| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
8 JAZZ
jokes was safely recorded (and that he would never need to work again), he fell into bed again and went fast asleep. When he woke in the morning and inspected his diary, scrawled across the page was the phrase: "I am a hammer." But it really had seemed wonderful—at the time.
Arranged Jazz
Assuming that jazz is, originally, a simple form of music, improvised, played by a small group, directly expressing basic human emotions—then it is natural that people should think about expanding and developing this primitive art form. Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton and others have developed "arranged" jazz. Just as you can't have intimate conversation in a big room packed with people, so you can't try to improvise music with a large band of players—the result would be chaos. You have to plan a musical score in advance, write it down, play from the notes and rehearse it.
Some jazz purists will assure you that "this is not really jazz". It's swing, they will say—"commercialised swing". It capitalises the attraction and excitement of jazz to build up a brash, noisy spectacle that will attract the box-office crowds.
On the other hand, Ellington, Kenton, Basie, Hampton and other "arranged jazz" or "big band" exponents have millions of devoted fans who get a big thrill out of their music. And if we have a theory of jazz into which this big sum of musical enjoyment |
||