Do you know why and how was Jazz invented?

Some people who didn't have any clue about the music sat and thought about faulty systems of organizing the notes to hide all of their inabilities behind those systems. At that stage they were searching a name of their concoction and suddenly one of them extemporized Jazz and they named it Jazz.



They can't digest other methodologies because they have already ruined everything for themselves.

 

In the late 1800s, African slaves started with work songs. These became the first 'Blues'. Blind Lemon Jefferson then was followed by Jimmy Noone, Bix Biederbecke, Louis Armstrong and MANY others. Jazz comes from the blues. Rock 'n Roll with Bill Haley (you can youtube it) had ALL jazz instrumentation playing? A blues. Bluegrass boom-chaka beats come from the Dixieland jazz 2-beat. Rock was the next step in rock 'n Roll - The Lemon Song by Led Zeppelin based on a Howlin' Wolf blues tune.... I can keep going. Jimi Hendrix Red House.....most of the R&B that people listen to with the great artists, they have their roots in blues and jazz. Aretha Franklin (did blues and jazz as well as motown) - the list goes on.

Please make sure next time you want to make something out to be what it is not, that you ensure it's not directed at someone who knows the history.


EDIT: Most of the really great session players behind every famous artist are often great jazz musicians. In fact, most of the great jazz musicians I am grateful to know can play any style of music and play it as well as the best of them. There is a misguided conception that all jazz players like nothing but obscure jazz. This is completely incorrect because the great players I know of like all music, but I cannot help what people think.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 6, 2020

Wow! What big names... I got impressed.
A very impressive history too ...

 

You asked a question:

Do you know why and how was Jazz invented?


I answered it. Not much more really.

I have not been here for a while. Are you the same guy that used to have the Pink Panther avatar that used to go WAYYYY left of center ?

 

You see, having discussions with jazz adherents goes nowhere. At the end, they are adjudged by themselves the only winners and the rest, born losers.

Good night or good morning...

 

lager ignored...sigh

 

Wrong again - I love all music you assumed I am by default 'A jazz musician' just because I know the history when in fact I love music so much I learned a lot about its history.

The reality is you can not have a discussion because you assume too much. You even assumed to know what I am.

I will make it really easy for you because I define myself:
'I am a musician.'

 

Well, I'll keep out of the @Thunoing Thumbs versus @Lager exchange
and get back to something more lighthearted by comparison.

I've been having tongue-in-cheek fun here (as I'm sure you appreciate) - but still with a point included.
I'm only using the word 'bigoted' as a way of poking fun at one piece of my own brain.

I certainly don't think I have a bigoted personality but, here, I am attacking my own audio perceptual system and I'm still standing by my accusation that my audio perceptual system (my ears) is bigoted as in "bigoted = obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief or opinion"

Agreed there are vast tombs of literature on why we have the tuning systems that we do have, and I've many times happily explored some of that literature. I'm convinced by much of the maths and physics of sound, and by the neural science of why we like mathematical regularities in sound frequencies, etc, etc. All of that can and does contribute well to providing an explanation of how we ended up with standardised western tuning.

But none of it leads to me believe that our ending up with standardised western tuning was some kind of 'superior inevitability'.
(that's one form of bigotry I'm definitely not guilty of) And that view is supported by the many thousands of cultural instances of brilliantly using tunings that are nothing like standard western tuning.

So, why does my brain insist on liking the standardised stuff and disliking the curiosities - like compositions played using 19-TET?

It's not as if my brain can't handle any microtonalities. For example(s), It's really easy for me to pass a strong opinion on why this blues bend worked brilliantly and that blues bend was a crap failure; it just sounds obvious. And I've been more than happy to sometimes correct for a guitar's built-in tuning deficiencies, by temporarily unconventionally retuning it so that all major thirds are perfect (just for one set of chord shapes, just for recording one song, etc)
So, I do 'get it' - that we do accurately hear and work with microtonalities even when working within standard tuning.

BUT... even with all of the above taken into account...
Now take a listen to this www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB4nwq8NGYI
This has none of the incompetencies that I would find in my own meddling with 19-TET tuning;
i.e., this is performed beautifully. So why does it sound so terrible to me?
I don't think any amount of repeated exposure to that music will shake my ears out of their 'bigoted' culturally conditioned comfort zone. I think I am doomed to always hear the stuff in that video as dreadfully 'out of tune'.

I have to just own up - that is my failing!
The music theory bit of my brain says "this is my audio perceptual system demonstrating a fascinating spectacular failure"
The musician in my head says "I don't give a rat's ass about this failing - got better things to meddle with, more interesting priorities"

 

The question was about you and your playing. I am actually interested in your answer, how do you go about making music? If you rather would not like to answer the question, maybe at least you could tell us why. Do you consider it a secret or is the way you make music not possible for you to describe?

 

hi mmj thanks again for a great thread......also thanks for not answering too many useless troll blurbs...it makes finding the info easier....one question about drop 2 voicings.....i understood drop 2 to mean taking the second highest voice and dropping it to the root position??/ i use an unusual guitar tuning FACFAD low to high so i am trying to find ways to envisage changes inan economical way.....i have devised a pentatonic row across 6 strings as my basic template, using dorian......eg DFGAC ACDEG EGABD which of course makes modal changes effortless....so i am trying to see a way to use your drop 2 voicings??? cheers

ah ha ok i see you have ordered the inversions in a descending pattern.....

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2020

Yes, it was what I was (vaguely) remembering when I said...

There's a nice video here about it... www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOYXNcuAd4
There's a lot to like about Bitwig.

 

Guys, please, enlighten me. Is this thread becoming a thread about Lager?

He does a 5 word sentence, and receive almost one page of answers ...

Why dont you just ignore him. He has obviously a completely - closed "view" - or should I say blindness - about music, so your answers are not going anywhere...

 

To complement this information, black musicians were much cheaper to hire than whites, so in different places, but much more in New Orleans, they were hired to play for parties, and burials, at that time, Polka 2/4 and Waltz 3/4 were very popular dances, and that's part of the reason this music went to the ternary rhythm, as they interpreted it pushing it to 6/8 as African traditional rhythm was closer to that.

Then comes the Ragtime which is very important in the Rhythm and harmony history. I will reproduce wikipedia, as I cant explain it better:

Ragtime shared similarities with both blues and jazz, the two forms of African American music at the time. It was primarily piano-based, and could be performed by a single person (more like the blues) or by an entire orchestra (more like jazz). Scott Joplin was the most famous ragtime musician.

Rag also shares strong similarities with Polka music, with the strong emphasis on beats 2 and 4. Both styles also rely upon 7th and 9th chords, resulting in a more sophisticated harmonic palette. From the Caribbean islands and other sources, Rag adopted strong syncopation in both the left and right hands of piano music.

 

Sure - I summarized 100 years into a few sentences... there is even more to yours, BeBop, Hard Bop, Birth of the cool, Free jazz...etc etc etc
My reasoning was to demonstrate that a lot of music taken for granted is connected to another style - which you have also done.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 6, 2020

Of course there is more after that, but I wanted to underline, when and how Jazz was born.

 

Hey Lager,
Could you let me know which notes are wrong?
( I'm going to tape them off , so that I don't forget
And use wrong notes. )
Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.
Totes.

 

This is the real thing.

 

It's genuinely nice to feel conflicted....

I think he's brilliant, authentic, talented, creative, skillful, and the list of superlatives could go on and on and on...
I have the utmost respect for performances like that.
So, sincere praise is my main comment.

But if I was blind and just heard the audio, and knew nothing at all about how that audio had been constructed,
I would say, "interesting" and probably not bother listening a second time.

So, to resolve my conflict...
There's musicianship, and there's music, and I love both, and the relationship between the two is complex.


MMJ, please don't provide a transcription