And in what way are they manifested?
As a standard, I take the content of textbook Jazz harmony, published in Berkeley PressDepends on what you mean by "jazz harmony".
Blue - not tempered - notes are one of the African DNA , but far from being the only one.True blue notes (as in partway between two equally tempered notes) are described as being present in African song, as well as many other folk musics. There are probably some other holdovers from African traditions.
I'm by no means a theoretician, but the some knowledge of Oriental and North African music, compelled for geographical reasons, has gradually made me more important to reconsider the views on the whole theme of harmony, including jazz. I think that the one who grew up in the original African culture should consider the question about harmony in the same way. On the one hand, the extremely strong influence of European music, including its theory, is impossible to deny; hence the legend that the girls go to the right, the boys to the left, the rhythm of jazz has roots in Africa, and its roots of harmony - in Europe. But this is a legend that roams the Internet ; because - with the other hand - there are musical facts that impossible to belittle -But modern jazz harmony (basically everything after Duke, Prez, Hawkins) is just basic Western harmony, with an emphasis on the subdominant and on seventh chords. Basically, in pretty much all jazz since the 1930s whatever African elements persist in the harmony are overwhelmed by the elements of Western harmony.
From the saxophonist, one could expect another answer; but tell the vocalist about it!So, for example, a flatted fifth or third is called a "blue note" when it's actually just a flatted fifth or flatted third.
It's amazing how you did not notice the relationship of rhythm and harmony! Try to play here the comp only with triads -Now rhythm is a different matter altogether. And truly, rhythm is more important than harmony most of the time in this music anyway.
I'm more than sure that you are strongly mistaken . I knew something about Joe Zawinul. And besides, to get acquainted with the works of Simha Arom and Gerhard Kubik very informative, and create a different perspectives. I did it.So I tend not to think to modal jazz as rooted directly into African tradition.
While it's true that a lot of jazz from the '60s has a strong relation with Africa this is mainly due to political reasons and black people recognition.
Beside that I would be surprised if the pioneers of modal jazz did some serious study in ethnomusicology. They were probably more interested in the freedom that the new form offered.
Depends on the style; back in the 90's. I wrote for jazz workshop modal heterophonic arrangements, where individual voices varied by improvising .You can find something in this book: https://www.amazon.fr/Interaction-Opening-Up-Jazz-Ensemble/dp/3892210535There's a lot of etherophony in African music that can generate some sort of spontaneous harmony, but that's totally different from what happens in jazz.
This is not a matter of terminology, but a matter of essence. European "harmony" was singled out from the polyphony of the Netherlands school without departing from the ticket office - in the same Europe. African people were forcibly taken out and subjected to the influence of foreign religious choral music, which gradually blended with their own cultural traditions. As a result - mutual musical influence, and not only in rhythm or blue notes.I think it's a flawed question: "harmony" (the way you or I use the word, meaning vertical analysis of triadic structures) is pretty much exclusively a European concept developed in the 1600s.
Here are a number of signs that the IMO evidence of non-classical vertical thinking:Summarizing:
Equal temperament: western origin
Chord structure consisting of stacking thirds: western origin
Chord movement (subdominant-dominant-tonic): western origin
Improvisation over chords: typical of baroque music, notably absent in the rest of the world
melody over a static chord (modal): called "pedal" in western music since 1600
Some observations:dam, here we go again another denier! .....harmony without rhythm is worthless! Please take note, the most sophisticated rhythms in the world are found where? AFRICA!..... rhythm is KING!
what many ignorant people overlook is that African music is not just poly rhythmic but, also poly meter, wrap your head around that, and this is what precisely makes the magic of jazz from traditional new orleans to bebop to traine, and this also makes the derivatives modern music so dance-able (to some)!...... the great jazz music Ellis Marsalis said to us "all modern music comes from new orleans!"
yes, Aldophe Sax did invent the saxophone and caught hell for doing it but, it was Coleman Hawkins that saved it from the obscurity of the circus! also, jazz was swingin and expressive well before it incorporated tonic dominant harmonic progressions! being from New Orleans we have many rhythms that i grew up tapping beats as a kid that i later found out are very primitive skeletons of what moderns call BACK BEAT!
That's fair enough. This isn't: ". . . it obvious some people have serious problems giving credit to some because it would open up an re evauation of everything we are taught!" If you're going to write something like that, you should at least be honestly forthright, and not hide behind weasel words like 'some people' and 'credit to some.' That allows everyone to tiptoe around what you clearly meant. Only Pete addressed it, but in an equally round-about way. How did we all become so friggin scared?at the same time, i must mention that improvisation is still very much a big task with or without harmony and that my intentions arent to downplay the importance of european harmony! i am just not willing to say that jazz isnt jazz without it!.......voila!
Many of the old "jazz" players called their music "ragtime". If you start listening to records from 1915 and keep listening through to 1925, you will gradually hear the emergence of jazz from ragtime. But it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly when and how that transition occurs. There is no bright line distinguishing the two styles. Ragtime just very gradually and almost imperceptibly becomes jazz. The only way to realize this is to actually do that listening exercise.To address some ignorant ideas I've seen in this breathtaking thread: [...] Ragtime is not jazz.
I said your argument is ignorant, but hey, if the shoe fits...We are lucky, we have DanPerez who knows everything (even when his nose is, according to his profile picture) and who says that I'm ignorant
A false dichotomy is when you try to reduce a complex issue into two mutually exclusive statements. What you're confusing here is an issue of definition. Tonal harmony is by definition a system of European rules, and that is what is functionally meant by "harmony" in this context. As such, it is not African or anything other than European.and a couple of lines after he writes:
"European harmony" is redundant, and "African harmony" doesn't exist.
Which, frankly, looks a lot like my "simplistic false dichotomy".
The chord in question clearly has influence that does not stem from Europe. I7 was not a common tonic chord in European concert music, and from the time of Monteverdi onward, demonstrated dominant function, even before tonal harmony solidified the idea of function.The first chord in a blues is a chord made stacking thirds, as per European harmony rules: there are no other musical systems we are aware of that ever had a chord that's the same as an European dominant chord. No matter where you put it or how you use it, it's a chord that has his roots in European tradition.
Your English is fine, so you're qualified. This straw man argument is also not in dispute. In fact, I said something very similar in my first post. You've scored a good point in an argument that's not taking place here!I find "idiotic" (am I qualified to use your lexicon, Dan?) the simple single idea that "European harmony" is considered as set in stone, when it's clearly something that constantly evolves with the taste of people.
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bike.If only we think about the blues chords as triads and not as dominant chords we have an harmony that's as old as harmony itself.
This is plausible. A musician's output is the sum total of musical experience and the creative avenues that experience opens. The result of commonly using I7 as a tonic did not occur until after musicians were commonly exposed to both European tradition and African slave chants/field songs.I find more logical to suppose that someone, someday just played everything as dominant chords and discovered that it sounded good, than postulating some now-extinct African musical system that reached the same result in a totally indipendent way.
The Real Book isn't the source, so citing it is puerile. You can cite the tunes without reproach. While I appreciate a good ad hominem as much as the next guy, if you've seen me on youtube, you know I don't give a rat's *** about appearing cool hahaha. Point of interest, I have no problem with using the Real Book as a resource when there's no time to learn a tune properly. I've owned a couple through the years. You're off the mark with your ad hominem, though. That's not my house.BTW: I'm not ashamed to cite Real Books, as -most- of the harmonic content is correct, as you may verify listening to the records (which, I also cited, but you were mainly interested in your badassery to notice). And you're not an Accademic, isn't it? You just wanted to look cool ignoring the content of what was written and bash whoever dared to name a Real Book. I won't ask what are the spiraled books in the library behind you in your Youtube videos...
Oh, was that you who didn't know those tunes? I didn't check. I don't know all of them, myself, but the basics are the basics. If you haven't heard those tunes, you're doing yourself a disservice. You can participate in the discussion, sure... anyone can have an opinion. Without knowing at least a cross-section of the basic tunes, though, you demonstrate that your opinion is not well-informed. At least one of them should have been very familiar to you, as the selection covers a wide swath of jazz history, which is what you are opining on.BTW: I'm not ashamed if I haven't listened to every single jazz video on Youtube as I listened enough to have a more-than-vague idea of the history of music. I feel "qualified" as anyone if I want to participate to a public discussion.
It's a reactionary attitude, mirroring the one I was responding to.BTW: you should really reconsider your attitude, it will make your liver sore...
Haha, sorry.So...
Setting aside invective...
Sometimes I think it has dual function like that, especially as used in Bird blues, but it's also clearly a tonic function. For example, when the tune resolves to it at the end, or in the case of a blues that just stays on the I7 for the first 8 bars or even the whole form....let's consider the (to me) interesting case of I7 as the first chord in a 12 bar blues.
A couple of observations:
- A C7 in the first bar of a C blues would tend to lead toward the F in the second or fifth bar, no? So from the "functional harmony" standpoint, couldn't you justify the use of the 7 chord in that 1st bar because of the F7 chord it leads to?
This is a really interesting idea that I haven't found before. Where'd you come across it?- If you accept the hypothesis that some practicioners of early African-American music were using a sort of "pentatonic" scale wherein semitones are widened to avoid the use of semitones (trying to divide the octave into more even intervals), then I think it would follow that you would find "thirds" played or sung somewhat flat to our ears, "fourths" played or sung somewhat sharp, and "sevenths" played or sung somewhat flat to European ears.
Yeah, that's probably the right way to say it, IMO.Maybe the closest thing to accuracy would be to say that African MELODIC practices were adjusted to fit European harmonic practices, and that elements of European harmonic practices were adjusted to fit the African-derived melodic practices.
+100 Yes, obviously, of course. When people flirt with denying this fact it doesn't come across well at all.Finally, to address in plain words the racial aspects of this question:
I think anyone even a wee bit familiar with the history of this music understands that the major work in the development of jazz at least through the 1940s was done by African American musicians. The fact that these musicians were largely working in a European-derived harmonic framework does not mean that they were not the major movers in creating this music. If you think the fact that European harmony was used in creating this music in some way invalidates the creation of those African American musicians, that's like saying that if an American Indian artist paints subjects from his experience using paints bought from France, that his art is really French in origin. Or that the art of John Coltrane, created using an instrument invented in Belgium, is clearly of Belgian origin. Or that Einstein, who used Arabic numerals and algebra (both invented by Arabs) was therefore essentially an Arab.