ThoughtGallery.org > What Is This Thing Called Jazz?

What Is This Thing Called Jazz?

With Kevin Fellezs, Professor of Music. What is “jazz”? Jazz music enjoys a history that is over 100 years old yet its definition continues to be hotly contested. There have been periodic arguments about whether or not an emerging style of music was jazz or not as early as the 1930s when fans of early, New Orleans style jazz decried the rise of big band swing. Bebop upset big band swing fans in the 1940s, while cool and Third Stream jazz created schisms in the jazz world of the 1950s. Today, there are continuing debates about the connection some artists are making between jazz and hip-hop. Yet, just as clearly, these innovative styles eventually become subsumed under the generic umbrella called jazz. What links these often disparate sounding musical idioms together? How do they all coalesce, even if uncomfortably, into a “tradition”? We will listen to various musical examples in order to tease out what might link them together. In the end, we may still disagree about what constitutes “jazz,” but we will gain a larger, more in-depth understanding of the processes that have gone into constructing jazz into “America’s classical music” from its humbler, popular music origins.











When: Mon., Jan. 13, 2014 at 6:30 pm
Where: Cafes Columbia
622 W. 113th St.
212-851-7398
Price: $10
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With Kevin Fellezs, Professor of Music. What is “jazz”? Jazz music enjoys a history that is over 100 years old yet its definition continues to be hotly contested. There have been periodic arguments about whether or not an emerging style of music was jazz or not as early as the 1930s when fans of early, New Orleans style jazz decried the rise of big band swing. Bebop upset big band swing fans in the 1940s, while cool and Third Stream jazz created schisms in the jazz world of the 1950s. Today, there are continuing debates about the connection some artists are making between jazz and hip-hop. Yet, just as clearly, these innovative styles eventually become subsumed under the generic umbrella called jazz. What links these often disparate sounding musical idioms together? How do they all coalesce, even if uncomfortably, into a “tradition”? We will listen to various musical examples in order to tease out what might link them together. In the end, we may still disagree about what constitutes “jazz,” but we will gain a larger, more in-depth understanding of the processes that have gone into constructing jazz into “America’s classical music” from its humbler, popular music origins.

Buy tickets/get more info now