Jazz Blog

The Jazz music sensation began to rub off on other parts of the world which encourages the experimentation of melding their familiar sounds with the essence of Jazz. In Europe’s country in the Region of France came the Quintette Du Hot Club de France who was responsible for the making of the early “Gypsy Jazz”.

The Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt created gypsy jazz by mixing the style of French Musette which was used in the dance halls, eastern European Folk known as Jazz Manouche, and American swing of the 1930’s. The sound was developed by instruments from the string family which are a steel string guitar, violin, and an upright bass. The atmosphere of the Jazz music is seductive with sudden unpredictable twists, and accelerating rhythms. The French artist Bireli Lagrene plays this unique music with old elements of the past.

Another style of Jazz music that allowed the musicians to express themselves freely was the invention of Avant-garde or free Jazz music. Both of these styles stemmed from the Bebop era, yet produced a relaxed form of harmonic and rhythmic music in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The musicians John Coltrane, Dewey Redman, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Ornette Coleman and many more were the creators of the free Jazz music. Between the 1960’s and 1970’s the Latin musicians created the Afro-Cuban and Brazilian Jazz Music styles after Bebop musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor cultivated it.

Gillespie and Taylor was influenced by the music of Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians Chico O’farrill, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, Xavier Cugat, Mario Bauza and Arturo Sandoval. Jazz music expressed in a Latin interpretation was termed Bossa Nova with origins in Samba music which is a mixture of Jazz, classical and pop music from the 20th century. Bossa is a moderate sound of music with Classical harmonic structure from Europe, Samba polyrhythm’s from Brazil and cool music. The tempo of such a work is about 120 beats per minute. The instruments used in this particular sound is nylon stringed guitar, piano, high hat tap of eighths, tapping on the rim of the drum like Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo”, and a vocalist. The sound produced is a new relaxing sound where the acoustic sound of the guitar can lull one to sleep with it’s easy melodic line.

Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim became popular in the sixties with this style of music. The influence of Jazz music returned to the place of its origins in the religious music known as Urban Contemporary Gospel from the spirituals music. Much of spiritual music sung by southern slaves in the past has a haunting dark and mournful sound during the 1800 and 1900’s. The churches know as the sanctified or holy churches took a more happier approach by encouraging member to sing speak their personal testimonies as they celebrated with song and dance.

The sanctified artist Arizona Dranes who was a traveling pastor made recordings that would fit in many musical categories such as blues, and boogie-woogie with the use of Jazz instruments. At the time the Jazz instruments used with religious themed music were percussion and brass instruments.

By: John Horsch