Jazz History
Contributing Articles in Jazz History
|
|
Gypsy Jazz of Django Reinhardt
Europe necessarily mimicked American jazz in the early years. But the first to break that mold and become an iconoclastic figure in gypsy jazz was Django Reinhardt.
|
|
|
Ornette Coleman
One of the inovators of free jazz, Ornette Coleman is a composer, saxophonist, violinist, and a recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for music.
|
|
|
The Ragtime Music Of Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin's life was both heroic and tragic. He viewed himself not just as a composer of popular music but as a teacher and leader.
|
|
|
Strange Fruit A Jazz Sound Of Protest.
Strange Fruit the song started life as a poem written by school teacher Abel Meeropol, but when Billie poured her heartache into it, it became a song of protest.
|
|
|
Hazel Scott Jazz Pioneer And Activist.
Hazel Scott was born in Trinidad, grew up in the US. She mesmerized audiences with her piano skills, married a congressman and ended up on Joe McCarthy's blacklist.
|
|
|
"Straight No Chaser"
The music of Miles Davis encapsulated the many sides of his prodigious talent with that familiar provocative "Me-ness" that always identified his work instantly.
|
|
|
Ragtime and its Influence
Ragtime is a musical idiom which flourished between the 1890s and 1910s. It is the only stylistic precursor of jazz for which any tangible evidence survives.
|
|
|
Hitler's War on Jazz in France
During WWII, jazz became a fugitive music banned and silenced in the cafes and clubs of war-time Paris by Nazi occupiers who feared its rebellious undertones
|
|
|
Jazz, Josephine Baker, and France
Into a France rocked by WWI and the Great Depression, jazz arrived at the perfect moment to revitalize, renew, and fill deep longings for escape into "Otherness
|
|
|
A Life of Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt changed the very philosophy of the jazz guitar, turning it into a major solo instrument. This is a life of the man.
|
|