What five minutes of music would you play to get your friends to like Alice Coltrane or Duke Ellington? We have asked critics, scholars to share their favorite jazz with our readers.
This month’s focus is on style, bebop, not artists. Think of a horn player galloping a dizzying line over his beat, sizzling swings so fast you can see smoke billowing from the cymbals. That’s bebop.
Amiri Baraka says,blues people‘, a style that ‘brought jazz to the art stage’. It was also associated with irreverence. “To some extent, this music was born out of a conscious attempt to remove it from the dangers of mainstream dilution and understanding,” says Baraka.
By spotlighting waveform harmonies, dashing tempos, and interplay between horns and drums, bebop changed the course of American music and raised the bar for improvisation and composition around the world.Never outdated: Bebop is music Painted by Jean-Michel Basquiatis the foundation of jazz theory that music students around the world are taught as they learn to improvise.
Enjoy these tracks chosen by practitioners, commentators and enthusiasts of various genres. There is a playlist at the end of the article, leave your bebop favorites in the comments.
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John Faddis, trumpeter
For me, any discussion of bebop has to include Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. This is no denying the contributions of Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke, Fats Navarro, Max Roach and many others. Parker spearheaded Bebop. A consummate teacher, Gillespie passed on this complex musical style to others. More than 75 years ago, many people fell in love with bebop at a groundbreaking concert at one of my favorite venues, Carnegie Hall, on an autumn evening. It still inspires and resonates today. Lots of classic bebop, including “Complete Jazz at Massey Hall,” “Parker’s Mood,” “Koko,” “Groovin’ High,” and Byrd’s solo on another favorite of mine, “Lady Be Good.” Although there are recordings, this version of “Dizzy Atmosphere” epitomizes the genius ability of Bird and Diz to create at such a high level. Charlie Parker is on fire and Dizzy Gillespie is with him. As Dizzy used to say, “Two hearts in one.”
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Camille Thurman, saxophonist, vocalist
Charlie Parker was the epitome of bebop. His improvisations were groundbreaking, boundless, liberating, daring, boundary-pushing, and impeccably innovative in a way that transcended all Western preconceived notions of harmony. This version of “Just Friends” is, in a nutshell, what bebop is all about. With this beautiful string orchestration with a whimsical yet eerie background, like lightning, Bard is highly imaginative and vivid, bringing a rapid stream of endless ideas, exhilarating in four bars. , takes you to Master Sonic. Ride a roller coaster. He lands on the melody of “Just Friends” with unprecedented grace, introducing the song perfectly at the end of the impromptu. To love bebop is to recognize how musicians like Bird had an aural flair that went beyond what we take for granted when listening to standards. I was able to express myself freely and honestly, reimagining something iconic, sophisticated, unique and timeless. He set the standard for bebop, bebop.
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Former Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins
Only in bebop can you remove the melody and lyrics from a pop song and create a definitive standard from the rest. It’s a code change. British musician Ray Noble’s 1938 “Indian Suite” recalled the romantic Americana of Victor Herbert and Coleridge Taylor, but the first movement, “Cherokee,” was a slow-moving Despite the melody and fast-paced song, it was a hit during the swing era. The harmony episode was considered so challenging (B, A, G major) that Count Basie released Lester Young from solo performances. Charlie Parker fell in love with those chords and started bopping in 1945 with his transformed “Coco”. Several classic versions followed, but none were as dazzling as Bud Powell’s masterpiece. do not. He does it with his two choruses of electrifying linear inventions against a barrage of bass clef chords. Solos are staged within two octaves of him, and to the area of middle C he drops only once, with rare breathy rests, minimal reliance on triplets, and a few heady riffs on his spelled out by episodes of Over 60 years and dozens of hearings, his joy, ingenuity and amazement have not lost a single iota.
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Giovanni Russonero, Times Jazz Critic
A haunting piece, loosely hanging on chord changes that originated in a George Gershwin composition, here it is adapted and restructured, turned sideways, and adorned with rock slides of rhythmic melodies. I’m here. The pinnacle of sound as the French announcer races the title and her name. The announcer’s words sound lifeless and irrelevant after a young Miles Davis, not yet 23, blows enough of the canned heat on his trumpet. In each of these facets, this recording of “Good Bait,” written by the quietly revolutionary pianist Tad Dameron, epitomizes a brilliant moment in bebop: a consideration of Western modernism, that Say hello to your limits, a Molotov cocktail tucked under your collar. of a three-piece suit.
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Natalie Weiner, author
Scat singing was not a bebop innovation, but was a central part of the subgenre’s development. common scat syllablesBetty Carter shows why on this 1958 record, packing an almost unfathomable number of notes into a whirlwind minute and 48 seconds of smooth big band sound. Her tics and riffs sound so familiar that they’ve become standards, but here Carter breaks new ground, extending Dizzy Gillespie’s scat innovations with wild virtuosity, often referred to as “girl The mellow background you’d expect from a singer’ never succumbed to her music styling.
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Sean Jones, trumpeter
The group’s performance of “Evidence” with Thelonious Monk is one of the greatest exhibits of a bebop musician who communicates at a very lively tempo and at a very sophisticated level. This form of communication, improvisation, is one of the world’s finest examples of spontaneous composition. The improvisational section builds on Jesse Greer’s iconic “Just You, Just Me” and showcases bebop’s ability to recontextualize pop song forms. In reference to that title, Monk thought “Just Us/Justice”, which requires “evidence”. The track also reflects the most profound aspects of rhythm and its relationship with harmony through the African-American experience, creating new sonic phrasings that are the foundation of hip-hop and other American musical styles. increase.
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Charles McPherson, saxophonist
bird I’m from Kansas City, in the middle of the country, when the area was in a musical boom in the mid-1930s. But besides soaking up all the Kansas City blues and Kansas City swing, Byrd was pretty eclectic. He knew people like Stravinsky very well. He quoted passages from The Firebird Suite and Petrushka. Birds listened to cowboy country westerns. he heard everything. So he was like a sponge musically. He probably listened to Middle Eastern music too – certainly Dizzy did that. So they are pushing all kinds of limits. These guys had a technique that brought it all together, and they were especially smart and wide open. Drummer Billy Higgins said bebop was the beginning of “divine intelligence”. it says it all.
Bird and Dizzy’s playing of “Shaw ‘Nuff” is so precise that it almost sounds like one person playing it. There are a lot of moving parts, and they’re pretty remarkable — but they’re very cleanly played. And these guys are right with each other. When I talk to Californian musicians of that age, they say, When they came out in the 1940s, we were amazed when we first saw them play. Because a lot of the songs we thought he was playing alone — no, he was playing two. ’ It overwhelmed them.
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Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer
I have always admired the bravery of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. No matter how powerfully the music swirled around him, whether he was bandleader or sideman, his wailing scorched through the arrangement every time. This 1969 version of “space truck, from the live album Without a Song, Hubbard guides the song on a shape-shifting journey, interspersing the composition with brisk upper register sounds that float above the band’s turbulent mix of piano, drums, and bass. “Space Truck” is occasionally drenched in silence to reinforce the balance between power and tranquility. Every time the band rises, so does Hubbard, at one point following Lewis Hayes’ peppy drum solo with an equally ferocious tone. To me, this track epitomizes the command of his instrument along with the message Hubbard wanted to convey. His mastery of tension was unparalleled.
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Kenny Barron, pianist
It’s a very melodic song. I know some people find bebop confusing, the lines can be very fast and complicated, but this is a very melodic song with very familiar lines. It’s not a simple melody, but it’s not super complicated either. You can actually sing along. It’s shot at a tempo that’s not too fast, so it’s very clear. Where the rhythmic emphasis falls is one of the reasons it works. 1 felt — the first beat of the bar — actually, fourSo at any tempo you get some sort of propulsion and forward motion. When the tempo is not too fast, you can actually hear the forward movement. Bud Powell is important because he improvised like a horn player. Some of the things he did were diabolical and so unbelievable. Regarding speed, and some of the stuff he wrote. He was a fine pianist.
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Melissa Aldana, saxophonist
For me, this album, Charlie Parker With Strings, captures the depth of Parker’s innovative nature as an artist in a beautiful, lyrical, and emotional way. Bird’s sound is raw and personal, but this track shows what it means to simply have a beautiful sound. It had a special effect on me many years ago and continues to affect me today.