Jazz is the USA and in Russia

Муниципальное общеобразовательное учреждение гимназии №1

Научно-практическая конференция

"Человек, Земля, Вселенная"

Jazz in the USA and in Russia

Выполнила:  ученица 10"Б" класса Шапкарина Екатерина

                        Руководитель: Моисеева Надежда Сергеевна

г. Краснознаменск

2016

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Jazz in America

   2.1. The history of jazz

   2.2. The most popular jazz styles

   2.3. Outstanding jazz musicians

3. Jazz in Russia

   3.1. Is there any jazz in Russia?

   3.2. Modern Russian jazz performers

4. Practical work

5. Conclusion

6. References

1.Introduction

The topic of the present paper is "Jazz in America and in Russia". The purposes of this report are:

-to study and summarize the collected material about jazz in the USA and Russia

-to compare its development and distribution in the USA and in Russia

-to find out the awareness of Russian teenagers about jazz and their attitude to it

-to gain practical skills in research work

What is Jazz? Jazz is a form of musical art that emerged in the early XX century in the United States as a result of fusion of African and European cultures and subsequently received widespread. The characteristic features of the musical language of jazz originally began with improvisation, polyrhythm, based on the syncopated rhythms and a unique set of techniques of performance of rhythmic textures - swing. The further development of jazz took place at the expense of the development of jazz musicians and composers, of new rhythmic and harmonic patterns

2.Jazz in America

2.1.The history

1700s -Music has always played an important role in African - American culture. The roots of jazz can be traced back to the times of slavery where slave work songs were created in the form of “call-and-response.” To tell a story, and pass the time, a song leader would call out a line and the rest of the workers would respond to his call.

Soulful songs called “spirituals” were also sung by slaves. They expressed their strong religious beliefs as well as their desire for freedom.

1800s -During this era, America became known as the “land of opportunity.” Many Europeans immigrated to different American cities in search of fortune and a better life. With these immigrants came a variety of musical traditions as well, such as Irish gigs, German waltzes and French quadrilles.

The African - American composer Scott Joplin combined these newly introduced European compositional styles with the rhythmic and melodic music of the black community. This became known as "ragtime."

1900s- New Orleans played a great role in the evolution of jazz music in the 20th century. As new settlers arrived in New Orleans, musical traditions from all over the world began to unite. African - American musicians merged European musical tradition with such music as blues, ragtime, and marching band to create a new style of music—jazz.

1920s-African - Americans began migrating to northern cities like Chicago and New York in search of better opportunity. With them, they brought the sounds of jazz and blues. Young Americans began to embrace this new style of music by listening and dancing to jazz and blues. This represented a rebellion against their parents’ old-fashioned views. Young women, known as "flappers", shocked their parents by cutting their hair and wearing shorter dresses.

For the first time radios and record players were widely available in stores. This encouraged the popularity and growth of jazz music. Jazz went from being played only in New Orleans to becoming a staple of the American airwaves, dance halls, and homes.

1930s- A new style of jazz, "big band swing," emerged. This became the most popular music of the 1930s and 40s. Because of its highly energetic beat, swing music brought people to the dance floor every night.

1940s-Many jazz musicians were drafted to fight in World War II. A million African Americans served in the armed forces all because of the strict segregation that pervaded throughout the era. Because of this, bands were experiencing difficulties in finding musicians to perform in the dance halls.

1950s- Americans began to turn to television as their source of entertainment and music began to play a less important role. As a result, dance halls began to close all across the country.

1960s-The civil rights movement also had an impact on jazz and the jazz music scene. African - American jazz artists had long presented that white owned record companies and clubs that controlled their income.

1970s-Throughout the rest of the 20th century, jazz continued to evolve and take on new forms. The 1970’s saw the popularity of fusion.

The 1980’s are known for acid jazz and its return to classic blues.

The 1990’s introduced smooth jazz and retro swing.

In the 21st century, jazz has found a second wind and the rapid spread of the Internet has served as a colossal impetus not only for commercially successful records, but also for underground artists.On the radio there are dozens of stations broadcasting jazz in all its guises. Undoubtedly,  the XXI century has placed everything in its place and gave jazz the place where it should be.

2.2. The most popular jazz styles:

There are some most popular jazz styles:

-archaic jazz style covers the first stage of development New Orleans jazz style.

-bob, bebop jazz appeared in 1940-1950s. It was performed by small jazz ensembles (combo). The main feature is the rhythm without the focus on the strong parts, including hard chords.

-dixieland is the name of Jazz ensembles consisting of "white musicians". The typical instruments are: a trumpet, a trombone, a clarinet.

-swing (rotation). It is a certain rhythm of jazz shortened, which the ancestors of African Americans

2.3.Outstanding jazz musicians

Duke Ellington

(April 29, 1899, Washington-May 24, 1974, New York)

Duke Ellington called his music "American Music" rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category2. He remains one of the most influential figures in jazz, if not in all American music and is widely considered as one of the twentieth century's best known African American personalites. As both a composer and a band leader, Ellington's reputation has increased since his death, with thematic repackagings of his signature music often becoming best-sellers. Posthumous recognition of his work includes a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Dizzy Gillespie

(October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993)

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians.

Dave Brubeck

(December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012)

David Warren "Dave" Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.

Louis Armstrong

(4 august 1901, New Orleans, Louisiana - 6 iulie 1971, New York City)

Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an African-American trumpeter, composer and singer who was one of the most influential figures in jazz.

His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in jazz. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also skilled at scat singing.Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing,

Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over", whose skin color was secondary to his music in an America that was extremely racially divided. He rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock Crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society which were highly restricted for black men of his era.

Ella Fitzgerald

(April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996)

Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over million albums. Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. (Or rather, some might say all the jazz greats had the pleasure of working with Ella.) She performed at top venues all over the world, and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common - they all loved her.

3.Jazz in Russia

Is there any jazz in Russia? The answer is "YES".  The history of jazz in Russia is not as long as the history of jazz in the USA.  The roots of jazz in Russia are based on the jazz of the USA. It follows the main principles of making jazz compositions of American jazz composers, but at the same time it has its own traditions and peculiarities.

The first jazz concert in Russia took place in Moscow on October 1, 1922. The band was local, called no less than The First Jazz Band of the Republic, led by not a musician, but a dancer, one Valentin Parnakh (1891-1951), who also was a gifted poet, poetry translator, and literature historian, and spend seven years (from 1915 to 1922) in Western Europe. That band was later employed by the great theatre director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, in one of his plays where the sounds of live jazz should represent the "Western reality." The band included a piano, a saxophone, a clarinet, trombone and a trap set. One of the musicians known to be a part of this band was pianist Yevgeny Gabrilovich (1899-1993), later a successful playwright and movie screenplay writer.

The first American jazz bands to perform in Russia were drummer Benny Payton's Jazz Kings in 1926, with the great Sidney Bechet on board. The hot New Orleans-style band spent several months performing in theatres and ballrooms in Moscow, Kharkov, Odessa and Kiev;

That same year, London-based Sam Wooding Orchestra toured Russia (Moscow and Leningrad) as part of European musical revue Chocolate Kiddies. The band also consisted of African-American musicians, but, according to historical sources, sounded less hot than the Jazz Kings.

The most interesting recordings of early Russian jazz were made in the late 1930, the most notably by Tsfasman, Alexander Varlamov, and the fresh émigré from Poland, which was captured by Nazi Germany, trumpet virtuoso Eddie Rozner.

During the World War Two, jazz music was regarded as the music of the allies (U.S. and Soviet Union were allies against Hitler) and thus widely spread. When the Cold War began, Soviet authorities’ attitude towards jazz changed. After that, the first significant recordings of Russian jazz were made only in late 1950s.

 Jazz sprang up in the USSR in the 1920s, when it was flourishing in the USA. The first jazz orchestra of Russia was founded in 1922 in Moscow by a poet, translator, dancer and theatre worker Valentin Parnakh and was titled “The First Eccentric Orchestra Jazz Band of Valentin Parnakh”. The first professional jazz band to go on the air and release its music record was the Moscow Orchestra of pianist and composer Alexander Tsfasman. Early Soviet jazz bands mainly specialized in performing fashionable dances, such as foxtrot and Charleston.

Jazz started gaining wide popularity in mass consciousness in the 1930s, first of all in connection with the activity of the ensemble that accompanied famous actor and singer Leonid Utesov. The comedy ‘Vesyolye rebyata’ (The Happy Guys) (1934) starring him is a story about a jazz musician and has a corresponding soundtrack composed by Isaak Dunayevsky. Leonid Utesov and Jakov Skomorovsky formed an original style of ‘theatre jazz’ based on blending music with drama and operetta, with vocal turns and performance element playing a significant role.

Remarkable contribution into the development of Soviet jazz was made by a  composer, musician and bandleader Eddie Rozner. He started his career in Germany, Poland and other European countries and then moved to the USSR where he became one of the pioneers of swing jazz in the USSR and the founder of Byelorussian jazz. Important role in popularization and development of the swing style was also played by Moscow bands headed by Alexander Tsfasman и Alexander Varlamov in the 1930-1940s.

 The All-Union Radio Jazz Orchestra under conductorship of A. Varlamov took part in the first Soviet television broadcast. Oleg Lundstrem’s Orchestra is the only band that has survived since then. Presently well-known, this big-band was among the few and the best jazz ensembles of Russian Diaspora performing in 1935-1947 in China.

Soviet authorities displayed quite ambiguous attitude towards jazz. Russian jazzmen, as a rule, were not banned, though jazz as such was severely criticized in the context of overall criticism of Western culture on the whole.

 In the late 1940s, the period of fighting cosmopolitism in the USSR jazz was going through particularly hard times, when bands performing “western” music were subject to persecution. When the Thaw came, repressions of musicians stopped, yet disparagements went on.

In the 1950-60s the orchestras of Eddie Rozner and Oleg Lundstrem renewed their concert activities in Moscow; new jazz bands sprang up, the most remarkable of them being orchestras of Iosif Vainstein (Leningrad, now St. Petersburg) and Vadim Ludvikovsky (Moscow), as well as Riga Variety Orchestra.

The big bands brought up a whole galaxy of talented arrangers and solo improvisers, whose creative work promoted Soviet jazz to a brand new level and brought it closer to the world paragons of jazz.

The development of chamber and club jazz in all the diversity of its stiles started first jazz festivals, nowadays in plenty, came to be held back then.

3.1. Modern Russian jazz performers

Daniel Kramer

(March 21, 1960, Kharkov)

Daniel Kramer is the soviet and Russian jazz pianist, teacher, composer and producer, known for its regular and mass actions, and self- developed circuit tour tickets jazz philharmonic halls in Russia. He is people's Artist of Russia (2012) and member of the Russian Academy of Arts. (2014).

Sergey Manukyan

(March 15, 1955 - Grozny, Chechen-Ingush ASSR)

Sergey Manukyan is a famous singer of Armenian origin who plays the keyboards and percussion instruments, one of the masters of instrumental vocal. Sergey Manukyan is a legend of Russian jazz. His performances are a special magic that controls emotion and feelings of the audience. Each concert pianist is a new reality. He was applauded by jazz lovers worldwide. Sergey Manukyan received many prestigious awards, the title of "Best Jazz Musician". The development of the art of jazz is an integral part of the life of pianist and vocalist. This task Sergey Manukyan sells through its own Foundation, founded in 2005.

Sergey Zhilin

(October 23, 1966, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR)

Sergey Zhilin is the pianist, conductor, band leader, arranger, composer and teacher; Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (2005). Head bands united by the common name " Phonograph " " Phonograph Jazz Trio ", " Phonograph Jazz Quartet ", " Phonograph Jazz Quintet ", " Phonograph Jazz Sextet ", " Phonograph - Dixie Band " " Phonograph Jazz Band ", " Phonograph Big Band ", " Phonograph , Symphonic Jazz " .

Larisa Dolina

(September 10, 1955, Baku)

She is a soviet and Russian pop jazz singer, actress, People's Artist of Russia (1998) and "Ovation" three-time winner of the National Prize of Russia. The singer has often been the winner and the winner of many prestigious Union and international competitions. In 1991, Larisa Dolina was awarded the title of "Best Singer of the country" in the All-Union competition "Pro". In 1993 she became the Honored Artist of Russia. In 1994, she received the prize "Crystal dolphin" in the All-Russian competition in Yalta

4.Practical work

The practical work of our report consistsof two parts:

-the comparative table of jazz in America and jazz in Russia

-the results of the survey about the history of jazz in Russia and in America

        The comparative table of jazz in America and jazz in Russia

In the comparative table we tried to show differences and the same characteristics of jazz in Russia and in America.

We made a survey of the students of the 10 classes and 43 students took part in the survey.

The students were supposed to answer five questions:

1. Do you know what is jazz?

2. What do you prefer to listen: jazz or rock?

3. Do you think that there is a jazz in Russia?

4. Name the famous Russians and foreign jazz musicians.

5. Do you know in what century it appeared?

1. Do you know what is jazz?

2. What do you prefer to listen: jazz or rock?

3. Do you think that there is a jazz in Russia?

4. Name the famous Russians and foreign jazz musicians:

a)  Russian

b) Foreign

5. Do you know in what century it appeared?

The survey results

The results of the survey shows that despite the fact that 95% of the interviewed claim that they know what the jazz is. They practically don’t know the history of jazz ,jazz composers and performers.  Consequently, we can arrive at the conclusion that jazz is not the main hobby of most teenagers.

Conclusion

The studying and the comparative analysis of the collected material of jazz in America and in Russia made it possible to arrive at several conclusions:

1. The history of jazz in Russia and in America is incomparably different. They have different background; they are different in a form and contents.

2. Modern Russian teenagers have the slightest idea of ​​ jazz, its history and development, and a very small number of young people are actually interested in jazz.

3. I have been keen on jazz for some years but this research work has given me an opportunity to plunge into the history of jazz, to learn more about the world's jazz performers in America and Russia and to acquire the basic skills of scientific research.