1 Jazz Timeline, Early Jazz Concepts

Timeline of Jazz vs. Classical

Jazz is not like all of this, where new genres replace the old ones. Instead:

all the jazz genres are brought in and out of the spotlight. It also happens in just a hundred years!

20th Century

  • 1910s: Ragtime (Jazz is just invented, but new)
  • 20s: Dixieland, New Orleans Jazz, Symphonic Jazz
  • 30s: Swing Era (HUGE)
  • 40s: Bebop (taking the swing to the next level, run by hotshots, but some people reacted against the escotericness)
  • 50s: Cool/West Coast Hard Bop
  • 60s: Modal and free Jazz, Avant-garde
  • 70s: Jazz Fusion (primarily mixing jazz with rock)
  • 80s: Smooth Jazz (the easy background jazz, easy to make fun of)

What is Jazz?

Jazz is hard to define, but let's define it.

jazz

Jazz is any piece of music that has these 4 properties:

  1. Improvisation
  2. Swing-Feel (note it doesn't mean the rhythm is exactly swing though)
  3. Blue Notes (ie: scales that go outside the conventional scales, think b3 and #4 in blues scale)
  4. Outside-Feel (not doing what's expected)

It's interesting since even the older generations could improvise (Bach was a notorious example).