|
>between 'jazz' and 'blues' music and musicians. But claiming
>that bebop musicians "came out of the blues tradition" at all,
>let alone moreso than the jazz musicians that predate them,
>isn't accurate.
The bebop musicians primarily came out of the Big Band tradition. They had absorbed all the harmonic complexity of Big Band but were tired of being "reigned in" by the stiff arrangements and commercialism of the form. It was essentially musican-music for musicians by musicians initially-it's been said that bebop was played in private jam-sessions and after hours in clubs years before it started to appear on record as a form in itself. And of course, there are solos in big band songs by guys like Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax) and Charlie Christian (guitar) that clearly points towards bebop even if the *genre* of those songs was of course still swing or whatever...
>>which was based on a scale system
>>that had the flattened third and fifth as the norm...
>
>okay... commonly known as 'the blues scale'*
>
>>which is completely different from what western music
>>had been doing up to that point.
>
>no.
>
>I can't say whether this scale was use in Western classical
>music but as Teknontheou pointed out it is not at all uncommon
>in various Euro vernacular musics, in addition to certain
>Western African vernacular musics, especially those informed
>by Arabic culture, and Middle Eastern musics (which
>understandably may not be considered Western for the purpose
>of this conversation).
>
>In particular with reference to the development of this scale
>in Western music, the 'blues scale' was also present in
>British Isles vernacular music in what's come to be known as
>'modal' scales, very common in balladry and also Celtic
>instrumental music.
>
>It's most likely that rather than developing in isolation on
>reaching American shores, those commonalities combined,
>recombined and reinforced themselves as they emerged as major
>influences in developing American music of all kinds
>throughout the 19th century.
I don't think it's fair to just talk about the blues-scale in terms of the notes/intervals being used. If you do that, it's of course just a minor pentatonic (which as you said has been used in a lot of different musical cultures) with an added flat fifth (not sure how common *this* was though in other cultures; from what I understand, the flat fifth was added by piano-players who of course lacked the ability to bend notes to "mimic" the blue note between the fourth and the fifth).
No, I think one needs to bring up the bluenotes as well; otherwise, there's not much point in distingushing the blues-scale from a regular pentatonic.
BTW, the use of the flat fifth in bebop was quite different from how it is commonly used in blues-lines where it is frequently a chromatic passing tone between the fourth and the fifth in otherwise pentatonic melodies.
In bebop on the other hand, the prime use of the flat fifth was in the context of tritone substitutions so let's say we have a basic ii-V7-I progression, in, say, C major. The G7 chord then contains the notes G B D and F. The point of this chord from a functional standpoint is that the third and seventh (=B and F in this case) form a dissonant interval (=a flat fifth in this case) which creates tension and gets resolved by moving the B to C and F to E in the next chord.
The tritone substitution then substitues the chord with a chord one flat fifth away (bII7 I guess) and the special thing here is that this chord retains the same function as the V7 it substitutes. You still get the tense flat fifth interval between B and F but they have changed place; the B is now the seventh and the F the third and of course, you get two notes chromatic to the C major scale in the root and the fifth of the new chord (=Db and Ab; note that it was often a b5 instead though which is more diatonic since it-in this case G-is part of the major scale).
Thus, the sub chord retains the same harmonic function but it gives the soloist two notes outside of the scale to play with which adds some dissonance and freakiness while still being quite functional since Db leads nicely into C (=the root of the next chord) and Ab into G (=the third of the next chord).
Anyway, this is just one of the many type of dissonant additions bebop musicians added to give some freaky, "inside-outside" flavour to the music and it became a cliche in the runs of bebop just like some other things like for example the technique of sidestepping (=self-consciously playing a phrase a bit too flat or sharp to create tension and then play it again in the right key immediately afterwards) or targetting consonant notes with chromatic passing-tones etc.
Basically, the possibilites were endless almost BUT it was all ffirmly rooted in functional harmony and at least on record (not necessarily live) they rarely stepped "outside" for more than a tiny split-second or an 8th note or so but if you do that a lot in an improvisation, it of course sounds quite freaky compared to earlier jazz which was more purely consonant and blues-based in terms of the melodies used (note that beboppers were frequently playing blues-material too, they just spiced it up with a lot of sophistication which of course mean that blues-purists don't think it sounds authentically bluesy).
I don't know how common those particular dissonances were in other forms of music though...
Anyway, I think the most radical aspect of jazz had nothing to do with melody or harmony but rather rhythm. Especially in early jazz (I won't mention free-jazz, LOL!), it's like you get lots of instruments at the same time throwing different rhythmic patterns on top of eachother and add the elusive concept of swing to that and you had the critics at the time somewhat lazily I guess comparing the music to "african"-drum music in terms of its rhythmic qualities (BTW, it's worth pointing out that in the early days, jazz was the "theme"-music in so-called "jungle music" clubs; people really thought it sounded african and that the musicians were black didn't hurt). This however is at least partially justified by the phrasing in REALLY old jazz being largly percussive and the use of longer, "legato"-note values that came with guys like Lester Young and-duh!-Miles Davis are not too common even if someone like Louis Armstrong of course sometimes held notes for effect.
It's not a coincidence that critics started to say that jazz became more "european" when legato-phrasing became more common; it didn't fit the "african" (=percussive) stereotype...
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
The Lesson
