Jazz (1910–2026)

Jazz was born in the early 20th century in New Orleans, a port city where brass bands, ragtime, blues, church music and Caribbean music met. Bands played in the streets, at parades and dances; several instruments improvised at once around the melody. The first jazz record was made in 1917.

In the 1920s Louis Armstrong made the improvising soloist the star of jazz; this was the age of New Orleans jazz and stride piano. In the 1930s the big swing bands (Duke Ellington, Count Basie) got all of America dancing. In the 1940s the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie sped up tempos and complicated harmonies: jazz became music for listening.

Then came cool jazz, modal jazz (Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, 1959), free jazz, jazz-rock… In Europe, guitarist Django Reinhardt invented Gypsy jazz in the 1930s. In Brazil, jazz blended with samba to give bossa nova.

What unites all these styles: improvisation over a chord progression, swing (uneven eighth notes and accents on beats 2 and 4), extended chords (sevenths, ninths) and the ii–V–I progression, the backbone of the standards.