Jazz originated in New Orleans in the early 20th century, combining elements of ragtime, blues, and African rhythms. Early influential jazz musicians like Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton blended these styles spontaneously without writing music down. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band made the first jazz recording in 1917. Jazz then spread nationwide, with pioneering artists like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk developing the art of improvisation. Central to jazz is the ability to listen closely and play together cohesively as a group, building on each other's ideas. The personality and creativity of individual jazz musicians also shapes their distinctive musical voices.

1. JAZZ
And The Art of Listening

2. AFRICAN MUSIC –
POWER OF LISTENING
“The only way to begin correctly, was to listen a moment
and than start right in”

3. THE PULSE, THE SWING
• The secret sauce behind many successful popular songs is the degree of
cohesion between the individual musicians
• What is a strong sense of swing?
• Exciting performances tend to break the rules (phrases that linger)
• Does it breathe? Is it relaxed? Is it dreamy?
• Listen to the pulse that is slightly faster than human heartbeat (Li’l Darlin)

4. “WHEN A GROUP IS WORKING TOGETHER EFFECTIVELY, THE
INDIVIDUAL MUSICIANS DON’T NEED TO PLAY SO MANY
NOTES”
- TED GIOIA
“When a group is working together effectively, the individual

5. PHRASING
Playing with commitment and authority
No notes were written for 2 min solo!
Interpretation of a written melody
through mastery and individuality

6. ARMSTRONG
Improvised phrase after phrase
Never wrote down music
The published had melodic lines
transcribed
It’s all about rhythmic mastery &
authorative quality
Only handful performers operate at this
level

7. DIZZY GILLESPIE
Intentionality – there is a rhythmic
structure of the line, notes come later
Every phrase has an authoritative
quality that lasts until the final note

8. SINATRA
Accented words
Shaped meaning and imparted vitality
to melody line

9. SIDNEY BECHET
“I am going to give you
one note today. See how
many ways you can play
the note – growl it, smear
it, flat it, sharp it, do
anything you want to it.
It’s like talking.”

10. “
”
LISTENING TO JAZZ BEGINS WITH PAYING ATTENTION TO
THE INDIVIDUAL NOTES…WESTERN… MUSIC IS A SYSTEM
OF NOTES – OF DISCRETE TONES, TUNED IN SCALES WITH
12 SUBDIVISIONS. AFRICAN MUSICIANS CREATED MUSIC
THAT DREW ON INFINITE GRADUATION OF SOUND, AND
NOT JUST TWELVE NOTES IN A SCALE
Ted Gioia

11. DYNAMICS
Variations in volume of a note or phrase
(Pianissimo, fortissimo)
Many decisions on dynamics are made
spontaneously on the bandstand.
“Jazz is a hot art form. It thrives on
intensity. For better or worse, a macho
aesthetic got embedded in its DNA at an
early stage in its evolution… Audiences
burn out on unrelenting volume, whether
it's a politician shouting out denunciations
on the campaign stump, a preacher
bellowing a lengthy fire-and-brimstone
sermon, or an amateur jazz band full of
testosterone and determined to conquer
the world. … But I do want to hear jazz
musicians make an attempt to control
the dynamics, rather than letting the
dynamics control the music.”

12. PERSONALITY
“If I met musicians before I heard them
perform, I could predict how they would
improvise”.
“Their personality in off stage interactions
got transferred into how they
approached their solos”…
“The bedrock layer of
improvisation, almost beyond the scope
of musicology, is the psychology or
personality of the individual musician”

13. SPONTANEITY
“More an attitude than a technique,
the element of spontaneity in the
music rebels against codification and
museum-like canonization”
“This is the realm of poetic and
miraculous, the one-time event that
won’t come around again… Jazz
belongs to that miraculous realm”.

14. Among the citizenry, jazz stood as the antithesis of
repressive rules

15. ORIGINS
Buddy Bolden, ~1920
First musician to play jazz
No recordings, music or written biography

16. BEN’S JAZZ CURVE
“I got a new curve this year and I’m goin’ to pitch one or two of them
tomorrow. I call it the Jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can’t
do anything with it”
Ben Henderson, 1912

17. From the blues, jazz musicians learned how to bend notes, how to play dirty, how to break away
from the tyranny of the pure and ideal written notes…
From ragtime, jazz borrowed syncopation, that exhilarating sense of displacement and momentum
created by putting rhythmic emphasis between the beats…
Then as now, jazz musicians were scavengers and borrowers, visionaries who broke through the
boundaries between highbrow and lowbrow, religious and secular, caste and clan. Historians of the
music give the most attention to the influence of blues and ragtime on the evolution of early jazz,
but a host of other styles and sounds played a role in the creation of this exciting new hybrid. The
earliest jazz performers also took note of the sounds of the sanctified church, the stately music of
concert halls and opera houses, the popular dance tunes played by string ensembles—indeed,
anything that came to their attention and might excite an audience.
And here's the beautiful part of the story: jazz musicians still beg, borrow, and steal, only now they
do it on a global basis.

18. “
”
NEW ART FORMS ARE SIMILAR TO THE PLAGUE OR A
VIRAL FLU IN HOW THEY SPREAD. ART AND DISEASE
PROLIFERATE VIA CONTAGION, AND SIMILAR
CONDITIONS FAVOR BOTH.
Ted Gioia

19. NEW ORLEANS
Densely packed populations, many individuals coming and going via land and waterways, an
overheated mixture of people recently arrived from different locales, informal settings where they
intermingle in close contact, a culture and environment that emphasize communal activities and
get-togethers— these are nightmare conditions for anyone trying to stop an epidemic, but they are
the same ingredients that can spur world-changing artistic revolutions

20. MAMIE SMITH
1920 “Crazy Blues”

21. FIRST RECORDING
• The standard history of Jazz
generally considers the first Jazz
record to have been the Original
Dixieland 'Jass' Band's "Dixie Jass Band
One Step" and "Livery Stable Blues."
• This record was made for the Victor
label in New York on February 26,
1917. The record was released in May
of 1917.

22. “
”
A NEW WORD, LIKE A NEW MUSCLE, ONLY COMES INTO BEING
WHEN IT HAS LONG BEEN NEEDED.
THIS REMARKABLE AND SATISFACTORY-SOUNDING WORD,
HOWEVER, MEANS SOMETHING LIKE LIFE, VIGOR, ENERGY,
EFFERVESCENCE OF SPIRIT, JOY, PEP, MAGNETISM, VERVE, VIRILITY,
EBULLIENCY, COURAGE, HAPPINESS—OH, WHAT’S THE USE?—JAZZ.
NOTHING ELSE CAN EXPRESS IT.
Ernest J. Hopkins
April 5, 1913

24. DUKE
ELLINGTON
Boston Consulting Group
recommended him as a source
o managerial wisdom – he did
not demand perfection,
instead he everything in the
ensemble’s repertoire on the
demonstrated strength of his
personnel.
No ensemble in the history of
the music can match the
Ellington orchestra’s half
century of constant
productivity and high artistry.

25. BILLIE HOLIDAY
1956 Lady Sings the Blues
(autobiography)
She represents the culmination of a
series of changes that turned popular
singing in America into a quest for
intimacy and personal contact with the
performer.

26. THELONIOUS MONK
“He operates in a kind of constant flow state in which aural doors, closed to others, open magically at his
slightest gesture. “

27. MILES DAVIS
“He somehow managed to make
everything sound melodic – even a
short, choppy phrase, or a single,
note, or a mistake on the horn”.

28. JAZZ
And The Art of Listening