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Jazz is amusic genre that originated in theAfrican-American communities ofNew Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are inblues,ragtime, Europeanharmony, African rhythmic rituals,spirituals,hymns,marches,vaudeville song, anddance music. Since the 1920sJazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression intraditional andpopular music. Jazz is characterized byswing andblue notes, complexchords,call and response vocals,polyrhythms andimprovisation.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles.New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlierbrass band marches, Frenchquadrilles,biguine, ragtime and blues with collectivepolyphonicimprovisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-orientedswingbig bands,Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), andgypsy jazz (a style that emphasizedmusette waltzes) were the prominent styles.Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation.Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence ofhard bop, which introduced influences fromrhythm and blues,gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano.Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using themode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as didfree jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures.Jazz fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation withrock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion calledsmooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such asLatin andAfro-Cuban jazz. (Full article...)




January 2011
"At the Jazz Band Ball", played by the Dixieland Jazz Band ensemble of theU.S. Coast Guard Band for the album "U.S. Coast Guard Bicentennial, 1790–1990".

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