Jazz Jazz Is a Uniquely American Music Genre That Began in New Orleans Around 1900, and Is Characterized by Improvisation, Stron
Jazz Jazz is a uniquely American music genre that began in New Orleans around 1900, and is characterized by improvisation, strong rhythms including syncopation and other rhythmic invention, and enriched chords and tonal colors. Early jazz was followed by Dixieland, swing, bebop, fusion, and free jazz. Piano, brass instruments especially trumpets and trombones, and woodwinds, especially saxophones and clarinets, are often featured soloists. Jazz in Missouri Both St. Louis and Kansas City have played important roles in the history of jazz in America. Musicians came north to St. Louis from New Orleans where jazz began, and soon the city was a hotbed of jazz. Musicians who played on the Mississippi riverboats were not really playing jazz, as the music on the boats was written out and not improvised, but when the boats docked the musicians went to the city’s many clubs and played well into the night. Some of the artists to come out of St. Louis include trumpeters Clark Terry, Miles Davis and Lester Bowie, saxophonist Oliver Nelson, and, more recently, pianist Peter Martin. Because of the many jazz trumpeters to develop in St. Louis, it has been called by some “City of Gabriels,” which is also the title of a book on jazz in St. Louis by jazz historian and former radio DJ, Dennis Owsley. Jazz in Kansas City, like jazz in St. Louis, grew out of ragtime, blues and band music, and its jazz clubs thrived even during the Depression because of the Pendergast political machine that made it a 24-hour town. Because of its location, Kansas City was connected to the “territory bands” that played the upper Midwest and the Southwest, and Kansas City bands adopted a feel of four even beats and tended to have long solos.
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