Jazz is a genre of music that has shaped our character by giving us courage, preparing us to improvise, innovate, give others an equal voice and listen. It is an incredibly important part of American culture, with a rich history that has had a ripple effect on almost every aspect of American life, from style and social movements to the music that followed. Learning more about the importance of jazz music in the United States can give you even more appreciation for the genre. Jazz has always sought a popular audience with varying success, but since its inception, it has been music that is often performed by musicians for musicians. This has made many listeners impatient with it, feeling that if one practically needs a degree in music theory to appreciate it, its practitioners should not expect the untrained or casual audience to be bothered by it.
On the other hand, its technical pretensions have made jazz a kind of status music with some audiences. Jazz has to do with race in the United States, not only because African-American musicians were so central to its creation and the African-American public was so important in their creative responses, but because whites played such a dominant role in its dissemination through records and performance venues and their ownership as intellectual and artistic property. Whites also played jazz from their earliest days and always constituted an important part of their audience. Whites, both in the United States and in Europe, were the main critical performers and writers on jazz as well. Jazz has generated an international and influential lifestyle, an attitude towards life — the hot, the modern and the cool — that is secular, obsessed with youth, obsessed with the marginalized and detached but passionately egocentric. This attitude of cool and modern has influenced literature, including the production of the so-called jazz-novel and jazz-poetry, as well as art, speech, dress and anti-bourgeois habits of indulgence, such as the use of illegal drugs such as marijuana and heroin.
Even interracial sex, considered rebellious by some and deviant by others, was associated with the demi-monde of jazz. Each dimension of jazz described above is the subject of academic and critical study in a variety of fields, including English, history, American studies, musicology, African American studies, Americas studies, and cultural studies. In fact, jazz studies as an interdisciplinary field of research and pedagogy formally exist and have their own magazine, Jazz Perspectives. Regardless of how much jazz has lost today in the size of its audience compared to popular music forms with higher market shares, it has gained in the high esteem in which it is held in business and art as a sophisticated artistic expression (it is often used as background music in business luxury establishments, museums and galleries). It has also been institutionalized as a formal course of study in many colleges and universities. In fact, if it weren't for colleges, universities, and high school jazz bands, and institutions like Jazz at Lincoln Center and SF Jazz, it's quite possible that few young people in the United States play or listen to jazz today. One of the greatest contributions of American culture to the world is jazz music.
It captures a variety of emotions and embraces diverse European and African influences to create a form of music that is both an art form and an expression of the soul. The clothing design changed to make it easier to bounce to the rhythm of jazz melodies. Even poetry evolved as a result of jazz; jazz poetry became an emerging genre within this era. These poems presented the same depth of emotion and sense of improvisation as jazz music. The imposition of the ban in the 1920s turned jazz into a musical and cultural phenomenon.
Later on various forms emerged such as West Coast jazz, fresh jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, Latin jazz in the 1950s or even jazz rap in modern times. These simultaneous developments indicate how difficult it had become to pigeonhole jazz into specific stylistic times or periods. Many areas of the jazz musician's brain are stimulated while playing; they must think critically and creatively. The essays in this issue critically examine the achievements of jazz as an artistic movement through historical case studies; commitment to contemporary jazz innovations; projections of its future; impressive roster of incredible musical performances almost every night; artists such as Robert Glasper or Kamasi Washington; avant-garde hip hop artists such as Kendrick Lamar; Pink Floyd's Beatles' “Honey Pie” or hip-hop artists like Q-Tip. The world of jazz music not only gave us such compelling music but also gave rise to drumming. Unlike European classical music which gives primacy to composers; jazz is oriented towards performers who generally have freedom to improvise solos or even ensembles on spot.
With dance halls or ballrooms in....
