JAZZ | 爵士
它于19世纪末期至20世纪初期起源于美国纽奥良的非裔美国人的社区，植根于蓝调和拉格泰姆音乐以及欧洲的军乐，并且由其发展而来。自1920年代的爵士时代以来，爵士已经被认为是音乐表达的一种主流形式。其后，爵士乐亦以若干相对独立的、传统的流行音乐风格的形式表现出来，这些相对独立的风格间亦有关联，其间的纽带即是非裔美国人的音乐与欧裔美国人音乐之间的互相融合。爵士乐在其发展过程中除了有美国黑人音乐的根源以外，还吸收了来自于不同文化的不同音乐风格，逐渐形成了今天多类别的爵士乐，所传递的内容也更为多样，已经不仅限于早期的“黑人风格”。
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.
As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz didn't begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.
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.
The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz.