Strong Jazz Musical Traditions for African People

In the 18th century, African people who were slaves gathered at a market and performed their dance in that area. Later on, in 1866, the Atlantic slave trade brought nearly 400 thousands of African people to North America. They had strong musical traditions along with their life. They uses the single line melody to perform music. 

In 1885, they made musical instruments from washboards, wash tubs, tugs and beaten boxes with bone sticks and a skin-stretched over a flour barrel drum. During the early 19th century, there were a plenty amount of black people learned how to play European instruments, the violin for example. On August 4th 1901, one of the most influential artists in the history of music was born “Louis Armstrong”. He could performed Jazz solo perfectly, he developed the idea of musicians instead of playing during the breaks, they could play individual solos. 

They performed the combination of syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. From 1920 to 1933, The prohibition of the United States about the sale of alcohol all of the speakeasies became very lively venues at the “Jazz Age”. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jazz music is a music genre which was originated from African-Americans, communities of New Orleans, United States. New Orleans Jazz began in the early 1910s, Jazz has spread around the world and had different styles. 

The 1920s years were Jazz Age, it has became a majority part to form the musical expression. In the 1930s, it was developed into a new type: prominent styles were Kansas City Jazz and Gypsy Jazz and performed with well-organized dance. Bebop, a style of Jazz developed in the early to mid of the 1940s in the United States. This shifted Jazz from “danceable popular music” to be a more tough which challenged the musicians, everything they needed was played at faster tempo and complex chords. After that, near the end of the 1940s, Cool Jazz existed and it was a calm music with smooth and long sounds and romantic melody. The 1950s introduced Free Jazz, people can play it without regular meter, beat or formal structures. 

Hard bop emerged in the mid 1950s and follow it later on was Modal Jazz. Due to the combination of several countries such as African, Spanish, Latin America, they formed a unique type of music and dance. In the late 1960s, Jazz-rock fusion appeared and make a combination with rock-music, electric instrument in the early 1970s. A smooth Jazz became successful in the early 1980s which is a commercial form of Jazz fusion. The other styles were made in the 2000s such as Latin, the combination the musical traditions of North, South and Central America, and Afro-Cuban Jazz.