Essays on Jazz

The year 1959 was marked a monumental year in American music history. Many American jazz artists made recordings that influenced society profoundly and left a lasting impact that still is present to this day. Musical experimentation during this year is considered the apogee of American...

Racial segregation was extremely common in the first half of the twentieth century. During the 1940s segregation was enforced by law. The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution states that everyone should have equal rights, but the meaning could have been taken many ways. Until fairly...

Early 1920s ragtime music had a heavy influence on dance. In the late 1920’s jazz started to have a heavy influence. The big music in the 1920’s was dance bands, Jazz, Blues, and Broadway. Some of the big musicians in dance bands were Paul Whiteman,...

What is seen through a jazz aesthetic is what is seen now by many: conflict, difference, failure, mistakes, suffering, meaning, beauty, commitment to justice, grief, outrage at suffering and injustice. The form of jazz can provide a modality of critique, of social engagement that enables...

Ross Murfin defines postmodernism as, “A term referring to certain radically experimental works of literature and art after World War II” (Murfin 397). According to Murfin, postmodernism, like modernism that preceded it, involves separation from dominant literary convention via the “experimentation with new literary devices,...

Bop jazz divorced itself from its mainstream predecessor when musicians like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk began to emphasize fast tempo and improvisation over the predictable music of the swing era. These renegade musicians valued spontaneity and inspired many listeners. It is no...

Textual, mnemonic, and physical gaps leave room in which identity is found through body and environment in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Ondaatje’s characters retrieve their absent personas by mutually colonizing lovers’ bodies, thus developing a metaphor for the body as...

I decided to go to the “Dimensions in Jazz” concert which was directed by Wade Judy, Dr. Eric Bush, and Marko Marcinko. Before the performance started, there was a wide range of people entering. Some were students and some were adults; however, there were no...

The origin of jazz dance can be traced all the way back to Africa. In Africa, it was custom for natives to dance as a celebration of cycles in life such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death. This was to express their cultural beliefs. Drums,...

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.”- Louis Armstrong (Boujut, Michel) Louis Armstrong was a man who certainly knew what jazz is, without ever having to ask. For the greater part of the 20th century, Louis Armstrong was a central part...

From when I was a toddler mashing piano keys to now as a high school band student, music has always been a hobby of mine. But it was not until last year that I realised it was more than just a hobby, and that I...

Arguably the greatest jazz musician of all time, Miles Davis’s genius when it comes to the trumpet and jazz as a whole is never ending. Although often overlooked due to later success, his album, Milestones, perfectly exemplifies the talents Davis possesses. Joined by John Coltrane...

To say songwriter Thelonius Monk was a talented jazz musician is an understatement to say the very least. The main focus of this essay is a critical analysis of one of the top jazz musicians ever, Thelonius Monk. He is said to be one of...

The artist known as Billie Holiday, and later nicknamed Lady Day was born as Eleanora Fagan, in 1915. Billies childhood was a sad one. Her parents were never married and her father,Clarence Holiday who played guitar with Fletcher Henderson abandoned Billie and her mother early...

The cultural shift that the United States experienced during the Harlem Renaissance affected the lives of everyday citizens. One factor that affected this cultural shift was the new, lively music you could hear coming from the East coast to the West coast. Jazz was the...

I attended the Matthew Yeakley’s Jazz Session at The Continental Club. It was a cloudy cold dark night, which put me in a mood for being indoors in a jazz event. Yeakley’s jazz group consists of Matt for piano, Aaron for drums and Cooper for...

Jazz is a music style that is one of a kind, complex, and charming, yet it winds up a standout amongst the most famous music sorts today. Individuals from everywhere throughout the world hear it out now, yet did you realize that it was first...

After World War 1, many new activities and new technology emerged into a new era called the roaring 20s. One of these new subjects that emerged was a new form of music called jazz. Jazz was, and still is, a very popular branch of music...

Music is a form of art. Art is originally a way of expressing human beings, which requires understanding and feeling. Most people say that they like jazz, but they typically choose a jazz style in the low-level melody, which people can generally feel comfortable and...

The song I will be analyzing is the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday. The song of Strange Fruit is a song about the lynching of black people in Southern America in the first half of the 20th Century. The majority of lynching victims in...

Billie Holiday was one of the greatest Jazz vocalists of all time known for her improvisational skills and raspy voice. She was born in 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Sarah Julia Fagan and Clarence Holiday, a professional guitarist who left his family to pursue his...

Billie Holiday is considered as one of the best African American female jazz vocalists of all time one. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with the name Eleanora Fagan. She started singing at a very young age, but her career didn’t start until she started...

Introduction Billie Holiday born April 7th 1915 was an extremely influential musician on the Jazz scene during her career that spanned over 30 decades starting in 1929. Billie Holiday has been noted as a pioneer of her times, not just for her style of singing...

Jazz is a music genre that has existed for many years. Women in jazz have had a great impact on jazz and the larger music world. Some of the greatest women jazz composers include Mary Lou Williams, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. These women shaped...

Ella Fitzgerald, also known as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella , was without any doubt one of the greatest, if not the greatest, jazz vocalists of the 20th Century. With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted...

Movement throughout the Black community is brilliant and reflects within every single action and word from every individual. From the early 19th century to now, music has been a big influence on the protesting and liberation of the Black community. As basic human rights have...

This paper will be on Louis Armstrong’s family, birth, personal life, culture, the society that he lived in, but above all I will be discussing Louis Armstrong’s music style and musical accomplishments. Along with this, I will talk about these inspirations and influences that helped...

When jazz is mentioned, one of the first instruments that comes to mind is the trumpet. The trumpet is an iconic image of jazz. From Miles Davis’ mellow and laid back ‘cool jazz’ to Clifford Brown’s hard bop, the trumpet is a staple piece in...

Among all the music genres, jazz places a significant role in art history. The American jazz critic Ted Gioia states that “Jazz has always been a music of fusion. ‘Nothing from New Orleans is ever pure’ — so goes an old throwaway phrase”. If speaking...

Born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, not far up the Mississippi river from East St. Louis, Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is regarded as one of the most influential and acclaimed figures in...