A Brief(ish) History of Jazz 

Ya like jazz? Well I certainly do. In this video we explore the history of jazz, from its conception in west Africa and the Americas, all the way through the 19th and 20th centuries, through blues, ragtime, swing, bebop, the free jazz and on into the modern day.
Featuring such artists as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Scott Joplin, and many others!
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What would come to be jazz originated in the spiritual and traditional music of West Africa. These musical traditions were- and continue to be- extremely diverse, what with Africa being FUCKING MASSIVE, however there are some commonalities between regional styles. The players of West African music placed a heavy emphasis on rhythm as opposed to melody or harmony, and very often would involve many different rhythms layered on top of each other in Polyrhythms .
Ragtime was a very popular style of music which appeared in the 1890s, and very quickly took over dance halls all throughout the States. In contrast to the subdued Blues, ragtime was loud, and big and colourful. The style, which was mostly played on pianos, adopted vibrant harmony, and utilised crazy syncopated rhythms
The Jazz age was a period in the 20s and 30s where Jazz rose to meteoric popularity. The genre had become almost completely ubiquitous- it was played everywhere. Coffee houses, great big theatres, bars, restaurants, you name it! Even classical musicians like Ravel and Shostakovich were beginning to take inspiration from Jazz, and would incorporate some of its elements into their own styles. .
Swing was an immensely popular style of jazz around this time. Developing out of dance orchestra of the 1920s, Swing would reach its height of popularity in the 30s and 40s.
Post war Jazz arose in the 1940s as a response to the decadent popularity of swing in the 20s and 30s. Jazz began to take a turn for hipster- gone were the days of popular, simple, dancing jazz - no - musicians were bored of that stuff. It’s always the case, whenever something is really cool and then gets popular because it’s really cool, there’s always a group of nerds that are like “ugh, I knew it before it was popular”
In their opinion, earlier jazz was forced to sacrifice its potential as art for mass appeal, but no more. Musicians had a desire - they wanted to listen to jazz, not dance, listen . Musicians wanted to reform the genre into a mature style that not only is fun to listen to, but also captures deep musical meaning. And from this desire, Bebop was born.
Jazz throughout the mid to late 20th century continued to transform. Free and avante garde jazz appeared, and experimentalism came into vogue. Musicians like John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock all added their own distinctive flavours to the mix- developing new, never-before-seen musical structures and techniques in jazz that are used all across music today. Art Ensemble of Chicago, an experimental jazz group, arose in the late 60s- very often ignoring melody and harmony altogether, and instead using nonstandard instruments like bicycles bells and rubber ducks.
Jazz artists today are constantly finding new and exciting ways to reanimate and advance the genre- combining jazz standards with rock, hip hop, pop, folk, even western classical.
Musicians like Ashley Henry, Maria chiaro Argiro, Joel Ross and so many others are all contributing to the genre in their own unique and genius ways- in far too many directions for me to adequately talk about them all in this video.
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00:00 Intro
01:02 Origins
04:19 Blues and Ragtime
06:40 The Jazz Age
08:52 Post-war
10:58 Modern Day
13:06 The part where i (unfortunately) talk about myself