Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
Charles Henry Christian was an American swing and jazz guitarist. He was among the first electric guitarists and was a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string technique, combined with amplification, helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. For this, he is often credited with leading to the development of the lead guitar role in musical ensembles and bands.
In jazz, comping is the chords, rhythms, and countermelodies that keyboard players, guitar players, or drummers use to support a musician's improvised solo or melody lines. It is also the action of accompanying, and the left-hand part of a solo pianist.
Milton Mesirow, better known as Mezz Mezzrow, was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist from Chicago, Illinois. He is remembered for organizing and financing recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. He recorded with Bechet as well and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong. Mezzrow is equally known as a colorful character, as portrayed in his autobiography, Really the Blues, co-written with Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946.
Bruce Randall Hornsby is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. His music draws from folk rock, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Southern rock, country rock, jam band, rock, heartland rock, and blues rock musical traditions.
Oran Thaddeus "Hot Lips" Page was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and bandleader. He was known as a scorching soloist and powerful vocalist.
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
A descarga is an improvised jam session consisting of variations on Cuban music themes, primarily son montuno, but also guajira, bolero, guaracha and rumba. The genre is strongly influenced by jazz and it was developed in Havana during the 1950s. Important figures in the emergence of the genre were Cachao, Julio Gutiérrez, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín and Niño Rivera in Cuba, and Tito Puente, Machito and Mario Bauzá in New York. Originally, descargas were promoted by record companies such as Panart, Maype and Gema under the label Cuban jam sessions. From the 1960s, the descarga format was usually adapted by large salsa ensembles, most notably the Fania All-Stars.
Jazz piano is a collective term for the techniques pianists use when playing jazz. The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception, in both solo and ensemble settings. Its role is multifaceted due largely to the instrument's combined melodic and harmonic capabilities. For this reason it is an important tool of jazz musicians and composers for teaching and learning jazz theory and set arrangement, regardless of their main instrument. By extension the phrase 'jazz piano' can refer to similar techniques on any keyboard instrument.
A lead sheet or fake sheet is a form of musical notation that specifies the essential elements of a popular song: the melody, lyrics and harmony. The melody is written in modern Western music notation, the lyric is written as text below the staff and the harmony is specified with chord symbols above the staff.
The Soulquarians were a rotating collective of experimental Black music artists active during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Members of the collective included singer and multi-instrumentalist D'Angelo, drummer and producer Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, producer J Dilla, singer-songwriter Erykah Badu, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, keyboardist James Poyser, singer Bilal, bassist Pino Palladino, rapper-producers Q-Tip and Mos Def, and rappers Talib Kweli and Common. Prior to its formation, Q-Tip, Common, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli were members of the Native Tongues collective, while Q-Tip's original group A Tribe Called Quest served as another inspiration behind the Soulquarians.
Arthur W. Hodes, was a Russian Empire-born American jazz and blues pianist. He is regarded by many critics as the greatest white blues pianist.
A music session is a social gathering of musicians and singers who perform music in a relatively informal context. Much of the music performed at such events is traditional music for the area, popular songs and other well-known tunes. In sessions, the participants typically improvise the accompaniment, song arrangements and musical ornaments to the melodies of songs or tunes. The venue may be a public bar, tavern, village hall or a private home.
1958 Miles is a compilation album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released in 1974 on CBS/Sony. Recording sessions for tracks that appear on the album took place on May 26, 1958, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio and September 9, 1958, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 1958 Miles consists of three songs featured on side two of the LP album Jazz Track, which was released in November 1959, one song from the same session not appearing in the album, and three recordings from Davis' live performance at the Plaza Hotel with his ensemble sextet. The recording date at 30th Street Studio served as the first documented session to feature pianist Bill Evans performing in Davis' group.
Each style and era of jazz adopted new techniques to help educate younger musicians. Early forms of jazz education were more informal. Since the first degree program was founded in 1947, the rise of institutionalized jazz education, resulted in jazz education becoming more formalized and more structured. Formalized jazz education has brought a new wave of interest in jazz. JazzTimes.com currently lists 492 collegiate jazz programs globally. This database is exclusive to just schools that offer majors and does not include the number of schools that also offer jazz courses in their curriculum. The formalization of jazz was and still is a controversial subject. Many professional musicians believe that it has harmed the spirit of the music, while others maintain that it has been beneficial for the art form.
The Havana Cultura Tour is a Cuban music concert tour, taking place in Ibiza (Spain) during summer. The first edition of the Havana Cultura Tour occurred in July and August 2008, featuring three artists from Cuba: a famous rapper called Kumar, an R&B style singer named Diana Fuentes, both accompanied by DJ Erick Gonzalez. Havana Club, the original Cuban rum brand, is the organizer of the event.
A jam band is a musical group whose concerts and live albums substantially feature improvisational "jamming." Typically, jam bands will play variations of pre-existing songs, extending them to improvise over chord patterns or rhythmic grooves. Jam bands are known for having a very fluid structure, playing long sets of music which often cross genre boundaries, varying their nightly setlists, and segueing from one song into another without a break.
Pedro Nolasco Jústiz Rodríguez, better known as Peruchín, was a Cuban pianist specializing in jazz-influenced Cuban popular music. He was an important figure in the 1950s descarga scene in Havana, and one of the most influential Cuban pianists of the 20th century.
Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature is the debut album by Cuban double bassist Cachao, released in 1957 by Panart. The album is composed of descargas, improvised jam sessions with Cuban themes. It was the fourth installment in Panart's Cuban Jam Session series after Julio Gutiérrez's Cuban Jam Session Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and Niño Rivera's Vol. 3. Unlike the other installments, Cachao's session comprised short improvisations instead of extended jams. The album sold over a million copies and became "a Latin music milestone". In 2013, it was induced into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry.
