There's one word you can use against all those American culture bashers, all those noses-held-high-ers, a word that even invites reverence from the French: jazz. Part of the silver lining of a very stormy cloud in the U.S.'s history, jazz was the first (and some say the only) American-born art form.

Wait isn't jazz, like, a bunch of horns and stuff? We know, it's a bit overwhelming at first. Without understanding the history of jazz, it's damn near impossible to appreciate it. So we're here to teach you jazz's history and lead you through its progression. We'll introduce you to the forefathers, acquaint you with the sub-genres, and fill you in on all the terms. So put on your sunglasses, grab a glass of bourbon, and think of this as "Jazz 101." We'll collect your tuition money later.

1. UNDERSTAND THE ROOTS OF JAZZ

Jazz began with slaves who were originally brought to the U.S. from West Africa. When these slaves got a break during the day or night, they would get together and make music. This particular music was a reminder of their home; a music full of rhythmic complexity and syncopation. Syncopation is when the accentuation comes off the beat. In other words, if you've got a 1-2-3-4 beat going, and you hit beat 3 a little before or a little after its turn, you've got syncopation.

Being in America, slaves were exposed to many types of European music-and especially instruments-while in captivity. The result of this hybrid slave music is jazz. So, to understand jazz, it's best to compare African music with its European counterpart at the time of slavery, and then imagine how the two might meld together. Here's a step-by-step explanation:

  • As we just mentioned, the rhythm of African music had syncopation. It was also additive, meaning that there were many lines of rhythm playing at once, each musician entering on top of the other. It usually wouldn't have a steady beat; rather, it was asymmetrical. European rhythm, on the other hand, was fairly rigid; time was divided evenly and almost always adhered to.

  • The two forms of music used different notes. European music used the diatonic scale, which is simply the twelve notes you see repeated on piano keyboards, A through G with flats and sharps in between. The diatonic is still by far the most popular scale in Western music. African music also used the diatonic scale, but they incorporated other sounds as well. Over time, this became known as the blues scale.

  • The diatonic can be played in the major scale, which will sound more positive, or it can be played in the minor scale, for (often) a sadder sound. There are other variations, but the major and minor are the main scales, and they are played through choosing certain notes out of the diatonic and excluding others.

  • The blues scale is neither major nor minor; it is a combination of both. Because of this, it produces many odd-sounding notes, which are called blue notes. You instinctively hear these notes as differing from normal scales and, when listening carefully, they are liable to really stand out. This is because, whether you know the terminology or not, you know the major and minor scale from all that music you've already heard, all the times the soundtrack of a movie made you feel the way you're supposed to at that point in the story. You already know what diatonic music is like, so you recognize the notes outside the normal sound (that is, the blue notes). Jazz uses both the diatonic and blues scale.

  • African music would bend notes and go to the in-betweens often as well, creating what are called tambral effects. European music had little of this, partially because many European instruments were incapable of tambral effects (you try bending a piano key).

  • African music also was not written, was not memorized, but was spontaneous and improvised. Contrast that with the score of Mozart opera, and you see what we're getting at.

  • Since it kept to relatively rigid guidelines, European music had to find its creativity elsewhere. This emerged in harmony. Not used in Africa, harmony is when two or more notes are played together and they sound especially nice. Play two lines of such notes at the same time and you've got a melody echoed by a counterpoint, if you're into vocab.

  • In addition to these differences, African music also practiced call-and-response, where a leader sings a line and the listeners all repeat. Call-and-response can still be seen all over the place, in some church meetings, in banjo wars, and of course, in jazz.

2. LEARN ABOUT EARLY JAZZ MOVEMENTS

Ragtime

Back in the mists of time before everyone had MP3 players, music was lost after a performance. You couldn't record it. Of course, you could write musical notation, and the earliest evidence we have of jazz comes in this form in the 1890s. So the earliest recorded Jazz we know about is known as Ragtime.

Ragtime is really easy to write down. It's the style of jazz that's closest to European music, so it easily fits into European notation. Ragtime was also put onto piano rolls for player pianos (think Cowboy Westerns-the music that stops when Black Bart saunters into the saloon).

Ragtime is in 2-beat meter, which means it goes "boom-chick, boom-chick." It stays on this steady pulse most of the time, but the melody is often dancing around with a lot of syncopation. This is important, since the unusual rhythmic tension is really the only thing about Ragtime that makes it jazz. There is no improvisation, there are no tambral effects (the piano being the main instrument) and there is no use of the blues scale.

It is worthless to talk about Ragtime without talking about Scott Joplin (no relation to Janis). Without a doubt, his style gave voice to the jazz of that era (extending from the 1890s-1920s). If someone puts on a bit of Ragtime music, 9 times out of 10 it's either "The Entertainer" or "Maple Leaf Rag," both Joplin titles. If your browser has the capabilities, listen to "The Entertainer" for an example.

Joplin wanted Ragtime to gain recognition as serious art, something that would show that Blacks were as capable of as much as the European composers of classical music. Although jazz would eventually go in an entirely different direction, it was Joplin who first earned the music its respectability.

Classic Jazz

Around the same time as Joplin, another type of jazz was emerging. It came to be known as Classic Jazz, and it grew out of New Orleans Storyville, to be exact. Storyville was the section of town filled with legal prostitutes and the clubs they worked in. The clubs all needed entertainment, so they hired musicians who would sometimes play out the back of a car covered in advertisements for the house they performed in. These bands were made up of back lines (drums, bass or tuba, piano or guitar) and front lines (trumpet, clarinet, trombone), and these guys really cooked. Not only did they have solo improv, they had ensemble improv too. What's that? That's when everyone in the band-not just one instrument-makes up his/her part as the group goes along. Also, the beat broke free of the oom-pah feel of Ragtime and started becoming more variable. Ensemble improv is a joy to listen to, but is fairly unique to the Classic Jazz period.

One of the early players of Classic Jazz was Jelly Roll Morton, originally a Ragtime pianist who was among the first to start playing the new style. Other important names to drop at cocktail parties are King Oliver, Kid Ory, and Fletcher Henderson (no relation to Florence).

But the biggest name of all is a guy who picked up the trumpet in reformatory school, Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was a young kid when the first jazz album came out in 1917, but once he got playing, he took over. Because of Armstrong, the trumpet became the premiere instrument of jazz (before that it had been the clarinet). It was Armstrong who first gave a modern solo, based on the fundamental chord progression rather than on the melody. Oh, and he also sang ("What a Wonderful World," for one).

Swing

The biggest culprit for the reduction of improv, though, was jazz's own growing popularity. Throughout the 1920s, jazz became more and more popular with all audiences; soon it became a dance music: Swing. (Gap commercials, anyone?) The beat became steady again, and the experimentation with sound slowed; people didn't want new musical ideas, they wanted something to move their feet to. Consequently, Swing Jazz is simple jazz, played in large bands of 10 or 12 people, though sometimes some core musicians of a band would play a song. This is also when jazz vocalists came into prominence, most notably Billie Holiday (a.k.a. "Lady Day") and Ella Fitzgerald, known for her unmatched scat abilities.

Swing jazz fell into three unique styles:

  • The Kansas City-style Bands were usually country folk that couldn't read music but had taught themselves to play. They were best known for solo-heavy music with easy, repetitive, memorable riffs underneath. The best Kansas City Band belonged to Count Basie. To get a feel for Kansas City-style bands, listen to Basie's "Flight of the Foo Birds."

  • The National Bands came out of the city and featured slicker musicians that were often classically trained, and almost all were able to read music. They tended to have more complex written parts and less improvisation. A good National style of play can be heard in the Benny Goodman Band. Listen to "Moonglow," for example.

  • Duke Ellington was one of those rare musicians who fell outside the boundaries of his time, not limiting himself to either the Kansas City or National forms. Ellington surrounded himself with good musicians and gave them a lot of room to play around in, so they enjoyed working with him. Arguably the best arranger in the history of jazz, Ellington would write pieces specifically to highlight his players. For instance, he once wrote a song called "Concerto for Cootie," which gave his trumpeter Cootie Williams three styles in which to show off his chops. He also used more exotic and complex harmonies than had been used before, taking advantage of his 10-piece band. Furthermore, he experimented with cross-voicing, the use of unusual combinations of instruments to create new sounds.

While swing was often looked down upon by jazz fans from the 1950s on, it is now making something of a comeback. Classic swing bands like Duke Ellington's, Count Basie's, and Woody Herman's.

3. LEARN ABOUT BEBOP

Unless you were in Ellington's band, Swing wasn't the most exciting time to be a jazz musician. Almost everyone was capable of playing more complex stuff, but was limited by the dance hall constraints of the time. Consequently, in the early 1940s, many good young jazz musicians would have "day jobs" in a Swing band while their best music would be played after hours in jam sessions with other young cats at New York hot spots like Monroe's and Minton's. These guys stayed up late inventing Bebop.

Listening to the experimentation of such musicians as guitarist Charlie Christian and saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, the true inventors of Bebop were the baby-faced trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and sax player Charlie Parker (also known as "Bird").

Bebop contained harmonies as complex as any ever developed, and it had active percussion and vibrant rhythms. Drummers, such as Max Roach, became more important and received more attention, as the focus moved from the bass drum to the cymbals as the primary element of the backbeat. The music was "hot" (meaning it had an expressive sound), and made all jazz before it seem like a precursor. To the novice listener, it just sounds really fast. Bebop is often considered to be the pinnacle of jazz.

The only problem was that no one was listening. The musicians all knew how great it was, so they decided that the music was too overwhelming for audiences. So to make it more accessible, they decided to simplify the music a little and highlight certain elements for the audience. This is when Bebop, starting in the late 1940s and continuing to today, splintered into a couple of new genres: Cool Jazz and Hard Bop.

  • Cool Jazz (mid 1950s): Cool Jazz shares bebop's intellectual style but is slower, has less complex melodies, and is much more laid back. If you want a good example of Cool Jazz, look for early Miles Davis (an important trumpet player who we'll talk more about later) or some Stan Getz on the sax.

  • Hard Bop (late 1950s to early 1960s): Hard Bop used electric instruments for the first time, which took away much of the intellectual play of Bebop and emphasized the Hot sound. Hard Bop musicians sought to appeal to their audiences but not overpowering their ear with too much information. Hard Bop is very accessible for novice jazz listeners. Go out and get some Art Blakey or early Herbie Hancock to hear Hard Bop.

4. LEARN ABOUT AVANT-GARDE JAZZ MOVEMENTS

Modal Jazz

So you got your Bebop, Cool Jazz and Hard Bop all going, and you decide you want a new sound, a different sound. What do you do? If you're Miles Davis, you go Modal.

Modal Jazz didn't have chord changes. Instead, it was all played on one chord, all improvised around one note. The first all-Modal album was Kind of Blue, which is one of the first jazz albums anyone should ever buy. Many people consider it the greatest jazz album ever, and with John Coltrane (sax), Cannonball Adderley (sax), and Bill Evans (piano) all playing with Miles' trumpet, it's not hard to see why.

Free Jazz

Roughly around the same time as Modal Jazz, Free Jazz was coming into being. Modal Jazz may have had only one note it would play off of, but Free Jazz had none. Just as the name implies, anything goes in Free Jazz, though often players would have more structure than was required, so the listener wouldn't get too lost. The best examples of Free Jazz musicians are John Coltrane (in his later years) and Ornette Coleman, who still plays today.

Fusion

Miles Davis didn't stop at helping found Cool Jazz and Modal Jazz; he moved on to create Fusion, a combination of jazz and rock that hit its stride in the 70s and 80s. The electric medium was used again, like in Hard Bop, but without the simplifications of that style. Fusion was (and is) the open-ended amalgamation of music going on in the U.S., and is still one of the most popular forms of jazz today. Fusion is perhaps the most easily accessible form of jazz for someone just starting the journey. Bitches Brew, an album by Davis, is a great example of Fusion, as is Herbie Hancock's Headhunters.

5. LEARN ABOUT MODERN JAZZ MOVEMENTS

The three Avant-garde styles (Modal Jazz, Free Jazz, and Fusion) are still in use, but there are newer, as yet unnamed styles. After all, music styles usually get their names after the fact as a way to describe the work of particularly influential musicians, so instead of worrying about labels, you should just seek out good groups. Here are some tips:

  • Among the best to look for right now are Medeski, Martin, and Wood (MMW), a jazz trio that has Free and Fusion and Bop and Hawaiian (!) and probably the best pianist of our generation.

  • Try to find a Steve Coleman album-he has experimented with ensemble improv with bands of as large as 20 people, and plays some hot stuff with his band The Five Elements.

  • Another good band playing today is the James Taylor Quartet-don't worry, it's not that James Taylor. JTQ is on the Acid Jazz label (a good label's catalog to look through, along with Blue Note).

  • Although he's been around for a while, John McLaughlin is still very much on the cutting edge of jazz. He successfully works distortion-traditionally considered only appropriate for rock musicians-into the repertoire of jazz guitarists. He has also produced many unique sounds by combining jazz with musical forms those of other regions, from Central America to India.

Of course, in today's music, the lines between jazz, rock, and electronica are all blurring. Phish improvises all the time, DJs sample jazz riffs constantly, and Bluegrass bands play at jazz festivals. But that doesn't mean that jazz is going to become boring; if it does, you can bet that someone will change it all over again.

Whoever you're seeing and wherever you're at, a jazz concert is worth seeing. Jazz isn't meant to be captured on CDs, since it's about the moment and improvisation. Lots of shows have been recorded (and the studio albums generally do their improvs on the spot), but it just isn't the same. To be there as it happens is the experience, whether in a tiny jazz cafe or at Carnegie Hall.

In the meantime, though, you should start out by listening, just so you can get a feel for the music. Here are a few album suggestions to whet your appetite:

Miles Davis
Birth of the Cool
Kind of Blue
Bitches Brew

John Coltrane
My Favorite Things
Giant Steps
Blue Trane

Herbie Hancock
Headhunters

John McLaughlin
The Inner Mounting Flame

Steve Coleman
The Tao of Mad Phat

MMW
Notes from Underground
Shackman
Combustication

JTQ
A Few Useful Tips about Living Underground