A History of Jazz

This is short documentary of the history of jazz which traces the roots of jazz back to the Slave Trade and its African Roots.

Dave Koz : You Make Me Smile

This is a live performance of one of my favorite jazz records entitled You Make Me Smile by Dave Koz. I remember this song being played a lot when i was little so i thought i'd share it with you guys. hope you like it and consider adding jazz to your library of music.

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ

Dixieland music referred to as Hot Jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans Jazz is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s. Its well known jazz standard songs from the Dixieland era, such as "Basin Street Blues" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" are known even to non-jazz fans. An early style of jazz that was developed in New Orleans is the earliest style of Jazz music. The style combined earlier brass marches, French Quadrilles, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. While instrumentation and size of bands can be very flexible the standard band consists of a front line of trumpet, trombone, and clarinet with a "rhythm section" of at least two of the following instruments, guitar or banjo, string bass, or tuba, piano and drums.

Local Scenes

Jazz music has many local scenes like Cape Town, Kansas City, West Coast and last but not least, New Orleans. In Cape Town. jazz is known as Cape Jazz which is a genre of jazz music similar to the popular music style known as marabi, though more improvisational in character which is performed in the very southern part of Africa. Where marabi is a piano jazz style, in the beginning this music grew from the instruments that can be carried in a street parade such as brass instruments, banjos, guitars and percussion instruments. Kansas City Jazz is a style of jazz that developed in Kansas City, Missouri and the surrounding Kansas City Metropolitan Area during the 1930s and marked the transition from the structured big band style to the musical improvisation style of Bebop. The hard swinging, bluesy transition style is bracketed by Count Basie who in 1929 signed with the Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra and Kansas City native Charlie Parker who was to usher in the Bebop style in the 1940s. Kansas City is known as one of the most popular "cradles of jazz".

Modal Jazz

Modal Jazz is jazz that uses musical modes rather than chord progressions as a harmonic framework.The term comes from the use of the pitches of particular modes in the creation of solos, modal jazz compositions or accompaniments may only or additionally make use of many techniques, slow moving harmonic rhythm where single chords may last four to sixteen or more measures. Pedal points and drones, and absent or suppressed standard functional chord progressions. Quartal harmonies or melodies are also used.

AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ

Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave- based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz first emerged in 1943 with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Francisco Raul Gutierrez Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans based in New York City. In 1947 the collaborations of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban jazz mainstream. Bauza's initial composition within the genre was referred to as descarga, while Gillespie's approach was originally called cubop. During its first decades, the Afro-Cuban jazz movement was stronger in the United States than in Cuba itself.

Jazz Rock

Jazz rock is known as a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock music, complex time signatures derived from non-western music and extended typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations often using wind and brass and displayed a high level of instrumental technique. The term "jazz rock" is often used as a synonym for "jazz fusion" as well as for music performed by late 1960s and 1970s era rock bands that added jazz elements to their music.