Neo-bop (also called neotraditionalist) refers to a style of jazz that gained popularity in the 1980s among musicians who found greater aesthetic affinity for acoustically based, swinging, melodic forms of jazz than for free jazz and jazz fusion that had gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. Neo-bop is distinct from previous bop music due to the influence of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who popularized the genre as an artistic and academic endeavor opposed to the countercultural developments of the beat generation.[1]
Neo-bop contains elements of bebop, post-bop, hard bop, and modal jazz. As both "neo-bop" and "post-bop" refer to eclectic mixtures of styles from the bebop and post-bebop eras, the precise differences in musical style between the two are not clearly defined from an academic standpoint.[citation needed]
In the United States, Wynton Marsalis and "The Young Lions," for example, have been associated with neo-bop and post-bop.[citation needed] Neo-bop was also embraced by established, straight-ahead jazz musicians who either abstained the avant-garde and fusion movements, or returned to music based on more traditional styles after experimenting with them.
The return to more traditionally-based styles earned both praise and criticism, with Miles Davis calling it "warmed over turkey"[2] and others deeming it to be too dependent on the past. The movement, however, received praise from Time magazine and others who welcomed the return of more accessible forms of jazz.[3]
History
1970s: Origins
Some bebop and post-bop musicians were lukewarm to the avant-garde explorations of the 1960s and rejected the electronically based, pop-influenced sounds of jazz fusion. Most prominent among these was the drummer Art Blakey, whose Jazz Messengers group was a stylistic incubator for like-minded younger musicians. Drummer Cindy Blackman credited Blakey with keeping jazz from being completely eclipsed by fusion during the 1970s.[4] Many of the younger musicians who went on to form the core of the neotraditionalist "Young Lions," including Wynton Marsalis, were Jazz Messengers alumni.
Albert Murray, in his 1976 book Stomping the Blues, contended that true jazz was based on three elements, swing, blues tonalities, and acoustic sounds. His ideas influenced Stanley Crouch who, along with Marsalis, became a militant advocate of the core jazz elements as defined by Murray. Crouch went on to contend that many of the devices of avant-garde and fusion were grandstanding and used as a cover for lazy-mindedness or lack of musicianship.[5] Crouch wrote, "We should laugh at those who make artistic claims for fusion."[6] In 1987 Murray, Crouch, and Marsalis founded the Jazz at Lincoln Center program in New York, where Crouch and Marsalis would serve as artistic directors. JALC would become one of the main institutional promoters of the neotraditionalist movement.
1980s: Young Lions
Bassist Christian McBride in 2009
Wynton Marsalis, son of jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, emerged on the jazz scene approximately 1980 and looked to late swing music and bop trumpet players for his main influences, from trumpeter Fats Navarro to Kenny Dorham.[7] His album Wynton Marsalis (1982) for the Columbia label was, according to the Los Angeles Times, called "the birth point of the Re-bop Renaissance." A crucial difference, however, between the neo-bop movement and its bop predecessors was that neo-bop had academic roots and rejected the "iconoclastic" and rebellious lifestyles of the bop era. Marsalis instead advocated that jazz could achieve "fine-art" status and be compared to classical music rather than rock music.[1]
With the revival of hard bop as mainstream jazz in the 1990s, neo-bop jazz began to form its own reputation as a distinct subgenre of jazz. According to critic Scott Yanow, this new subgenre remained related to the broader straight-ahead category, but was no longer "recycling the past" as some claimed.[10] Alternatively, neo-bop has been criticized for lacking the innovation of the pioneering beboppers of the 1940s and 1950s and for being too reliant upon the commercial success of CD sales.[11]
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
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.
Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by German-Jewish emigrants Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz around 1947. From there, Blue Note grew to become one of the most prolific, influential and respected jazz labels of the mid-20th century, noted for its role in facilitating the development of hard bop, post-bop and avant-garde jazz, as well as for its iconic modernist art direction.
Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, and music instructor, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been active in promoting classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the only musician to have won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year.
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.
Arthur Blakey was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s.
Soul jazz or funky jazz is a subgenre of jazz that incorporates strong influences from hard bop, blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues. Soul jazz is often characterized by organ trios featuring the Hammond organ and small combos including saxophone, brass instruments, electric guitar, bass, drums, piano, vocals and electric organ. Its origins were in the 1950s and early 1960s, with its heyday with popular audiences preceding the rise of jazz fusion in the late 1960s and 1970s. Prominent names in fusion ranged from bop pianists including Bobby Timmons and Junior Mance to a wide range of organists, saxophonists, pianists, drummers and electric guitarists including Jack McDuff, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, and Grant Green.
Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz music inspired by bebop and big band that arose in the United States after World War II. It is characterized by relaxed tempos and a lighter tone than that used in the fast and complex bebop style. Cool jazz often employs formal arrangements and incorporates elements of classical music. Broadly, the genre refers to a number of post-war jazz styles employing a more subdued approach than that of contemporaneous jazz idioms. As Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill suggest, "the tonal sonorities of these conservative players could be compared to pastel colors, while the solos of [Dizzy] Gillespie and his followers could be compared to fiery red colors."
John Gilmore was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and percussionist. He was known for his tenure with the avant-garde keyboardist/bandleader Sun Ra from the 1950s to the 1990s, and led The Sun Ra Arkestra from Sun Ra's death in 1993 until his own death in 1995.
Stanley Lawrence Crouch was an American poet, music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, novelist, and biographer. He was known for his jazz criticism and his 2000 novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome?
Jazz at Lincoln Center is part of Lincoln Center in New York City. The organization was founded in 1987 and opened at Time Warner Center in October 2004. Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director and the leader of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Straight-ahead jazz is a genre of jazz that developed in the 1960s, with roots in the prior two decades. It omits the rock music and free jazz influences that began to appear in jazz during this period, instead preferring acoustic instruments, conventional piano comping, walking bass patterns, and swing- and bop-based drum rhythms.
Post-bop is a jazz term with several possible definitions and usages. Musicologist Barry Kernfeld wrote in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that post-bop is "a vague term, used either stylistically or chronologically to describe any continuation or amalgamation of bop, modal jazz, and free jazz; its meaning sometimes extends into swing and earlier styles or into fusion and third-world styles." The term has been variously defined as a musical period, a musical genre, a musical style, and a body of music, sometimes in different chronological periods, depending on the writer.
A jazz club is a venue where the primary entertainment is the performance of live jazz music, although some jazz clubs primarily focus on the study and/or promotion of jazz-music. Jazz clubs are usually a type of nightclub or bar, which is licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Jazz clubs were in large rooms in the eras of Orchestral jazz and big band jazz, when bands were large and often augmented by a string section. Large rooms were also more common in the Swing era, because at that time, jazz was popular as a dance music, so the dancers needed space to move. With the transition to 1940s-era styles like Bebop and later styles such as soul jazz, small combos of musicians such as quartets and trios were mostly used, and the music became more of a music to listen to, rather than a form of dance music. As a result, smaller clubs with small stages became practical.
The Majesty of the Blues is an album by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis that was released in 1989.
Live at Blues Alley is a double live album by the Wynton Marsalis Quartet, recorded at Blues Alley in December 1986 and released through Columbia Records in 1987. The quartet included trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, bassist Robert Hurst, pianist Marcus Roberts and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts. The album was produced by Steven Epstein; George Butler served as executive producer.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to jazz:
The Young Lions is an album by an ad hoc group of jazz musicians: Wayne Shorter, Frank Strozier, Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Bob Cranshaw, Albert Heath and Louis Hayes. It was recorded at Bell Sound Studios in New York City in 1960 and released in 1961 on Vee-Jay Records.
The Jazz Messengers were a jazz combo that existed for over thirty-five years beginning in the early 1950s as a collective, and ending when long-time leader and founding drummer Art Blakey died in 1990. Blakey led or co-led the group from the outset. "Art Blakey" and "Jazz Messengers" became synonymous over the years, though Blakey did lead non-Messenger recording sessions and played as a sideman for other groups throughout his career.
"Yes sir, I'm gonna to stay with the youngsters. When these get too old, I'm gonna get some younger ones. Keeps the mind active."
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