PRESENTATION SPEECH

I chose to write my paper on the history of jazz. Through this research paper I want to present the
evolution and different styles of jazz, but also the impact of this genre of music in society. My choice was
influenced by my passion for music, the historic era that was dominated by it, the Jazz Age, as well as the
literature inspired by this genre.
Jazz is the most significant form of musical expression in American culture and outstanding
contribution to the art of music. From obscure origins in New Orleans over a century ago, the music and the
word we use for it are now familiar all over the world. Like the self-motivating energetic solos that
distinguish the genre, Jazz continues to evolve and seek new levels of artistic expression. In slightly over
one hundred years, this evolution has given birth to approximately twenty distinct Jazz styles.
While it is true that New Orleans was the most important city in the genesis of jazz, it is false that it
was the only one. Similar ways of playing evolved in Memphis, St. Louis, in Dallas and Kansas City..
Ragtimes capital was not New Orleans but Sedalia, Missouri, where Scott Joplin, the leading
ragtime composer and pianist, had settled. Ragtime was largely composed, primarily pianistic music. Due to
this aspect, ragtime lacks one essential characteristic of jazz: improvisation. Yet ragtime swings, at least in a
rudimentary sense, and so it is considered a style of jazz. In ragtime, European music and African music met
as equals for the first time in America. Even experts were not able to detect differences in playing style
between blacks and whites. More than any other form of jazz, ragtime may be described as white music,
played black.
At the turn of the century, New Orleans was a witches cauldron of persons and races. All these
voluntary and involuntary immigrants loved first of all their own music, the sounds of their home. In New
Orleans, people sang British folk songs, experimented with Spanish dances and ballet, and marched to the
strains of brass bands based on Prussian or French models. New Orleans style is the first example of hot
playing, hot connoting the emotional warmth and intensity of the music. The instrument is not so much
played as made to talk, to express the individual feelings of the musician. New Orleans was a watershed
for the music of the countryside, such as the work songs of the black plantation laborers; for the spirituals
that were sung during the religious services for which they gathered under open skies; and for the old
primitive blues-folk songs. All these things merged in the earliest forms of jazz.
In the teens we have Dixieland. One of the first uses of the term "Dixieland" with reference to music
was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Their 1917 recordings fostered popular awareness of
this new style of music. At that time, there was no issue of subgenres of jazz, so "Dixieland" referred to the
band and not the music. It has become customary to label all New Orleans European-American jazz
Dixieland, thus separating it from essential New Orleans style, but the borderlines remain fluid. Especially
in later years, with black musicians playing in white bands or vice versa, it no longer made any sense to
argue about which style was being played. With ragtime, New Orleans, and Dixieland, the history of jazz
begins.
In the twenties Chicago style developed. The development of New Orleans jazz in Chicago is
generally connected with the entry of the United States into World War I. With Storyville closing by official
decree, the great exodus of New Orleans musicians to Chicago took place. New Orleans style actually had
its really great period in the Chicago of the twenties. It was in Chicago that the most famous New Orleans
jazz recordings were made. Stimulated by the jazz life of the South Side, young white high school and
college students, amateur and professional musicians, began to develop what has been called Chicago style.
They had become so inspired by the greats of New Orleans jazz that they wanted to emulate their style. As
imitation, their music was unsuccessful; instead they came up with something new: Chicago style. From this
point on, the solo becomes increasingly important in jazz, chicago being considered the second cool style
of jazz, after piano ragtime.
In the thirties we have Swing. With the second great exodus in jazz historythe journey from
Chicago to New YorkSwing begins. In the Swing era, Benny Goodman became the King of Swing. In
Benny Goodmans band, the different styles flowed together and the bands easy melodic quality and clean
intonation made it possible to sell jazz to a mass audience. It only seems to be a contradiction that the
individual soloist gained in importance alongside the development of big bands. In other words, although it
was a collective sound, Swing offered individual musicians a chance to improvise melodic, thematic solos
which could at times be very complex. Derived from New Orleans Jazz, Swing was robust and invigorating.
Swing was also dance music, which served as its immediate connection to the people. Due to this aspect, by
the end of the thirties, Swing had become a gigantic business enterprise.
As it is so often the case in jazz, when a style or way of playing becomes too commercialized, the
evolution turned in the opposite direction, this way bop making its first appearance. Differing greatly from
Swing, Bop divorced itself early-on from dance music, establishing itself as an art form but severing its
potential commercial value. The term bebop came into being spontaneously used when someone attempted
to sing at that time the best-loved interval: the flatted fifth. This is the explanation that trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie, one of the main exponents of the new style, gave for the origin of the term bebop. To the listener
of that time, the sounds characteristic of bebop seemed to be racing, nervous phrases that occasionally
appeared as melodic fragments. Every unnecessary note was left out. Everything was highly concentrated.
As a bop musician once said, Everything that is obvious is excluded.
In the fifties cool jazz and hard bop came into the scene. This style appeared for the first time in the
playing of trumpeter Miles Davis, in the piano improvisations of anthropology student John Lewis, and in
the arrangements of Tadd Dameron, all people who have worked with or for Dizzy Gillespie. Cool jazz
represents a smoothed out mixture of Bop and Swing, tones being harmonic again and dynamics now being
softened. In hard bop, something new was created without sacrificing vitality. Also, in hard bop, the
melodies tend to be more "soulful" than Bebop. At the beginning of the nineties, the stylistic delta of jazz
had become immeasurably broad. With its style- and genre-bridging tendencies, jazz had ensured that hybrid
ways of playing, stylistic mixtures of every conceivable type, had become commonplace.
In the 1920s women rebelled against their traditional roles as daughters and mothers. Jazz provided
an outlet for rebellion in several ways. The dance halls and jazz clubs were places where women could
escape from the traditional roles that were demanded of them by a rigid society. Here, women were allowed
greater freedom in their language, clothing, and behavior. The women who frequented these places were
called flapper girls.
Nearly one hundred years after it began, jazz is still what it was then: music of protest. It cries out
against social, racial and spiritual discrimination, against the functional organization of modern mass
society. Jazz music comes from life experience and human emotion as the inspiration of the creative force
and through this discourse is chronicled the story of its people.