz

6. Lester Young as the father of three schools of jazz

7. Eurocentric critics, jazz criticism, and their negative effects on the dissemination, documentation and understanding of innovative jazz.

8. N. B. C. and MCA as major factors in jazz

Question of the week: Why do Asian, European & other cultures value jazz and its artists so much more than America does? Why were such attitudes and the appreciation of art forms, revolution, and community different among the young (to a degree) in the 1960's?

A. Dixieland Revival Period

1. Geographical areas

2. Major innovators and popular figures

3. European acceptance of ---

a. France = innovators

b. England

4. Why was Dixieland revived? Economic and social reasons for and results.

B. Bebop and the Dawn of Modern Jazz

1. The roles of each of the major innovators (and Art Tatum's influence)

2. Major musical changes in style

a. Rhythm

b. Melody

c. Harmony

d. Tone color

e. Form

f. The roles of various instruments

g. Texture

h. Presentation

3. Religious concepts

4. Social connotations

5. Charlie Parker as a major force (the positive and negative effects)

6. The relative few innovative Big Bands

a. Earl Hines

b. Billy Eckstine

c. Dizzy Gillespie

7. Narcotics and the jazz scene (cabaret cards)

8. The ban on records

a. War Department

b. Musicians strike

9. Origin of the term "bebop"

10. Economic results

Question of the week: Is it true that most European Americans usually name European American jazz musicians when asked about their favorite jazz artists? If so, is this a result of musical preference or other sociocultural factors? Is this a factor that is age-specific?

A. Progressive Jazz

1. The reasons for and characteristics of the music

2. Major innovators

3. Relationship to Bebop

4. Duration of and its chronological place in the jazz evolution

5. Relationship to its audience and indigenous neighborhood

B. Cool Jazz and Third Stream

1. Major innovators

2. Geographical areas

3. Characteristics of

4. Studio Jazz and innovative jazz

5. Miles Davis as a major figure ("Birth of the Cool")

6. Big Bands

7. Lennie Tristano and his New York School (independent of cool or West Coast schools)

8. Public acceptance of Third Stream in Europe and America

a. compositional techniques

b. orchestral composers and major orchestras involved

9. Film scores

C. Hard Bop School

1. Major Innovators

2. Musical characteristics

3. Geographical areas

4. Economical conditions

6. Cultural language involved

7. Spiritual Conceptions

a. Relationship to the church

b. Relationship to the blues

c. "Demystification" and denial of jazz's spirituality by the European American critic

D.The Modal Jazz of Miles and Coltrane

Question of the week: Why is a musicologist writing on European art music expected to have several degrees in the related subject areas while jazz "historians, reviewers, and critics only have to have a record collection? Why does the average person (musician or lay) feel more comfortable and authoritative criticizing African American art music than European art music? WHY DO MANY PEOPLEFAIL TO COMPREHEND THE RACIST IMPLICATIONS INVOLVED WITH THIS ATTITUDE?

A. Free Jazz - New Thing - Avant-Garde and returns to Trans-African values

1. Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, & the notion of free jazz

2. Eric Dolphy - father of the New School?

3. The evolutionary approach of John Coltrane & spontaneous composition

4. The music industry vs. the creative artist

5. Determining the validity of unfamiliar music according to the principles balance, self-expression, evolution, social and musical elements, etc.

B. Musical terms, concepts, problems, etc. to aid in understanding and describing modern "jazz" and other contemporary music:

Questions of the week: Why the perpetuation of the myth "Jazz is Dead" in America Why African American and Latin American music work well together? What other world musics seem to share similar qualities with jazz?

A. More musical terms, concepts, problems, etc. to aid in understanding and describing modern "jazz" and other contemporary music:

Question of the week: What is the Jazz Culture's Relationship to the Rock, Culture and its derivatives? (ex.- Hendrix, Beattles?) To Soul, Rhythm 'n Blues, and Rap? (ex.- Louis Jordan, James Brown, Isaac Hayes, L.L. Cool J, etc.)

STUDY AID: Other factors to consider when DESCRIBING A COMPOSITION. Apply as many of the following questions as possible to your process of active listening, your initial approach to analyzing your musical examples, etc..

1. What is happening at the beginning, the climax or culminating point, and at the end of the composition? Is there an introduction, divisions and/or coda? Is there more than one climax? What defines the expressive quality of each of these musical landmarks and what compositional means are used to obtain the desired effects? What are the tone colors, form, tempo(s), rhythms, dynamics, meter, etc.?

2. What is the general mood (or moods) or quality generated by the piece? {Is it a sentimental, dramatic or poetic work; a texture or expressionistic composition?; stark and/or pointilistic; mysterious?} How does the composer and musicians organize musical elements to achieve these musical modes and/or effects? (instrumentation/timbre; pitch sets; articulations; dynamics; harmonic devices; rhythmic devices; focus on metrical ordering, placement of silence, etc.?) What is the style of the music?

3. What are the methods used to maintain continuity in the composition? (repetition; melodic variation; motivic transformation; rhythmic or harmonic gestures; etc.?) What compositional and improvisational devices are employed, and what proportion of each do you feel exists?

4. How is balance achieved in this work? What are the types of similarities and contrasts; tensions and releases; surprises and fulfilled expectations, etc.? Does the balancing of musical elements involve more than one movement in addition to the internal balance? (More than one album?) Are musical concepts transferable to other art forms and human endeavors?

5. Carefully trace the most significant musical highlights throughout the unfolding of the work following a single instrument (or set of instruments) during one listening. On the next listening, pair each event that you charted thus far with an accompanying (simultaneous) musical event. Repeat this process until you have charted all of the layers of musical stratification involved in the piece (background, middleground, foreground, etc.).

6. What kinds of musical textures occur within this piece at the various stages you have outlined (homophonic, polyphonic, heterophonic, polyrhythmic, hypermetric, hypometric, etc.)?

7. What is your overall impression of the piece? What difficulties did you encounter in analyzing this composition? Were there features such as spirituality, emotional expression, humor, etc., present that you felt were present but were difficult for you to quantify? Were there operations in effect that exceed your musical ability to understand or analyze them?

8. What are the particular problems and the unique relationships that exists between performance and composition in contemporary Trans-African music? Between perspectives of listener, composer and performer

9. What are some of the materials you use in evaluating music (i.e., main melodies, motives, transitions, rhythm cues, interaction between instrumental strata, etc.). What did you learn about the creative process from your investigation?

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Music 80E: History of "Jazz"
Posted 10/02/2002