As the name suggests, ‘modern’ jazz is heavily dependant on what era you’re living in. Back in the 1940s, for example, bebop was considered modern compared to the big band swing that came before it. But, in 21st century jazz speak, we’re usually…
In the late 1960s jazz musicians began to use electric instruments and take on the influence of the rock music and funk that were popular at the time. Larry Coryell’s Free Spirits was an important band early in the new music’s development, as…
Free jazz developed in America during the late 1950s and early ‘60s, as musicians sought to break down and reject conventions within bebop and hard bop that they found restrictive, including harmony and chord changes, regular tempos, and compositional forms. Ornette Coleman’s ground-breaking…
Jazz has always included what Jelly Roll Morton referred to as a ‘Spanish tinge’, dating back to the music’s origins in the melting pot of New Orleans in the early 20th Century. In the late 1940s Dizzy Gillespie pioneered Afro-Cuban jazz with his…