Summary: Defining Jazz

Defining Jazz

The word Jazz comes from the word jasm, a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning "pep, energy”. When the music was created it was popular for the expression of emotions. Jazz music is from New Orleans and is created through brass instruments. The music was created by a mixture of European and African American cultures. Jazz is is the result of American and European classical music entwined with African and slave folk songs but is also influenced by many other music genres such as blues and rock n’ roll. Jazz was most popular in the 1920’s and 30’s a time known as ‘The Jazz Age ‘ or ‘Ragtime’. It was during this time that Jazz started to become famous and spread. All though not as popular now, jazz has had a major effect on today's

This forever changed the way that brass instruments were played, and lead to the development of jazz. Dixieland jazz, also known as “hot jazz’ or ‘traditional jazz’ was created in New Orleans, and named after The Original Dixieland Band. While instrumentation and size of bands can be very flexible, the "standard" band consists of a "front line" and a "rhythm section". The definitive Dixieland sound is created when one instrument (usually the trumpet) plays the melody or a recognizable paraphrase or variation on it, and the other instruments of the "front line" improvise around that melody.

The Journey

Dixieland was the name given to traditional jazz referring to the "Old South", specifically anything south of the Mason-Dixon line. The style was created when the Great Migration brought African American jazz players to the big city of Chicago. The style of playing was adopted by white musicians who favored meters of 2 instead of 4.[5] Emphasis on solos, faster tempos, string bass and guitar (replacing the traditional tuba and banjo) and saxophones also distinguish Chicago-style playing from New Orleans style.

Jazz in

He spent his childhood in poverty living with his grandma until he was 5. Armstrong developed his cornet playing skills by playing in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, where he had been sent multiple times for general delinquency. At age twenty, he could read music and started to be featured in extended trumpet solos, one of the first jazz men to do so. In 1922 Joe "King" Oliver offered to mentor Armstrong, and to have him join his band Creole Jazz. Oliver's band was among the most influential jazz bands in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of the jazz universe. Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the time. Armstrong switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section.By the 1950s, Armstrong was a widely beloved American icon and cultural