Portal:Jazz
Welcome to the jazz portal
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. (Full article...)
Selected biographies -
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that in 1973 Luten Petrowsky played the saxophone in a quartet that made the first record with jazz musicians from both East and West Germany?
- ... that jazz saxophonist Chris Byars ended his childhood operatic career when his voice croaked during a performance?
- ... that jazz composer Duke Ellington worked on his only opera, Queenie Pie, from the 1930s until his death in 1974 without finishing it?
- ... that Jazzy's 2023 single "Giving Me" made her the first Irish solo female act to top the Irish Singles Chart since Julie-Anne Dineen in 2009 with "Do You Believe"?
- ... that in 2021 Sarah Aristidou recorded Jörg Widmann's Labyrinth V, a wordless piece for her soprano voice with "ululations, sobs, jazz inflections and wild laughter"?
- ... that jazz fusion and funk musician Mark Lettieri graduated with a degree in marketing?
More did you know...
- ... that jazz pianist and vocalist Dena DeRose (pictured) only considered singing professionally after carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis forced her to give up playing the piano?
- ... that eclectic and non-traditional Quartet San Francisco has been nominated five times for Grammy Awards, most recently for QSF Plays Brubeck, the first all-Dave Brubeck string quartet recording?
- ... that Lena Horne (pictured) won six awards for her 1981 one-woman show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music?
- ... that "Have Ya Got Any Gum, Chum?", a 1944 novelty jazz song written by Murray Kane and performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, was inspired by a phrase used by British children towards American soldiers during World War II?
January - April 2010
Selected recording
"Livery Stable Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, recorded on 26 February 1917
Jazz by topic
Quality content
Categories
Things you can do
Create an article on a jazz-related subject
Suggest new selected articles and images for the portal here
Add new selected articles here
Add new selected biographies here
Add new selected images here
The Jazz WikiProject
The Jazz WikiProject works to improve the quality of jazz-related articles on Wikipedia. Please join us!
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus