That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

Chapter 2: Altered Ears: Understanding the Traits and Roots of Jazz
books and where they often performed alongside white people at services.
The harsh change was difficult for African musicians who found their music
restrained or redirected along Euro-American lines, yet the blending of
African rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and improvisation, with more formal
Euro-American music, was at the heart of the invention of jazz (see Chapter 5
for details on jazz’s invention).
Even in the early stages, the impact of African musicians on American music
began to emerge. Here are key elements:
� Call and response: like when a preacher or dance leader shouts a statement,
and his audience shouts back; when instrumentalists have a “conversation”
consisting of traded musical “statements”
� Improvisation: embellishment around a song’s primary melody
� Pentatonic scales: five-tone scales later used as primary scales in blues
� Polyrhythms: the overlapping of different rhythmic patterns
� Swing or forward momentum: a sense of urgency created by relentless
rhythmic drive
� Syncopation: rhythmic accents around the underlying beat
I cover these elements in more detail in Chapter 3.
Borrowing from European classics
European musical traditions also make up a vital part of jazz. Elements like
swing and improvisation (which I cover earlier in this chapter) found their
way into jazz from Africa, but jazz’s major instruments, including the piano,
saxophone (invented in Belgium about 1840 by Adolphe Sax), and assorted
horns came to jazz by way of Europe.
If you talk to a musicologist — someone who studies origins of music and
instruments — you may hear that many European instruments resemble
modified versions of instruments from the Middle East and Africa.
Largely because of the availability, popularity, and portability of violins, slaves
received training in classical music and performed a range of music that also
included dance and folk. Violin was the most popular instrument for slaves,
and in the 1700s, they sometimes accompanied their owners to colleges such
as William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, for musical education. In 1770,
blacks were part of the first U.S. performance of Handel’s “Messiah” by the
Trinity Church choir of New York. This classical training eventually turned up
in jazz. Violin found its way into jazz in the ’20s, thanks to Stephane Grappelli,
Stuff Smith, and Joe Venuti, who used violins to play the same sorts of
melodies and solos as saxophonists and trumpeters.
21