JUST JAZZ SCRIPT 2015 *
Jazz Is On Its Way
Kara: Do you hear that music? It sounds like something brand new!
Caitlin H.: It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
Aaron: It sounds to me like they’re just makin’ it up as they go along!
Kennedi: Well, maybe they are!
Cruz: It sounds “old” but “fresh.”
Kennedi: “Honest” and “real.”
Cruz: “African” and “American.”
Gabi: Well then it has to be…it ought to be…it’s gotta be…
ALL: Jazz!
Gotta Be Jazz
Tyler: Most people agree that jazz music gets its roots from the songs the slaves used to sing as they worked in the fields.
Kristen: These original songs were called spirituals.
Tara: Of course jazz was influenced by African music since most of the slaves were from Africa.
Savannah: But it also incorporated sounds of the Caribbean islands.
Evan R.: When the rhythmic music of West Africa mixed with the songs of the New World, it created a whole new sound!
Raziel: Did you know that New Orleans was the first place that slaves were allowed to make their music public?
Daniel: No wonder people think of that great city as the birthplace of jazz.
Jonathan: But before anyone had even thought of the word “jazz”, we had the blues!
Basin Street Blues
Elle: The whole world woke up to jazz around 1917, when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band released its first record.
Gabriel: In 1920, the word, “jazz” was coined by the famous author, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Will: In fact, Fitzgerald called the 1920’s the “Jazz Age.”
Erin: By the 1920’s, when you heard jazz, you heard more than just the blues.
Noah: When you heard jazz, you heard soul!
Jack D.: When they said jazz, they were talking about Dixieland.
Sam: But even before there was Dixieland, there was Ragtime!
Moira: That’s right! Nothing paved the way for jazz quite like the syncopated, ragged rhythms of a Ragtime band!
Simple Melody
Lucian: From New Orleans, jazz quickly spread up the Mighty Mississippi to Saint Louis and even Chicago.
Melena: The great thing about jazz is that it just continued to grow and change.
Domenic: From Chicago, jazz music made its way east to Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Marissa: Eventually, it even headed west. “Travel my way, take the highway, that’s the best!”
Bethany: Hey, that sounds like a song!
Lauren Walker: It is a song! And it became a jazz standard all about the highway that everybody used to travel as they headed west to seek their fortunes.
Victoria: You mean, someone wrote a song about a road?
Andy: Not just any road! If it’s gonna be jazz, it’s gotta be Route 66!
Route 66
Kade: Oh, this next song is one of my favorite jazz standards: “Take the A Train” by Billy Strayhorn!
Martell: Wait a second, first we have a song about road, and now we have a song about a train?
Caitlin M.: Sure, in jazz music you can write a song about pretty much anything.
Trey: In fact, Strayhorn wrote this song while traveling from Pittsburg to New York City.
Olivia: He was meeting with the great composer and jazz bandleader, Duke Ellington.
Karinna: Ellington wrote directions for Strayhorn to get to his house by subway.
Stella: And the first direction told Strayhorn to, “Take the A Train.”
Nathen: These few words are what sparked the idea for this famous jazz tune.
Maddie: It’s a shame we don’t have trumpets, trombones, and saxophones to play this next number.
Drew: I guess we’ll have to play our version on the glockenspiels, xylophones, and recorders!
Take the A, B, C, or G Train
Nina: That was great, but what if I’m feelin’ jazzy and I don’t have any instruments nearby?
Jett: Yeah, I don’t carry a glockenspiel with me when I’m walking around town.
Mataya: Well, we can create jazz without any instruments at all!
Brianna: Many performers improvise using only their voice to make a jazz sound.
Bella: It’s called scat singing.
Adam: And the best part about scatting is that you don’t even have to remember the lyrics. You can just sing nonsense syllables!
Jazz Round
Jack E.: George Gershwin wrote some of the most memorable jazz melodies of all time.
Ariyana: But Gershwin was different from other famous jazzers.
Kalia: His compositions spanned both popular styles, like jazz, as well as classical genres.
Sergio: In fact, in 1924, Gershwin brought jazz to the concert hall with one of his most famous pieces, Rhapsody in Blue.
Jacob: A few years later in 1930, Gershwin wrote the musical, Crazy Girl.
Aidan: Crazy Girl included some of his most famous jazz standards, including our next rhythmic number.
I Got Rhythm
Abby: I never understood why all the old jazzers had such funny names, like Dizzy and Satchmo. Lady Day and Duke.
Lauren Widmer: Well, these nicknames were either given to them by friends, or the jazzers chose it themselves.
Nick: You see, these jazz players were very creative people.
Isabelle: Usually the name said something about their personality and about the way they made jazz.
Joey: A lot of jazz is about being creative, yes, making it up as you go along.
Hallie P.: That’s called improvisation. Dizzy, Satchimo, Lady Day, Duke, and many more were all vey good at it.
Patrick: In 1974, the famous Stevie Wonder, wrote a song as a tribute to many of these late, great, jazz legends, including one of Stevie’s idols… Sir Duke!
Ethan S.: When Stevie Wonder was just a boy growing up in the 50’s, there was new Rhythm and Blues dance move that was all the rage.
Ashlee: So just for fun, we’ve added our own 50’s twist to this timeless tune.
Sir Duke
Vince: So that’s jazz!
Josh: Well, that was jazz, but jazz isn’t finished yet and never will be.
Evan A.: Jazz music is only a little over a hundred years old and it’s always changing.
Colin: Who knows what it might sound like in another hundred years?
Hallie F.: But whether you hear it in New Orleans or New York…
Devin: If the sound you hear is full of surprise and honesty…
Grace: If it has strength and improvisation, or sadness and joy…
Achilles: Then it has to be…. it ought to be… it’s gotta be…
ALL: Jazz!
It Don’t Mean a Thing
* Portions of this script are from Gotta Be Jazz Celebrate Jazz Classics: America’s Music by john Jacobson and John Higgins. s