Evolution of Modern Jazz - Essay Example

December 12, Bebop: Evolution and Continuity toward Modern Jazz Pianist Hampton Hawes, while playing bebop with his band,remembers that their music is rebellious due to its stark difference to New Orleans jazz of the 1920s and the popular swing in the 1930s, and he hears people saying: “What these crazy niggers doin playin that crazy music? Wild. Out of the jungle” (italics from original text).1 In contrast to swing and early jazz, bebop is described as being more intellectual because of its technical difficulty with fast tempos and complex rhythms and characteristic improvisation from its soloists.2 Bebop’s development into the modern jazz movement cannot be described in a linear historical model with a series of clearly separate stages because, since its inception in the 1940s, it quickly fragmented into cool and hard bop in the 1950s to the 1960s. Bebop exhibits the dynamic organic nature of jazz as it changes across three decades. It evolves from early jazz and revolts against swing, as it continues the development of modern jazz into cool and hard bop, an evolution that manifests African American innovation that reacted to American society’s oppressive socioeconomic and cultural conditions. Bebop rebels against big bands which are already declining during the 1940s as a form of struggle against racism. Several historians argue that bebop is a reaction to racism and swing’s populist ideals. Eric Porter asserts that Bebop musicians “refused” to become the entertainers of “Uncle Tom,” and wanted “to escape the stereotypes and audience expectations of the past,” while preserving an “aversion to musical boundaries.”3 Bebop is rooted in African American experiences that characterize it as an oppositional reaction against big bands, the large dance swing bands.4 Bebop music is about experimentation and technical expertise that resisted the controls of socioeconomic forces. In essence, bebop musicians did not play music primarily for making money, but for their autonomy.5 As a result, when it first came out, those who regarded themselves as “cultural gatekeepers” of white bourgeois cultural values and standards “descended” on bebop with “fanatical fury.”6 They did not like the originality and independence of bebop that reflected aggression and defiance of rigid social hierarchy through traditional musical norms. Scholars understand this negative perception of bebop from the threatened gatekeepers because changing music means changing culture and that these changes ultimately threaten the status quo of society.7 Besides rejecting populist big bands, Bebop struggles for autonomy. It wants to chart its direction by creating its music, which has ties to New Orleans jazz, but also develops it into something “modern.”8 Arranger of bebop music, Gil Fuller, describes the meaning of modern music in 1948.9 He says that if modern living is “fast and complicated,” then “modern music should be fast and complicated.”10 His idea of bebop music is different from New Orleans jazz: “Were tired of that old New Orleans beat-beat, I-got-the-blues pap.”11 Dizzy Gillespie is more critical of early jazz and stresses: “That old stuff was like Mother Goose rhymes…It was all right for its time, but it was a childish time.”12 Bebop exhibits artistic autonomy that Scott DeVeaux describes as the decisive shift from early jazz to jazz as “art music.”13 Some of the best-known bebop musicians are trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, alto-saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Bud Powell and composer Tadd Dameron. These bebop musicians wanted to control their music, instead of letting the public dictate it, such as what happened to swing and jazz that has been commercialized for jukeboxes. Bebop transforms jazz into an “autonomous art” despite its oppressive socioeconomic and cultural circumstances.14 It does so through rejecting commercial controls by playing small gigs instead of playing for the mainstream.15 African American innovation played a large role in developing bebop in response to mainstream tastes in the U.S. through producing bebop that has techniques that came from African American traditions and that express and have roots in African American experiences.16 Bebop did not want to be swing or to retain early jazz. It wanted to experiment and to be modern in its musicality that could be connected to the changing times of the 1940s, when younger black musicians wanted more independence and desired to differentiate their music from other genres. I believe that bebop represents the black youth’s need for a more intellectual and different approach to early jazz and to shun the commercialism of swing music, while asserting their stand against racism. Instead of playing like commercial big bands, bebop preferred experimental small combos because the former differentiated wages, employment opportunities, and critical awards according to race.17 “Cells” of beboppers existed in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, while its larger networked flourished in Detroit.18 Most of them started very young, at ages 14 to 15 years old, playing what jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Hank Jones, called as “technically superior” music.19 These black youth are hungry for power over their music that society denies to them. In their bebop bands and while interacting with others, they are free to learn, experiment, and grow. Their music is African American in its roots, as well as its evolution. By the 1950s and the 1960s, bebop fragments to cool and hard bop. Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and Gerry Mulligan are some of the players of cool jazz where it is different from hot jazz which is loud and loose. Cool bop is more reserved and controlled.20 Cool jazz brought jazz back to the mainstream because it has more mass appeal than bebop. Bebop has a limited audience due to its intensity and sophistication, whereas cool jazz has both arranged music and improvisation that has greater appeal for more people.21 From cool bop comes hard bop. Hard bop is different from bebop because it is not as intellectually and technically difficult as bebop. Several hard bop musicians are Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Drew, Herbie Nichols, Mal Waldron, Horace Silver, Randy Weston, Ray Bryant, Sonny Clark, Elmo Hope and Wynton Kelly.22 Others like Miles Davis also played both cool and hard bop.23 Three of the most prominent Detroit piano stylists, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, and Barry Harris, have greatly influenced the lyricism to of hard bop.24 Hard boppers have reworked, broadened, and at times, subverted bebop, as they oppose racism and celebrate African American culture.25 Hard bop is more “expressive,” in the sense that it is “bleak, often tormented, but it was always cathartic.”26 It is bleak because of the darkness of racism during this time. Hard bop, moreover, has expanded bebop that has formulaic restrictions in its sophistication. Hard bop mixes the Blues, Gospel, and funky music with forceful interactions between trumpets and drums.27 Some hard bop compositions are soulful and tormented; while others are gentle and can be played in jukeboxes.28 Hard bop adapts to greater mass appeal for working-class blacks. Essentially, hard bop does not always reject bebop’s advances, but represents the rage against a racist, oppressive society. Furthermore, hard bop celebrates blackness vitality.29 Hard bop musicians combine improvisation with soulful arrangements. Their works are as complex as black culture is complex. Hard bop later on gives way to free jazz and fusion that continue the legacy of modern jazz as always in flux and developing. Bebop shows the importance of change in the life of any genre. It rejects swing, but evolves from early jazz, as it continues developing into cool and hard bop. Instead of remaining as it is, bebop becomes more diverse from the 1950s and the 1960s, as musicians use more instruments and added different styles. Moreover, the context of bebop shows that it is a revolution against racism through artistic autonomy. It does not care about commercial profit, but emphasizes intellectual and social growth and development. Thus, Bebop represents the rise of African American art music that opposes oppressive conditions due to social divisions according to race and social class. Works Cited DeVeaux, Scott. “Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography.” Black American Literature Forum 25.3 (1991): 525-560. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. Macías, Anthony. “‘Detroit Was Heavy’: Modern Jazz, Bebop, and African American Expressive Culture.” The Journal of African American History 95.1 (2010): 44-70. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. Rosenthal, David H. “Hard Bop and Its Critics.” The Black Perspective in Music 16.1 (1988): 21-29. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. ---. “Jazz in the Ghetto: 1950-70.” Popular Music 7.1 (1988): 51-56. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. Read More