1) The social context in which Jazz developed and the ways in which this is reflected in the

music.
New Orleans was home to a diverse group of whites, enslaved black people, and the largest community
of free people of color in the country. Following emancipation in 1863, newly freed black people made
every attempt to gain social mobility. Black musicians uptown were more likely to learn music by ear, and
were known for playing improvised blues and ragtime. Many early jazz musicians from Uptown, were
descendants of enslaved people from the city and the surrounding rural areas.

Early jazz developed in a city where racial segregation in public accommodations, transportation, and
education were dictated by law. White musicians, such as the early jazz players born of Italian and
Sicilian immigrants, enjoyed a freedom of movement unattainable by black musicians. New Orleans was
at the center of early legal battles over segregation. Many black jazz musicians chafed at living under Jim
Crow. In the 1910s, some moved north or overseas to pursue economic opportunities and leave the
restrictions and demeaning social order of the South. While segregation was the law of the land, some
interracial musical performances did occur in the city.

The dispersal of jazz musicians out of New Orleans during the 1910s and 1920s is best understood in the
context of the Great Migration, when African Americans left the South in great numbers. New Orleans
jazz musicians were part of this movement of black people seeking to improve their economic and social
conditions. From that point, a large wave of musicians began to leave the city. A number of important
musicians toured nationally or regionally but stayed based in New Orleans, taking advantage of the local
dance market. In the 1920s, automobiles provided musicians with greater mobility, and helped expose
audiences all along the Gulf Coast to the jazz style.

In the 1920s, jazz experienced a rise in popularity when the music began to spread through recordings.
Some black jazz musicians believe that they were ripped off financially and that they did not get full
recognition and compensation for being the inventors of jazz as African American culture. Furthermore,
some people oppose the idea that jazz was invented by blacks. Jazz music as such became more of a
commodity than an art and the highest achievers were white.
Music is essential to the African American experience in the United States. Faced with racism,
discrimination, and segregation, blacks have always found comfort and a sense of peace in their music.
Music continues to be a means by which the anger, grief, compassion and desire for change is
transformed into positive energy for blacks (Dawson, 2001). Today, the social conditions facing American
popular music, especially rap, are analogous to those faced by jazz music, and many musicians have
similar experiences. Despite the fact that jazz music has created some positive social effects, it has
created more negative ones for black jazz musicians, such as exploitation and jazz appropriation, some
of which are still occurring today.
As jazz developed a more modern sound in the mid-1920s, the New Orleans style began to decline in
popularity. In this transition, soloists and vocalists became more pronounced and orchestras got larger, a
harbinger of the big band and swing era to come. Ironically, New Orleans native Louis Armstrong helped
bring about this change. At the same time, big bands and orchestras became more popular, and the
dance marketplace moved toward their smoother sound.
2) The Blues as an expression of both sadness and happiness

That is Joe Williams with the Count Basie Orchestra, and Ill be returning to that wonderful recording
later in this paper. Williams sings Everyday I have the blues, and Nobody loves me, nobody seems to
care, yet he doesnt sound depressed, and we listeners are thrilled and uplifted. Why is that? Why have
men and women, for over 100 years, been impelled to singand deeply pleased to listen tothe blues?Ive
seen that the answer is in the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, founded by the 20thcentury critic and poet Eli
Siegel. Aesthetic Realism explains the deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an honest or
accurate basis. The blues shows how deep that desire is, because, in the blues, people have taken some of
their saddest feelings and shown, even these can be given form, even these can make for beauty.Eli Siegel
lectured on all the arts and sciences, and wrote as early as 1925 about jazz as having beauty continuous
with beauty anywhere. In one lecture, he said:The blues style represents . . . a saying of things that are
very painful, deep and poignant, with a feeling of ease. In the very best blues the pain changes, because of
the music, into something light.That lightness and ease come to be because the musical form given to
those feelingsin both the organization of the words and the notesshows the world has a structure that
is logical and sensible, and makes for a good time! Mr. Siegel explained, in this central principle of
Aesthetic Realism,All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we
are going after in ourselves.At its best, the blues is a oneness of pain and pleasure, defeat and exaltation,
sadness and joy. This is what Ill be showing.2. Something New Happened!One of the new things the
blues brought to music is what has been called blues tonality, and writers have pointed to opposites in
this tonal quality. Frank Tirro, in Jazz: A History, describes it as the simultaneous use of major and
minor. And Hugues Panassi, in The Real Jazz, writes, the major includes in its sphere the minor mode
from which it borrows its melancholy and sorrow. This is technical, but it arose from and meets a deep
hope in the human selfin our selves: the hope to make sense of the world as having darkness, sadness,
pain, and the world as having sunlight, joy, pleasure. Thats one reason Joe Williams singing Everyday I
Have the Blues gets us: We feel joy and sadness at once, as the band plays in a predominantly major key,
while he sings in the minor.Another fine instance of that oneness of pain and pleasure is Bessie Smiths
1928 recording of Thinking Blues. As youll hear, there is a wail in her voice, but there is also triumph
and joy. For instance, as she sings the words ever and thousand, there is agony in her sliding blue
notes, yet there is lightness, too; her voice rises on those words, giving them a lift. And as she sustains the
word old at the start of the second verse, she sounds, strong, assertive, but there is a beautiful trembling
in her vibrato. Throughout, Bessie Smiths voice is deep and bright, rich and piercing. As she sings, we feel
the painful and the pleasing dont have to fight; they can go together beautifully. Listen to this exerpt:

The blues points to a critical question for every person: What do we do with our sadness, pain, and
disappointment? Do we use them to see more meaning in things and people? Do we use them to be
kinder? Or do we use them to feel the whole world is bad, and to retreat from or lash out at other people?
This, Aesthetic Realism explains, is the central fight in the mind of every person between the desire to like
and respect the world, and the desire for contempt, which Eli Siegel defined as the disposition in every
person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world. Contempt is as ordinary as a
son not giving full attention to his mother, thinking, I know what shes going to say. But it is the cause of
all unkindness, including racism and economic injustice, which so many African-American blues artists
suffered from, and people suffer from right now. But no one can like themselves for having
contempt.Years ago, while I could act cheerful and make people laugh, I often felt very low. I hoped to
make it as a jazz pianist, but I felt I never got the breaks. I hoped for love, but I felt, Why doesnt someone
appreciate me? And while Id call myself names, essentially I blamed the world for my unhappiness. What
I didnt know and was to learn from Aesthetic Realism is that I had a hope to be displeased, and to feel
distinguished in my misery, deeper and more sensitive than other people, and too good for the world. This
was contempt, and it was the reason I didnt like myself and often felt depressed.

The blues as musical form is against depression, even as the lyrics may describe that depressed feeling.
This is explained greatly in a paper titled Feeling Bad, Good Will, and the Blues by Ellen Reiss, who is
the Chairman of Education at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City, and with whom Im
honored to study in professional classes. For instance, Ms. Reiss shows that in the AAB line structure of
traditional blues is an answer to two of the biggest complaints people have. She writes:

the boring and the uncomfortable become technical opposites in blues. The classical blues stanza says the
way the world is repetitious and then suddenly pokes at you is beautiful.

As an example, here are the great opening lines of the St. Louis Blues:

I hate to see that evenin sun go down,

Hate to see that evenin sun go down,

Cause then I know my man has done left town

And about the meaning of the blue notes Ellen Reiss explains:

Every depressed person hates the world that bumps into her on the street, the world and its people that
keep coming at her at distasteful angles. Yet an essential in the technique of the blues is good will for the
bump and the distasteful angle. [The] blue note, an awry sound when one doesnt expect it, says that
the jarring is your friend.

We heard that in both the Joe Williams and Bessie Smith recordings: those mournful, painful,
harmonically contradictory blue notes become part of a stirring composition. Aesthetic Realism defines
good will as the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself
stronger and more beautiful. And Ellen Reiss shows in this paper that the blues is good will because it
arises from the desire to give honest form to ones complaints, ones painliterally to make music out of
them!and to give honest pleasure to other people. This is thrillingtremendous both as music criticism
and as the understanding of every person!3. The Blues Idea Is Elsewhere, TooThe influence of the blues
on Popular music of the last 100 years shows how important the blues way of bringing together sadness
and pleasure, minor and major is. One great example is Cant Buy Me Love, by Paul McCartney,
recorded by the Beatles in 1964. There are important differences between this song and the classical blues
form, including the presence of a chorus. But the verse is essentially the traditional 12-bar form, and we
can hear in it that combination of minor melody and major harmony: in the first four measures of the
verse (see below), McCartney sings in C minor (note the Eb and Bb in the melody), while the chord
underneath is C dominant 7.

As you heard, the song begins with that 6-bar introduction, based on the 8-bar chorus that comes later. A
wonderful thing about this is, while different from traditional blues, it too puts together major and minor.
On the words Cant buy me love, McCartney rises on a bright C major triad. By itself it sounds
triumphant.

But he harmonizes the word love with an E minor chord. And when he repeats those words, the same C
major triad is harmonized with an A minor chord. In fact, until the very end of the chorus, we dont know
what key were inmajor or minor. McCartney has found a new way to put together sadness and joy
new, but utterly in keeping with the blues tradition.

By looking throughout the history of music, we can see how deep is the desire in humanity to relate pain
and pleasure, the somber and the celebratory. A surprising example, which Ive studied with my high
school chorus is NY, is the motet Ave Verum Corpus, by the English Renaissance composer William
Byrd. The piece begins in G minor but ends in G major, and throughout we find major and minor 3 rds, 6ths
and 7ths. And in the last phrase, on the words miserere meihave mercy on mewe find major and
minor actually overlapping. The altos and tenors begin, in G minor.

On the first syllable of mei, the basses join, and the three voices sing a perfect D major triad. But, while
the tenors and altos hold the major 3rd and 5th (F# and A), the basses move to an F natural. Its the blues
effect in 17th century style! Here is the concluding phrase, with its rich interweaving and interpenetration
of major and minor, sweetness and pain.

4. The Blues Is Sadness and Energy

In a lecture titled Poetry and Cheerfulness, Eli Siegel said:

One of the important things about art is that it can take something sad and sincerely put it into a swift
rhythm.

Thats what we hear in Everyday I Have the Blues, to which I return now. Michael Palmer, who has
written importantly on music and musicians of the Big Band Era and is a colleague of mine at the
Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City, writes about this recording:

The Basie band and Joe Williams take that feeling so many people are prone to, of having the blues, and
give it a form, an energy and liveliness that definitely contradicts the very mood of what is being said.

We hear that energy from the very start, as Basie introduces the piece on piano. Twice he plays a
descending scale in the left hand. But this sinking bass line is accompanied by staccato, syncopated right
hand chords, giving it, as Mr. Palmer writes, a critical edge. Then the band comes in with that blues
oneness of minor melody and major harmony, and powerful brass hits punctuate and energize the
saxophone melody.A little later, Joe Williams enters with those mournful words, but his tone is rich and
full. Usually, when a person feels blue or depressed, they feel nothing matters, nothing is worth getting
excited about. Williams singing and the Basie Bands playing criticize delightfully that state of mind.This
music is very different from how I was when I began studying Aesthetic Realism at 24. My teachers,
consultants on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, asked me: Have you ever felt
despondent, or restricted, stuck? I said I had, and they asked Have you also felt impelled, energetic?
AS: Yes, I have.

Consultants: Have you felt like two different people? In jazz, when things are going well, are there both
energy and something restricted? Are these the same opposites that may not work well in your ordinary
life?

I had never seen that relation before! Learning how energy and restraint can be one in music has taught
me have to have these increasingly one in my life. Listen to how Williams repeats the verse Nobody loves
me/Nobody seems to care: he is terrifically energetic while, at the same time, he has the restraint that is
exactitude: his pitch and rhythm are impeccable!The song concludes very surprisingly: on the 5th
measure of the final verse he sings a high, and amazingly long ooall the way through the end of the
verse. That oo has sweetness and wonder. This is not a man using his complaints to be bitter about the
world.5. ConclusionI have looked at some of the ways the blues, because it makes a one of opposites, is
beautifulmoves us, thrills us and meets our deep hope to put opposites together. I conclude with this,
which comments importantly on the meaning and value of the blues, from a lecture titled How Musical
Can Sadness Be?or, Grief, Anger, Hope, by Eli Siegel:The most cheerful fact in mans history is that
the presentation of sadness in art, the drama, poetry, could please people, and this meant that grief was
closer to happiness than people surmised. There are quite a few people listening with satisfaction to music
that is sad, and also, tragedy has been enjoyed. The meaning of this is the most hopeful thing in the
world.

Sadness

In other words, the blues is a kind of universal emotion expressed in the powerful medium of music. And
theres good reason to think that this is right.The blues has always been associated with a certain kind of
emotion. A painful emotion. A sad emotion. And perhaps an emotion that cant be captured in any other music or any
other way.Think about your favorite blues songs. One of mine is B.B. Kings How Blue Can You Get. Ive been
downhearted baby / Ever since the day we met.

Classic. Its that downhearted feeling that is really captured by authentic blues music. That universal, endless human
soul-crushing ache. And much of the blues seems to fall under this definition of what the blues are.Its a great
definition. But it does have its problems.

Not just sadness : The main problem is that it also seems to leave out much of what has been traditionally
considered to be the blues. Because not all blues music expresses negative emotion. There are love songs.
There are celebratory songs. Traditionally blues music has captured a wide range of emotions. Whole
subgenres of the blues, like jump blues, evoke a feeling that is upbeat, cheerful, positive and even happy. And if the
blues can cover the rest of those feelings and emotions, then the blues cant be just limited to the downhearted, the
down-trodden, the despairing feeling in us all.It seems that if we really want to know what the blues are, were going
to have to keep searching for its essence. While much of the blues definitely expresses this kind of universal sadness,
it doesnt cover all of the blues.

They started with field hollers, call and response to each other, singing notes they knew from common
scales. Then, to better express their pain and condition they bent and lowered notes, producing a feeling
of tension. These notes became known as the Blues notes.Blues notes are the expression of a sadness or
pain but at the same time make you feel better the expression leads to release and creative use of this
leads to a transformation.The color blue represents the Blues as sadness, or feeling down. These notes
eventually became a part of what is known as the Blues scale.As the notes were developed they took the
shape of longer phrases that started to tell stories. So the Blues went from words Im sad to explaining
why they were sad. Singing about their pain brought a feeling of release because along with the rhythm
they were feeling the life inside themselves. So although there was an almost intolerable feeling on the
outside, they sustained their existence by getting in touch with a deep sound and rhythm, the life pulse,
inside themselves.And then they generated that life and they kept themselves generated by looking for
for what? We are all conditioned to look outside ourselves for relief from the human condition but when
theres no life without, and its just an oppressive painful thing, you have no place else to go but in. And
digging in to look for the life within us and getting in touch with it brings about a release and
transformation of the pain.
3) Political dimensions of Bebop

After the decline of the big-band era, bebop surfaced as a trend that at first blush seemed to be a retreat from the
engaged politics of the 1930s. The small groups that played such adventurous works as Bloomdido or Groovin
High never seemed to take up the big issues of peace and racism that the previous generation had, nor did they
seem particularly interested in whether you could jitterbug to them. While this is true on one level, on another the
bebop musicians were pioneering a new kind of identity that refused to cede an inch to the entertainment
expectations of largely white audiences. Except for Dizzy Gillespie, these musicians had broken completely with the
almost minstrel-like aspects of bandleaders like Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. Their music was based on
expressions of Black independence and pride.

In no short time at all, bebop was superseded by hard bop. This style retained the rhythmic and harmonic
inventiveness of bebop, but married it to an explicit Black identity that more often than not saw itself as an adjunct
of the struggle for equality.

Later on, the best of hard bop was integrated into the New Thing avant-garde jazz of the 1960s. This hard-
edged and often dissonant style was the artistic counterpart of the urban rebellions and the resistance to the Vietnam
War. Music and politics were merged seamlessly in the recordings of Archie Shepp, an outspoken Black nationalist
who recorded one explicitly political album after another from 1965 on, and who is still going strong.

4) The jazz band as a space of democracy and learning

The collective improvisation of Dixieland jazz represented, in part, African Americans' newfound
freedom. Although hardly experiencing civil rights, African Americans were no longer slaves and
celebrated their new found freedom through jazz improvisation, playing whatever they wanted; they
were not "restricted" to notes written on a page, but instead could play whatever they "heard" in
their hearts and minds (the music was not read, it was played "by ear"). Freedom was and
continues to be an integral issue regarding all styles of jazz. Early jazz made its way from New
Orleans, to Chicago, to New York, to the rest of the country. Dixieland was the musical backdrop of
city life during the Roaring Twenties and the early years of the Harlem Renaissance.
Jazz calls us to engage with our national identity. It gives expression to the beauty of democracy
and of personal freedom and of choosing to embrace the humanity of all types of people. It really is
what American democracy is supposed to be.
-Wynton Marsali.
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the
slaughter.
-George Washington.
American democracy was designed from the very beginning around the idea of personal freedom.
These ideas are relevant to the world of jazz as well: a group of diverse musicians negotiating in
time to create a collective expression that reflects the unique personalities and values of each
individual for the good of everyone. The traditions of experimentation and improvisation in jazz
resemble the innovative approach of Americas democracy in placing so much faith in its people
and in striving to invent something new, different, and perhaps, even better.
5) Short History of Jazz from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker.
Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it could use faster tempos. Drumming
shifted to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the ride cymbal was used to keep time while
the snare and bass drum were used for accents. This led to a highly syncopated music with a linear
[121]
rhythmic complexity.

Harmony
Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter, Miles Davis, Max Roach (Gottlieb 06941)
Bebop musicians employed several harmonic devices which were not previously typical in jazz,
engaging in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation. Bebop scales are traditional
scales with an added chromatic passing note;[122] bebop also uses "passing" chords, substitute
chords, and altered chords. New forms of chromaticism and dissonance were introduced into jazz,
and the dissonant tritone (or "flatted fifth") interval became the "most important interval of
[123]
bebop" Chord progressions for bebop tunes were often taken directly from popular swing-era
songs and reused with a new and more complex melody and/or reharmonized with more complex
chord progressions to form new compositions, a practice which was already well-established in
earlier jazz, but came to be central to the bebop style. Bebop made use of several relatively
common chord progressions, such as blues (at base, I-IV-V, but often infused with ii-V motion) and
'rhythm changes' (I-VI-ii-V) - the chords to the 1930s pop standard "I Got Rhythm." Late bop also
moved towards extended forms that represented a departure from pop and show tunes.
The harmonic development in bebop is often traced back to a transcendent moment experienced
by Charlie Parker while performing "Cherokee" at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, New York, in
early 1942:
I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used, ... and I kept thinking
there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes. I couldn't play it.... I was working
over 'Cherokee,' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line
and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. It
[124]
came aliveParker.

Gerhard Kubik postulates that the harmonic development in bebop sprang from the blues and other
African-related tonal sensibilities, rather than 20th-century Western art music as some have
suggested:
Auditory inclinations were the African legacy in [Parker's] life, reconfirmed by the experience of the
blues tonal system, a sound world at odds with the Western diatonic chord categories. Bebop
musicians eliminated Western-style functional harmony in their music while retaining the strong
[125]
central tonality of the blues as a basis for drawing upon various African matrices.

Samuel Floyd states that blues were both the bedrock and propelling force of bebop, bringing about
three main developments:
A new harmonic conception, using extended chord structures that led to unprecedented harmonic
and melodic variety.
A developed and even more highly syncopated, linear rhythmic complexity and a melodic angularity in
which the blue note of the fifth degree was established as an important melodic-harmonic device.
 [121]
The reestablishment of the blues as the music's primary organizing and functional principle.

The timeline of Jazz style development has evolved significantly spanning three centuries. Since its
birth, well over two dozen distinct Jazz styles have emerged, all of which are actively played today.
The origins of Jazz are attributed to turn of the 20th century New Orleans, although this unique,
artistic medium occurred almost simultaneously in other North American areas like Kansas City,
Saint Louis and Chicago. Traits carried from West African black folk music developed in the
Americas, joined with European popular and light classical music of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, became the syncopated rhythms of Ragtime and minor chord voicings characteristic of
the Blues.
Most early Jazz was played in small marching bands or by solo banjo or piano. The dynamic of
Jazz improvisation arose quickly but as an ornament of melody and was not to come into its own
soloing styles until circa 1925.
During the years from the First to the Second World War (1914-1940) Europe, i.e. Paris, embraced
Jazz music as its own. American musicians spread the globe as ambassadors of Jazz often in self-
imposed exile from racial and social tensions at home, others in search of cultural and creative
freedoms thought to exist abroad. Jazz music transformed from primarily an African-American
genre into an international phenomenon.
Post-war depression and the break-up of the 'Big Bands' brought a focus on the smaller ensemble
sound and the emancipation of Jazz styles. Risky ventures into improvisation gave Jazz critical
cache with scholars that the Blues lacked. Perhaps the most innovative, forward discoveries in style
took place at this time.
The 1950s Jazz scene faced new competition from other forms of entertainment. The growing
popularity of television helped to introduce new popular music trends but shrinking Jazz audiences.
Then Jazz music suffered an almost fatal trend upheaval first from the record industry's frenzy over
Rock & Roll in the mid 1960s and followed by the Disco dance fad in the early 1970s. Many Jazz
artists crossed over to more popular venues or joined the new Fusion school of Jazz.