Jazz Music (Louis), Essay Example

Music, especially the African American type of music is to a great extent an exploration into the African American way of life. It has been part of the culture of the African American culture dating back to slavery. Jazz music has been a step forward for the African Americans and they have as well been the innovators and the ground breakers from its inception.

Jazz music is a feeling through the mix of a musical interface and complex rhythm that often is arrived at effortlessly and so naturally to the musicians. Their voice was heard through their instruments, one that was usually countered by the ignorance of a young American.

This is a paper illustrates the skill and modifications of the most influential artist; composer, trumpeter and leader Louis Armstrong.

Louis Armstrong, who held the nickname “Satchmo,” “pops” and later referred to as “Ambassador Satch” was an all-star virtuoso, born in New Orleans, Louisiana on the 4^th of August, 1901. His music career gained prominence in 1920s and he charmed people with his music style.

He drew his inspiration from artists mainly the cornetist Buddy Bolden, who was a quasi-legendary figure who ever recorded but credited for being the first musician to perform the New Orleans style of jazz and others who included Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, and also his favorite the great Joe King Oliver. Armstrong joined Ory`s ensemble in 1919 at the time Oliver left to try his luck up north. Other groups he played for include the Riverboats, and as a second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.

His influence in jazz music and the jazz age was immense. His undisputedly unique talent, quirkier, and sleek style altered the scope and depth of jazz as the new effects he emphasized in particular songs lured people`s interest. The scat style by this Armstrong`s improvisation made the song popular and most loved.

His pianist Earl Hines was also a soloist interested in transforming and re-shaping the traditional style of music making their duet on Weatherbird a milestone recording from the 1920s. The birth of his style of music, scat-singing in the recording of Heebie Jeebies created a more profound and powerful impact on jazz far from the recording of Gene Greene`s scat type vocal in 1909.

In his later recordings, with his group known as the Hot Sevens, and Hot Fives, in a song called “Cornet Chop Suey” he shifted from cornet to trumpet and in a series of monumental performances; his form of jazz changed and more prominent was the solos than the ensemble and the melodic and rhythmic vocabulary of his music more varied and complex. He brought to the future miraculous improvisationsto music with his flow to the beat. This rhythmic flow repeatedly felt in his music was in-born since he never learned how to read music formally not until late on in his life.

Armstrong`s stylistic range culminated from his wide range of interest in blues, Latin American folksongs, the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to the extents of classical operas and classical symphonies.

Scat singing is widely used by the contemporary jazz musicians and other genres as well. Scat singing with the inclusion of syllables also had additions to it with laughter and screams as well. Armstrong is said to have been the first artist to revolutionize this type of singing. At the time of these additions to scat in music, it was an incorporated aspect in particular rock music.

As Jazz developed more esoterically,the sophistication grew and influenced styles of music such as rock and roll. Though it retained the relations with the night clubs, it lost its aura of carefree joy. It influenced a more intellectual milieu group, associations extending to Black Nationalism, civil rights efforts, and other radical movements of the 60s and 70s.

Jazz of this type of century developed into music styles like that of soul jazz, free jazz, jazz-rock fusion all this that represented the numerous attempts to reclaim jazz as an explicitly as a black musical despite it being an integrated effort. The ensembles grew smaller and their work more experimental and aimed rather than at dancing but at appreciative listeners.

There developed an attraction to jazz clubs by the audience of jazz lovers and their numbers increased though not much then to influence a widespread swing. Wynton Marsalis and his brother Branford Marsalis led a renaissance in the extensive spread of jazz`s popularity during the 1990s. Wynton Marsalis, a characteristically accomplished trumpet player, took home the Grammy Awards in both the jazz categories and classical categories.

This was mainly perhaps his energetic advocacy of jazz as a central genre of American music. This culminated into collaboration with a documentary filmmaker Ken Burns with whom they contributed a more conservative perspective to Burns` twenty hour documentary, Jazz (2001). Other artists including Miles Davis, supposed that too conservative was Marsalis` idea of pure of jazz. This was unlike theresponsibility Marsalis took to revive jazz as an important musical form.

Artists who incorporated scatting included Aerosmith and Korn also other genres such as rap music have the wide spread of its use and using to fill bars. Artists of today`s pop music such as Christina Aguilera and Jason Mrazuse scatas well. Scat has given singers the opportunity to improvise and create emotions in music without the use of words especially among artists in the jazz scene.

Louis Armstrong`s first theatrical appearance was driven as a result of complications that developed with his lips and tongue because of unorthodox playing style. His appearance was in the movie Pennies from Heaven a hit produced by Bing Crosby. He later became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast on the CBS radio network where he substituted Rudy Valley.

His biggest selling record, “Hello, Dolly!” topped the charts and number 1 on pop charts, this making him the oldest person to ever attain such an achievement. It is with this record that the Beetles were toppled from a position they held for 14 weeks consecutively with the different songs they released. This proved he was not too sedate a statesman and he continued to attract new and young fans with his type consummate skills as an entertainer and his more profound extroverted personality in an era increasingly obsessed with the latest and new upcoming rock band.

Gunther Schuller, a horn player began his career with Miles Davis in 1949 and went on to form the Modern Jazz Society with a jazz pianist and had their first concert in New York`s Town Hall the same year they founded it and later transformed the name to Jazz and Classical Music Society. He coined the term “Third Stream” to describe the type of music that combines jazz techniques with classical techniques.

Similar to history`s occurrences, the music type jazz continues to find talented and innovative musicians who continue to edify, redefine, a reinvent jazz. Increasingly becoming international and slightly opening greater and bigger participation by the female musicians, the influence of jazz in new and improved styles, all being an assortment of styles, its specific contribution to racial integration, and its outstanding establishment of a uniquely American form as a central influential musical tradition already having its legacy formed.

In addition, jazz has grown to become a more academic and a respectable as a high culture phenomenon. Universities and music conservatories began offering courses ad studies in jazz history and its composition and equally train jazz musician.

Institutions that provide such education include; the Juilliard School in New York City, the Berklee College of Music in Boston, as well as the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York among others in the United States and across the world.

The development of jazz and its influence by Armstrong is virtually immeasurable. Despite this irrepressible personality both as a public figure later in his career and as a performer that was so strong overshadowing his contributions as a musician and a singer at times.

As a dazzling trumpet player, Louis Armstrong had an extraordinary talent and of unique type for the melodic improvisations in music. Through his trumpet playing, his solo instrument style is widely used in jazz during recent times. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who succeeded him.

References

Armstrong, L., Jenkins, G., Washington, D., Torme?, M., Lee, P., Hampton, L., Parker, S., … Commanders (Musical group). (2003). Louis Armstrong. Santa Monica, CA: Universal Music Enterprises.

Armstrong, L., Hot Five.,& Sebastian New Cotton Club Orchestra. (1996). Louis Armstrong. New York, NY: Columbia Legacy.

Armstrong, L. (1982). Louis Armstrong. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Records.