JAZZ NOTES

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STYLES OF JAZZ

Since the last world war, every country has made some contribution to the music of jazz. As the music has spread across the globe, it has drawn on local, national and regional musical cultures in varied environments. This exposure has given rise to many distinctive styles. These different styles of jazz co-exist with each other, no matter which ones are in vogue at any given time.

Jazz, then, encompasses a loose collection of many streams.  Offshoots of some streams form streams of their own; sometimes streams remix; sometimes they consolidate by imitation of a particularly distinctive innovator. But more often, styles come from gradual overlapping of approaches and a host of influences that even the players themselves are frequently unaware of it.

Jazz and many of it's related styles have also been affected by almost all musical idioms to which it's players and composers have been exposed: folk and popular musics, "light classics," and even some not-so-light classics. Such influences have also gone in the other direction. American music of all kinds, and indeed, many of the world's music have felt Black influences at least since the 1860s.

As a result, jazz has spawned a variety of subgenres. These subgenres have their stylistic and cultural origins in the Blues, Folk, March, and Ragtime music of New Orleans. 

From the early 1910s we have Dixieland. Then there is the big band-style swing from the 30s and 40s, bebop from the mid-1940s, free jazz from the 50s and 60s, jazz fusion from the 70s, acid jazz from the 80s, Nujazz from the 90s, and so on.

As you explore these relationships between styles and genres, you will discover a remarkable continuity.  Jazz, however, cannot be accurately described as a single stream evolving from Dixieland to swing to bop. There is no neat line of succession, with each subsequent style rendering the previous one obsolete.

 By studying the history of jazz you will learn principles of stylistic evolution  that apply to all art forms, and not just jazz. By studying and listening to jazz it will lead you to related styles that you will also enjoy.