Jazz StylesThere are different styles to jazz. It is a music that has evolved with

time. Recognizing the styles won't make you enjoy the songs any more, but itmay help you for instance, if somebody tells you, "this is a great bebop CD," youwill have an idea what it is, and you can recognize which styles you have apreference for. I don't think there is a person alive who likes ALL jazz. Alot? Yes. All? No. There is surely some guy out there who grates your nerves.:)

With that in mind, here are some of the different styles...not all thestyles (because I don't know them all), but some of them:

Dixieland -- This is the style that is most closely related to New Orleansand especially the marching funerals from the area. It is a very happy music.The instrumentation consists of a trumpet, that plays the main melody --usually with a lot of bounce and flair, the trombone, which plays a counter-melody; the clarinet dances around the melody (kind of like a yapping Chihuahuanipping at your ankles :); the piano played the chords, the tuba was frequentlyused in place of a bass, and it kept the rhythm, along with the drums. It is a2/4 rhythm (or "Ooom pah, Ooom pah", if 2/4 means nothing to you).Sometimes, the early Dixieland groups recorded with a banjo keeping rhythm,since they didn't have microphones (they used something resembling amegaphone) and the drums were too overpowering. Examples of this style arethe Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Wild Bill Davidson and the Commodores.

Hot Jazz -- This is a music style I am not very familiar with. I would liketo learn more about it, but my money is spent elsewhere, jazz-wise. This musicis from the "Jazz Age" in history (also known as the "Roaring 20s"). It is thelink between Dixieland and Big Band Swing. The combos got bigger and startedusing, for instance, 2 trumpet players. It's not as polished as Swing music.The music really cooks from this era, though--don't get me wrong. Examples ofthis music are Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers and Louis Armstrong's HotFives (and Hot Sevens) as well as Fletcher Henderson's orchestra.

Swing (or Big Band) -- This is jazz that is more formal and usually lessimprovised. The structure is very tight. The instrumentations often consists

of "sections", such as 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, and 4 "reeds" (Saxophones ofvarious types and/or clarinet.) as well as drums, guitar, piano, and bass. Theyused techniques such as "call and response", where a section would play a riffand another section would repeat it. The music uses a lot of riffs, or a musicalphrase played over and over (check out Glen Miller's "In the Mood" for anexample of this). This music was very popular and very danceable. It nearlydied in the late 1950s and all but disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s, due todecreasing popularity and high expenses (a lot of members to pay), but it ismaking a comeback. Examples of this music are the big bands of BennyGoodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, and Duke Ellington.

Bebop -- During the early 1940s, some very talented musicians grew tiredof playing the same music in their jobs with swing bands. After the bandplayed, they would stick around for jam sessions. A group of enormouslytalented musicians: Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, KennyClarke, and Charlie Christian invented a style that became known as bebop. Itwas less structured than say, swing, but depended heavily on improvisation andbecause these guys were leading the way, it required virtuosity, as well. Theimprovised solos, rather than being based on ornamenting the melody, wasbased on complex chords that changed rapidly. The music is very driving andyou can usually recognize it, because a) You probably cannot whistle the melodyafter hearing it, and b) the drums drive hard, especially when keeping time onthe cymbals! Examples of this music, other than those listed above, would alsoinclude Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, and Bud Powell.

Cool (or West Coast jazz) --This music came to be as a result of the MilesDavis' nonet and a series of recordings that later became known as The Birthof the Cool (Click link to view album). The style uses the chord changes, likebebop, but lacks the intensity and the "piss and vinegar" of bebop. The music ismore laid back. Many say it lacks the "emotional intensity" of bebop. Thedrummers in cool music often use brushes, and hence, you do not get thatdriving rhythm from the drums. This music was very popular in the early to mid1950s and some examples of players from this genre include Stan Getz, GerryMulligan, Paul Desmond, and Chet Baker.

Hard Bop -- This music was a outgrowth from bebop. It also uses complexchord changes. However, hard bop mixes bebop with gospel and blues,providing a more "emotional" music. Sometimes, the line between the musicstyles gets blurred (and you will see me refer to both as "bop"). This music was

also known as "East Coast jazz" during the 1950s. Examples of this genreinclude: Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, and Cannonball Adderly.

Third Stream -- This was an attempt by George Russell to fuse classicalmusic with jazz during the mid-1950s. Improvisational music with structured,composer-oriented music. Go figure. I hear his 3 movement piece "All aboutRosie" is very good, though. I don't have any music from this genre.

Progressive Swing -- An attempt in the 1950s to fuse Swing (Big Band)music with elements of bebop. An example of this is Stan Kenton's Big Band. Idon't have any of this music.

Modal -- This music was an extension of theories that George Russellpresented in his book The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization forImprovisation. (Sounds more like a thesis!) In the late 1950s, bop was startingto run its course. The chord changes were becoming more rapid andconstrictive, since soloist had to play follow the chords,) and also because afterplaying their 32 measures (click here for a more detailed explanation), thesoloist had to play the same chord changes again. .Also, the style was about 15years old, so the novelty and to some extent, the creativity, was disappearing.What modal improvisation did was use slower moving chord changes, and freedup the soloist to improvise more based on scales, rather than the rapidlychanging chords of bebop. The result more melodic solos. Miles Davis' groupsof the late 1950s popularized this music and John Coltrane spent the early1960s taking this form of jazz to new heights. Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner aretwo more examples of fine modal players.

Free jazz (a.k.a. "The New Thing"). Free jazz took the concepts of modalone step farther: It based it's solos on no structure (hence, it "freed" up thesoloist to play anything). The solo became the melody and the players playedoff of musical ideas that each other were playing. This sometimes comes offas sounding dissonant, especially when multiple people play their own thingsimultaneously. A little bit of it usually goes a long ways with me, so I don'tlisten to much. The music had something of an "angry" edge to it, and was amusical reflection of the turbulent 1960s. Although he mastered hard bop andmodal jazz, John Coltrane played this music during the last years of his life andbecame the musical figurehead who lent credibility to it (and the music'spopularity basically died with him). The father of this genre is Ornette

Coleman. Cecil Taylor is another example of an important figure from thisstyle.

Bossa Nova -- Stan Getz popularized this music, and it became anoutgrowth of Cool jazz. It uses Latin Bossa Nova music mixed with jazzimprovisation. If you have heard the song "The Girl from Impanema," you haveheard Bossa Nova (and Getz plays the saxophone solo). Getz was not supportiveof Free Jazz and decided to go in this direction. It was popular in the 1960s(and some say it saved jazz during this period), but became something of a fad.

Fusion -- Miles Davis created this music form of jazz with his recordBitches Brew. The music blends jazz with rock music. It was enormouslypopular in the 1970s. During the 1960s, a lot of younger people were no longerinterested in jazz and looked upon it as something you keep under glass in amuseum. This was the time of rebellion and "trust no one over 30", sounfortunately, jazz became of casualty of this type of thinking. Miles decidedto "take the music to the audience" and this was the result. The music usedtraditional jazz instruments, such as the trumpet, drums, and saxophone, but itadded electrical versions of other instruments, such as keyboards, guitar, andbass (and Miles, for instance, used a "wah wah" pedal with his trumpet duringthis period). Blood, Sweat, and Tears was a popular band from this genre (youhave probably heard "Spinning Wheels"). Many of Miles' sidemen went on tobecome some of the bigger names in this genre, such as Chick Corea's groupReturn to Forever; John McGlaughlin's group The Mahavishnu Orchestra; orTony Williams' Lifetime; and Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter's group WeatherReport.

Neo-Classical -- At the end of the 1970s/early 1980s, jazz had become sofused with Rock and other forms of music that it was beginning to become hardto tell where jazz began and ended. Many people were proclaiming that "Jazzis dead." Some of the younger players didn't care for the directions jazz tookwith Free Jazz and Fusion in the 1960s and 1970s and decided to lookbackwards for inspiration. The result is bop-based music (and some otherforms, such as Dixieland) with some modern touches. The biggest name fromthis genre is Wynton Marsalis. Other "young lions" (as they have become knownas) include: Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, and Branford Marsalis.