- September 4, 2012
- Posted by: essay
- Category: Free essays
The beginning of the 20th century was marked by the emergence of jazz music, which, to a significant extent, revolutionized music and introduced a totally new music style, which was unique and different from traditional music. At the same time, soon jazz gained a wide popularity among the audience, as well as among critics, which, though, were skeptical in regard to jazz at the beginning of this style. In this respect, it is hardly possible to underestimate the contribution of prominent musicians who developed jazz as the unique style. For instance, it is possible to mention Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Earl Kenneth Hines, and many others.
Jelly Roll Morton was a pivotal figure in the early jazz. In fact, he worked in the early 20th century and he attempted to develop an original music style which was different from the traditional music of that epoch. Eventually, he became a renowned ragtime player, who produced a consistent influence on the development of music, especially in the 1920s, where ragtime became a mainstream trend (Ward and Burns, 2007). At the same time, since the early 20th century, when he had just started his professional career, his music style was characterized by the innovative trends which became distinguishable features of the early jazz. For instance, many specialists (Ward and Burns, 2007) associate his work with the popularization of the so-called “Spanish tinge”¯ of exotic rhythms. In addition, he was not only a gifted musician but he was also a successful composers, whose “Wolverine Blues”¯, “Black Bottom Stomp”¯ and many other words became very popular at the epoch and encouraged other musicians to develop jazz as a new music style.
Leon Bix Beiderbecke is another renowned musicians who made a considerable contribution to the development of jazz music in the early 20th century. In spite of his young age, Bix Beiderbecke had managed to contribute to a consistent progress of jazz as a unique and interesting music style. He was a jazz cornetist and composer. His music career was short but he was a very prolific musician and composer.
He developed his own style in music which was characterized by distinctive tone. At the same time, Bix Beiderbecke had a distinct feature which became a characteristic of his music style ”“ he was inclined to improvisation (Lion, 2004). In fact, it was very important for the development of jazz music because this style is entirely built up on improvisation and Bix Beiderbecke actually attempted to show the audience and other musicians what improvisation actually means and what a success a musician could achieve while improvising upon the stage.
In this respect, Earl Kenneth Hines was another renowned jazz musicians who continued the work of Bix Beiderbecke and Jelly Roll Morton Similarly to Morton he was a pianist but he was more inclined to improvisation that made his music style rather more similar to that of Bix Beiderbecke than to Jelly Roll Morton (Berliner, 1994). At the same time, he went further in his experimentations and improvisation. He was particularly successful in solo-music which revealed the richness of jazz as a new music style.
Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is possible to conclude that the development of jazz was accompanied by the appearance of a number of gifted musicians, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke and Earl Kenneth Hines whose works were very original, but, at the same time, preserved elements unique for jazz and which distinguished their music style from all others.