If Tom Stoppard and Almost Free Theatre could play a 15-minute Hamlet to cut out the prevarications and welcome the masses in the 1970s, we can do the same for jazz in 2008. So here’s how to translate jazzspeak; follow the plot, and nod in the right places.
First, you need a story line, which goes roughly like this:
In the early 20th century, in the post-slavery American south, “jass” or “jazz” coalesces out of street marches, work songs, hymns, mutated African and European classical music and blues. Louis Armstrong, a child of the New Orleans red-light district, shows the world how a trumpet can deliver the improvised equivalent of an operatic aria.
With the help of the phonograph and a dance craze, the 1920s are dubbed the jazz age. The 1930s swing era, with its big-band heroes Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman, has massive youth appeal. But its eventual commercialism triggers a complex and more ascetic 1940s reaction — bebop. Bop is a fast-moving small-group music of intricate melodies and subtle chords — and saxophonist Charlie Parker is its hipster JS Bach. Because bop is a cerebral music, jazz begins to be displaced as a pop music by rock in the 1950s. Trumpeter Miles Davis makes jazz cooler, John Coltrane’s sax makes it densely passionate, Ornette Coleman’s makes it more structurally freewheeling and loose. An expressionist 1960s movement (avant-garde or free jazz) explores full-on improvisation without reliance on hooks or themes — it loses the wider public, but has a devoted following.
Funky and electric jazz-rock or fusion, develops in the 1970s to slipstream rock’s popularity, its stars including Miles Davis and Joe Zawinul’s Weather Report. A 1980s revival of pre-fusion acoustic jazz follows, with young trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as its standard bearer. The different persuasions evolve and intertwine through the 1990s — and jazz becomes increasingly a world music, with creative independent scenes springing up all over the world, especially in Europe.
Acid jazz
DJ-derived term for clubbers’ enthusiasm in the late 1980s and early 1990s for 1960s soul-bop styles. Spawned a new generation of jazz dancers.
Check out The James Taylor Quartet: Absolute.
Bebop/Bop
Mostly small-group reaction against big-band swing formulae, using more advanced harmonies and devious melodies. Named after the sound of its frequently fast, nervy phrasing.
Check out Charlie Parker: The Complete Dial Sessions.
Blue Note/Blues
Crucial African-rooted jazz ingredient, occurring when the third and seventh notes of a regular scale are roughly flattened, creating a slurred or bent note. Also the name of a legendary jazz record label. Blues and rock still use these sounds within a melody/counter melody/melody 12-bar structure.
Boogie woogie
Blues piano style with a rocking, repeating left-hand bass line, begun around 1900 but later significant in the sound of rock ‘n’ roll.
Check out Meade Lux Lewis: 1927-1939.
Changes
The chord sequence to a song. Being able to improvise over “the changes” — sometimes without rehearsal or familiarity with the other players — is a crucial jazz skill.
Circular breathing
Mostly a saxophonist’s technique, for simultaneously breathing in through the nose and blowing through the instrument, to create a sound without pauses. Frank Sinatra was reputed to have learned circular breathing while singing with Tommy Dorsey’s band, which enabled him to hold notes for longer. In truth, that’s unlikely.
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