Bebop jazz

Charlie Parker

Hi, in this time I want to talk you about a little of the history of jazz. The Bebop movement. It started at Minton's playhouse located in New York around 1940. There Thelonious Monk (pianist), Kenny Clarke (drummer), Joe Guy (trumpet) and Nick Fenton (bass) were the house band and the club started working like an experimental place to explore music ideas, specially doing jam sessions that lasted all night long. Many important musicians went there like the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker to develop the Bebop movement. Unlike the swing period (big band era) now the musicians started to join in smaller groups ( like quartets, quintets or sextets). The instruments that they usually used were the drums ( to give the beat), the bass (doing walking), the piano or the guitar ( to do the chords of the song) and a melodic instrument like the saxophone or trumpet. This music is characterized by fast and frenetic tempo (the drums and the bass are running all the time), instrumental virtuosity (check out in youtube any video from Charlie Parker) and improvisation. Musically speaking, in the most of the songs the musicians play first the melody of the tune (think in example of a christmas song) and later start to improvise (doing phrases) along the chord structure of the song. Like I said before, improvise is an important thing in this king of music, but... What's improvise? improvise is a language, a musical language that works like any other oral language. It has phrases and sentences and have to be put in coherence to be understanded. Well going to the main theme of my post. With the birth of the Bebop the jazz started to be a chamera music, where the people can't dance anymore and it became a more intellectual and seriously music. Concluding, this movement were very important to the develop of the jazz music and it influenced a very large number of musicians.