Jazz Styles with Representatives

Listen to examples of music throughout the history of jazz from early blues and Dixieland through Diana Krall at the McGraw-Hill website for Jazz 12th edition by Paul O. W. Tanner and Donald W. Megill.

JAZZ STYLES AND SOME OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVES

Dixieland (1895-1920, Dixieland Revival 1940-1950's) Originating from New Orleans by combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation where one instrument (usually the trumpet) plays the melody and the other instruments improvise around that melody – (Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Kid Ory, Red Nichols)

Ragtime (1895-1918) – its cardinal trait is its syncopated, or "ragged", rhythm a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa, with additional polyrhythms coming from African music and usually written in 2/4 or 4/4 time with a predominant left-hand pattern of bass notes on strong beats (beats 1 and 3) and chords on weak beats (beat 2 and 4) accompanying a syncopated melody in the right hand. It uses a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats – (Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott)

Big Band Dance Orchestras (1930's - late 1940's) – sweet (lyrical, slow, popular) (Paul Whiteman’s band) and hot (faster, energetic, powerful) – (Glenn Miller or Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra)

Swing (1930's -1940's) – Swing music became popular around 1935 (although it began in the 1920’s). It is distinguished by a more supple feel using a walking bass line developed by Walter Page rather than the more literal 4/4 timing of earlier jazz – (Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, and Duke Ellington’s Orchestra)

Bebop (1940 -1950) – typically has fast tempos, complex chord progressions, rapid chord changes, numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and challenging improvisations based on harmonic structure, scales, and occasional references to the melody – (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Art Blakey)

Cool jazz/West Coast jazz (late 1940's - 1950's) characterized by relaxed tempos and lighter tone in contrast to the tense and complex bebop style – (early Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh)

Bossa Nova (1950 - 1960's) – a genre of Brazilian music fusing samba and jazz, where the rhythm has a "swaying" feel rather than the "swinging" feel of jazz – (João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd, Laurindo Almeido, Luis Bonfa)

Modal Jazz (1950 - 1960's) – uses musical modes rather than chord progressions as a harmonic framework – Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue”, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Larry Young, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson, Chick Corea and Bobby Hutcherson)

Hard Bop (begun mid-1950's) Hard bop is sometimes referred to as "funky hard bop" refering to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style – (Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Drew, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Stitt)

Free jazz (1950's - 1960's) – alters, extend, or breaks down jazz convention, often by discarding fixed chord changes or tempos, rejecting pre-written chord changes, and uses freely improvised melodic lines as the basis for harmonic progression – (Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, later John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Joe Maneri)

Soul Jazz (1960-1975) – incorporates blues, soul, gospel, and rhythm & blues, often featuring a Hammond organ to produce music with an earthy, bluesy melodic concept and typically a repetitive, dance-like rhythm – (Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver)

Jazz Funk (1970 -1980's) – Notably jazz-funk is less vocal, more arranged, and featured more improvisation than soul jazz, and retains a strong feel of groove and R & B versus some jazz fusions – (Herbie Hancock, Donald Byrd, Johnny "Hammond" Smith, Gary Bartz)

Latin Jazz (1950's to present) – employs straight rhythm (or "even-eighths"), rather than swung rhythm with early Latin jazz rarely employing a backbeat, but contemporary forms fuse the backbeat with the clave and instead of a drum kit often using the conga, timbale, güiro, bongos, and calves – (Machito, Mongo Santamaria, Mario Bauza, Stan Kenton, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Poncho Sanchez)

Third Stream (1957) – classical music and jazz with significant improvisation – (Gunther Schuller, John Lewis, J. J. Johnson, Charles Mingus, Bill Russo)

Jazz-Rock fusion (late 1960's - 2000) – arrangements vary in complexity from groove-based vamps fixed to a single key, or even a single chord, with a simple melodic motif, sometimes with odd or shifting time signatures and elaborate chord progressions, melodies, and counter-melodies, typically using brass and woodwinds and a rhythm section consisting of electric bass, electric guitar, electric piano/synthesizer (in contrast to the double bass and piano used in earlier jazz) and drums, and a high level of technical proficiency shown during improvisations – (later Miles Davis, Tony Williams Lifetime band, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Return to Forever, Larry Coryell, Billy Cobham)

Post Bop jazz (mid-1960's) – assimilates hard bop, modal jazz, avant-garde and free jazz but not identifiable as any one of them. Forms, tempos, and meters are freer with space created for rhythmic and coloristic independence of the drummer to move in and out of the basic swing rhythm, uses modal and chordal harmonies, flexible forms, structured choruses, melodic variations, and free improvisations – (albums include Speak No Evil by Wayne Shorter, The Real McCoy by McCoy Tyner, Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy, Miles Smiles by Miles Davis, Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock, and Search for the New Land by Lee Morgan, Joe Lovano, Phil Woods)

World fusion jazz (1980's - ) – incorporates distinctive non-Western scales, modes and/or musical inflections, and often features distinctive traditional ethnic instruments, such as the kora (West African harp), the steel drum, the sitar or the didgeridoo – (Shakti, Nguyen Lê, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel)

Heavy Metal Jazz (1970's - ) – Heavy Metal jazz is characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals, with a prominent role of the amplified electric bass providing the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy" – (Last Exit, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Cynic, Atheist, Exivious)

Punk Jazz (1985 - ) – combines elements of the jazz tradition, usually free jazz and jazz fusion of the 1960s and 1970s, with the instrumentation or conceptual heritage of punk rock (typically the more experimental and dissonant strains, such as no wave and hardcore) – (John Zorn's band Naked City, James Chance and the Contortions, Lounge Lizards, Universal Congress Of, Laughing Clowns)

Creative Improvised Music (1968 - 🎁 ) – heavy blowing, traditional/non-traditional, and free improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term "free improvisation" can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right. Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and modern classical musics – (Evan Parker, John Zorn, Peter Brötzmann, Anthony Braxton, AACM, Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser, Fred Firth, Henry Threadgill)