Blog #5

                Before attending this class, I never knew that there was a variety of jazz types and that they each had their specific hometowns. Honestly (and quite naively), I assumed that modern jazz (specifically what I have heard on the radio) originated from New Orleans and this jazz traveled to Chicago and New York and the rest of the United States. I had not realized that jazz evolved over the years from various types to the modern jazz heard and enjoyed today. Also, I never recognized the racial turmoil that black jazz musicians faced during the development of modern jazz. Even though the Civil Rights Movement began to occur around the rise of jazz, I never connected the two. Moreover, I would have never have associated jazz to sex and drugs and prostitution and coolness as I know rock and roll was during its rise. Because I always thought jazz was how it sounded on the radio, I thought it was humorous to hear it linked to rebellious nature and social vices. After attending this class, however, I acquired the knowledge of the history of jazz and what happened during its emergence as well as concepts, specifically dissonance, that have a newfound meaning to me than what they had before.

Thanks to this class, I am aware of the various, vital locations jazz arose, specifically New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Kansas City. I also know of the multiple types of jazz including the stride piano and the focus on improvisation and “Swing” and “Bebop”. I learned of New Orleans’ metropolitan culture and its Latin slave code that allowed slaves to perform music and dance in Congo Square. Here, in New Orleans, was the beginning of the “syncretism” or “blending together of cultural elements that previously existed separately” that allowed jazz to emerge (Gioia 5). I then learned of Chicago and the age of the soloist. Chicago was an economically stable that had a “vibrant local jazz scene” in which plenty of jazz clubs and dance halls emerged but yet was divided racially as a separate black community attempted its own economy (Gioia 76). While improvisation reigned supreme in Chicago, New York introduced the stride piano in Harlem which was also divided; there were the Harlem Renaissance literature intellectuals of the high culture and the low culture jazz musicians and rent parties. “Swing” emerged and consumed the nation with its big bands and dance tunes. Its position in the “mainstream of popular culture” lasted until after World War II (Professor Stewart). The “Swing” opposite, “Bebop”, then emerged which became the modern form of jazz. The emphasis of “Bebop” was of improvisation and the fact that the musician was an artist not an entertainer, unlike “Swing” musicians. Out of “Bebop” and its individualistic expression came flamboyant and eccentric characters like Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Monk was known for his unconventional playing and sound, though, as Professor Stewart stated in lecture, he “embodied the beauty of dissonance.”

Being a musician I am knowledgeable in the concepts of improvisation and call and response and blues and even dissonance; however, I learned to avoid dissonance as it was not pleasing to the ear or conventional. Through this course though, I have witnessed the true beauty of dissonance and its even truer expressional importance. Monk truly was an eccentric and gifted individual. He mastered a sound that is often displeasing and unsatisfying and molded it into something personal, unique, and beautiful. After this class I will never judge something because I am not accustomed to it and because it is different, but rather I will see the beauty behind its individuality and uniqueness. In a world surrounded by media and popular culture, a little eccentricity is something that is invaluable and priceless.