Jazz Music Flashcards

Flashcards covering the types and styles of jazz, origins, and key figures, based on lecture notes.

Swing

A type of jazz characterized by large ensemble bands, harmonic arrangements, full-scale syncopation, and a sectional structure.

Band leader

Captain of the orchestra, often responsible for writing new music or creating arrangements, and uses notation or map form.

Jazz singers

Splitting time between singing lyrics and improvisational gibberish variations, treating their voices like instruments.

Bebop

Reaction to swing, emphasizing expressive improvisation, smaller ensembles, and dissonance.

Charlie “Bird” Parker

One of the most important figures in the development of bebop, known for his fast and adept saxophone playing and experimentation with chords.

Cool jazz

Response to bebop, distinguished by its downplayed nature, flowing melody, written song-style, and open passages for improvisation.

Vibraphone

Instrument often used in Cool Jazz composed of wooden blocks that were hollowed out on the inside, with a motorized butterfly valve at the end of each block to produce a vibrato effect.

Modal jazz

Jazz that often looked to ancient Greek music and church modes to guide improvisations, creating increased range and dissonant harmonies.

“Kind of Blue”

A studio album by Miles Davis created in 1959 that revolutionized jazz by giving each musician a set of scales and tonal parameters around which they could improvise.

Free jazz

Also known as avant-garde jazz, relies on little to no rules, complete improvisation, and abandonment of traditional values, focusing on the emotions of the moment.

Jazz

A uniquely American invention that began to form after the Louisiana slave revolt of 1811 as slaves would gather in Congo Square and mingle.

Syncopation

The rhythmic interplay between instruments.

First line

Typically family and close relations of the deceased who would be pulled by mule and cart to the cemetery.

Second line

Friends and community members.

Believed to be first jazz musician, reinterpreting ragtime using brass instruments, causing the style to become more loose and fluid, and making room for greater improvisation.

Buddy Bolden

Storyville in Tremé

The area of free Black people in New Orleans where Louis Armstrong grew up.

Chicago jazz

Jazz born in the American South, traveled north with factory production in full swing hoping to leave behind the poverty and segregation.

The tempo

New Orleans jazz, faster tempo and thrust was not accepted by the refined clubs and elegant dance halls.

Guitar

Replaced the banjo

Trombone

Replaced the tenor sax

Tuba

Replaced the upright bass

The New Orleans Rythm Kings

A traditional jaz band formed in Chicago