Today, the world of music has branched out to numerous genres. However, one of the oldest music genres would be jazz music. Jazz is primarily a musical art form that originated in the US back in the early 20th century. It started to flourish in the African American communities that were located in the Southern United States. It started as a union of the African and the European music traditions.
From the early development of jazz music until the present, it has incorporated music from the American popular music of the 19th and 20th century. It has also spawned a number of sub genres including: New Orleans Dixieland in the early 1910s; the big band-style swing in the 1930s and 1940s; bebop music in the mid-1940s; Latin jazz like Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz in the 1950s and 1960s; a fusion of jazz-rock music in the 1970s; and acid jazz in the 1980s. As jazz music spread all over the world, many local, regional and national musical cultures took it on and adapted its aesthetics to their varied environments, which gave rise to a lot of distinctive musical styles.
One of the key elements of jazz would be improvisation. Unlike artists of the other forms and genres of music, jazz musicians usually interpret a tune in very distinctive ways, never playing a particular composition exactly the same way twice. The jazz musician or performer may also alter the melodies, harmonies and even the time signature at will, while interacting with his fellow musicians or the members of the audience.
Jazz is usually described as the product of the musician or the performer’s democratic creativity, collaboration and interaction. Here are some of the forms of jazz music.
1. Ragtime: This musical genre actually predates jazz music and was considered as the first musical genre that was truly American. It started as a form of dance music before it was published as sheet music for piano. Ragtime was an alteration of the march that was made popular by musician John Philip Sousa, with the additional polyrhythms derived from African music.
2. Swing: Swing music or swing jazz is a form of jazz music that was developed back in the 1930s. It was established as a distinct musical style in 1935. Swing makes use of a strong anchoring rhythm section that supports a lead section which includes woodwinds such as saxophones and clarinets, brass instruments such as trombones and trumpets, and string instruments such as guitars and violins.
3. Bebop: Bebop is a form of jazz that is characterized by improvisation and fast tempos that is based on the combination of harmonic melody and structure.
4. Cool Jazz: This is a jazz musical style which came out during World War II. It puts emphasis on the intellectual musical aspects including intricate arrangements and innovative forms and songs.
5. Soul Jazz: This type of jazz is a development of hard bop that incorporates numerous strong influences from gospel, blues and rhythm and blues. Some of the important soul jazz organists include Charles Earland, Bill Doggett, Les McCann, Jimmy McGriff and Johnny Hammond Smith.
These are just a few of the types and forms of jazz music. Over the years, artists from other musical genres, including black soul, pop and rap artists, have integrated jazz music into their own compositions producing some of the best songs of today.