Music Ch. 2

Southern soul

A 1960s soul style with gospel, blues, and rhythm and blues influences.

Reggae

A 1960s-70s Jamaican style emerging from mento, American R&B, Cuban brass band music, ska, rock steady, and the chattering, rhyming, and use of nonsense syllables of Jamaican disc jockeys.

Salsa

A 1960s-70s fusion of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Caribbean styles; updated from of mambo.

Call and response

A characteristic of blues and early jazz that originates from African works songs. A leader will sing (or play) a phrase, and a chorus of voices (or an ensemble in blues or jazz) will respond (or answer) with a repeated alternate phrase that finishes the idea.

Riff

A short repeated melodic-rhythmic phrase producing momentum, either in the musical foreground or background.

Latin jazz

Jazz fused with dance styles and rhythms from Central America, the Caribbean, or South America (mostly from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil).

Bebop (bop)

A revolutionary style of modern jazz developed in the 1940s and distingushed by a striking increase im complexity that showcased virtuosity, or mastery, from its practitioners. Other features of bop included complex harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary, irregular melodic contours, and, at times, exceptionally fast tempos.

Jazz-rock fusion

A 1960s -70s style of jazz that combines elements of jazz and rock, particularly jazz improvisational techniques and styles, extended jazz improvisations, jazz harmony, and rock/funk rhythmic patterns and timbres (especially through use of electronic instruments and effects). This style is an instrumental ensemble-oriented music, as opposed to single musician focused music. By the 1970s jazz-rock was known as fusion.

Motown

A 1960s-70s soul music record label that featured pop-oriented songs, sophisticated jazz influenced arrangements that emphasized syncopated electric bass parts, solo and group singing, horn sections, string sections, background vocalists, and enlarged rhythm sections

Bossa nova

A Brazilian style that fused elements of samba and cool jazz; became popular in the US in the late 1950s - early 1960s. Characteristics included a relaxed and subdued feel, sophisticated harmony, flowing and lyrical improvisations, prominent use of the nylon string acoustic guitar, and soft, haunting beautiful, and somewhat expressionless vocals.

Traditional (early) jazz

A jazz style associated first with african-american musicians in New Orleans around the beginning of the twentieth century, and drawing upon African, European, and African-American musical styles (ragtime and blues.)

Jazz big band

A medium size jazz performance ensemble (16-20 instruments) comprised of winds (trumpets, trombones, and saxophones) , rhythm section, and sometimes a featured singer. The jazz big band (or "big band") was most popular during the swing era (1935-45), also known as the big band era.

Ragtime

A pre-jazz highly syncopated music style first popular in the 1890s and played chief by pianists. Melodies (played by the right hand) were generally syncopated or jagged while the left-hand accompaniment continuously sounded with the metric pulses (like a polka or march). Rags, which imitated the banjo-like rhythms from minstrelsy, were mostly notated, as opposed to being improvised. Early composers of rGs included Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin.

Combo

A small jazz-styled ensemble comprised of s rhythm section (piano, bass, drum set, and guitar), a front line of wind instruments (usually one to four, i.e., trumpet and alto saxophone), and an optional vocalist. Rhythm sections are also called combos. Combos (jazz) differ from rock/pop groups (rock) in style of music performed.

Swing

A style of popular music that featured jazz big bands, which featured sections of trumpets, trombones, saxophones, rhythm section, and a singer.

Montuno

A syncopated and repeated harmonic and melodic accompanying part used in Afro-Caribbean music (i.e., in mambo and salsa).

Dixieland

A term first used by Chicago musicians to describe New Orleans traditional or hot jazz.

Samba

Afro-Brazilian dance music that influenced jazz from the 1950s; characterized by a duple meter and medium to fast tempo; Brazilian urban sambas associated with Carnival.

Mambo

Afro-Cuban dance style of the late 1940s-50s that fused with big band swing; unison sections played after improvisations in Cuban music of the same period and in 1970s salsa.

Cubop

Also called Afro-Cuban jazz, cubop is a fusion of bebop and Cuban dance rhythms, folk and popular music, and was popularized in the 1940s by Dizzy Gillespie in New York.

Heavy metal

An intense, energetic, extremely loud, and intensely masculine rock style with blues-rock and hard-rock roots that emerged in the late 1960s and 70s. Style traits included boldly assertive high-pitched vocals, mostly dark lyrical subjects, guitar power chords, blues riffs, distortion, electronic feedback, virtuoso guitar soloists, and minimal instrumentation: bass, guitar, drums, and vocalist.

Funk

Arose as a popular dance style in 1960s-70s. Style traits included an intense groove created by short and repeated polyrhythmic phrases played by the rhythm and horn sections, passionately delivered gospel-like vocals that featured screams and grunts, a highly syncopated bass part, group vocal chants, and minimal chord changes, which garnered attention on rhythm instead of melody and harmony.

Rhythm section

In context of rock/pop, jazz, blues, and other related musical styles (i.e., Gospel and country), a group of instruments within a larger ensemble that functions as a unit and not 3-4 independent instruments. This group of instruments is mostly compromised of a drum set, bass, keyboard, and guitar. The role of the rhythm section is not limited to providing a steady tempo (speed of music) or a beat. (A beat marks musical time in terms of pulses.) It also contributes to musical harmony, color, and melody. The rhythm section musicians also listen sensitively to those who may be improvising, playing, or singing melody, and anticipate and/or react musically to what they are hearing.

Front line

In jazz bands, the wind section ( usually trumpet or cornet, trombone, and clarinet; sometimes add tenor saxophone) that plays or improvises melodies and is positioned in the front part of a stage during live performances. The back line comprises the rhythm section musicians.

Jazz

Jazz is a style of music arising out of New Orleans and first played primarily by African- Americans in the early twentieth century. It has since spread intentionally and interracially. Jazz embraced and interesting blend of mostly African (rhythm and vocalisms) and European traits (instruments, harmony, church hymns, and dance music). Ragtime and blues, others hybrids African-American styles, also influenced jazz, as did Caribbean, Central and continental South American music. The principal elements of jazz include improvisation, a highly spirited rhythmic beat, ever-increasing complexity of harmony and rhythm, and a propensity to embrace elements of other musical styles while simultaneously influencing those styles.

House band concept

Refers to the practice of 1960s record labels and producers hiring regular groups of professional musicians for recording sessions, resulting in the musical consistency from singer to singer and album to album.

Tin Pan Alley

Refers to the song publishing business.

Minimalism

Simple style of composition based on a methodical repetition of limited amounts of music, can produce a hypnotic state.

Improvisation

Spontaneous creation of musical ideas; idiomatic vocabulary of the jazz language.

Blue rock

The style emphasized a reliance on blues chord progressions,long and developed guitar improvisations, frequent use of riffs, heavy distortion, loud volume, and generally featured a rhythm section.