IllmaticDelta
Veteran
i'll entertain this; they did. what they did was put it in universities and made it a scholarly, collegiate pursuit. most of the "critically acclaimed" modern jazz musicians have passed thru the university system at one time or another even if they didn't graduate. more importantly, it became "intellectual" music or it was intellectualized. what i mean by that is that they came up with musical based theories about the sounds and ideas behind jazz and sucked the soul out of it. that's not to say the players themselves don't have soul, but it's no longer an art form based on feeling. instead, you have to know your mixolydian, phrygians, dorian scales, whole tone, pentatonics, hexatonics, triad pairings, etc. otherwise, those who've come out of the university are unlikely to recognize you as such an artist. i use to think i played jazz. nowadays, i just consider myself a musician. i wouldn't want to be lumped in with all that shyt...
To be honest, they didn't do that. It was black jazz musicians of the Bebop era.
With bebop, jazz shifted to the paradigm still in place today: a subcultural art music played primarily by small combos in a jam-session format, favoring solo improvisation and aimed at a specialized market of aficionados. This chapter explores the racial landscape that helped create bebop, as well as the roles of centrifugal forces that pull musicians out of swing bands and centripetal forces that pull them into small-group settings in New York. We see how the musical elements of bebop take shape in the early 1940s in places like Minton's Playhouse, and focus on the musical contributions of its main figures, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. We also learn about pianist/composer Thelonious Monk and the creation of a new generation of bebop musicians (Max Roach, Bud Powell). Finally, we situate bebop within the broader picture of American music, showing not only how its jam-session format leads to later jazz, but also the implications of its separation from popular song and new types of popular music (early rhythm and blues and rock and roll).
- Bebop
- Bop is a turning away from jazz as a popular music, part of the mainstream of American culture, to a music that is isolated, non-danceable, played by small combos to a small audience in a virtuosic style that is difficult to grasp (mid-1940s).
- There are two ways to see this change: one is that bebop was revolutionary, something apart from the jazz that preceded it; the second is that bebop is evolutionary, part of the jazz tradition that made it into an art music. We begin with the evolutionary approach.
- Bebop and Jam Sessions
- Swing musicians started work in the evening and continued to play after their regular gig (engagement) at jam sessions, which were relaxing, on the one hand, in their informality, but, on the other hand, work-like in their competitiveness.
- Musicians kept inexperienced players off the bandstand by playing tunes at ridiculously fast tempos in an unfamiliar key. Standards like "I Got Rhythm" were reharmonized with difficult chord substitutions.
- Bebop musicians were continually tested and experimented with fast tempos and complicated harmonies.
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/music/jazz/ch/11/outline.aspx