Jazz Experimentation Phase

Lore & Background

It does state that jazz is characterized by swing, blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, and improvisation. Jazz fusion, which appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combined jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, smooth jazz became a commercial form of jazz fusion.

Reader's Guide

The source provides a timeline of jazz styles: New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s; swing, Kansas City jazz, and gypsy jazz were prominent in the 1930s; bebop emerged in the 1940s; cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s; hard bop emerged in the mid-1950s; modal jazz and free jazz developed in the late 1950s; jazz fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s; smooth jazz became successful in the early 1980s.

Did You Know?

• The earliest written record of the word 'jazz' is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times, referring to a 'jazz ball' pitch.
• The first documented use of 'jazz' in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about 'jas bands'.
• The American Dialect Society named 'jazz' the Word of the 20th Century.