Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note.<1>
From its early development until the present, jazz has also incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music.<2> The word jazz began as a West Coast slang term of uncertain derivation and was first used to refer to music in Chicago in about 1915; for the origin and history, see Jazz (word).
Jazz has, from its early 20th century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, from New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s, big band-style swing from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s, a variety of Latin jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s and late 1980s developments such as acid jazz, which blended jazz influences into funk and hip-hop. As the music has spread around the world it has drawn on local national and regional musical cultures, its aesthetics being adapted to its varied environments and giving rise to many distinctive styles.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JazzBluegrass as a style developed during the mid-1940s. Because of war rationing, recording was limited during that time, and it would be most accurate to say that bluegrass was played some time after World War II, but no earlier. As with any musical genre, no one person can claim to have "invented" it. Rather, bluegrass is an amalgam of old-time music, country, ragtime and jazz. Nevertheless, bluegrass's beginnings can be traced to one band. Today Bill Monroe is referred to as the "founding father" of bluegrass music; the bluegrass style was named for his band, the Blue Grass Boys, formed in 1939. The 1945 addition of banjo player Earl Scruggs, who played with a three-finger roll originally developed by Snuffy Jenkins, but now almost universally known as "Scruggs style", is considered the key moment in the development of this genre. (Jenkins, in interviews, has renounced his role as being the one who invented the three-finger roll, and has said he learned it from Rex Brooks and Smith Hammett in the 1920s.)
Monroe's 1946 to 1948 band, which featured Scruggs, singer-guitarist Lester Flatt, fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Howard Watts, also known as "Cedric Rainwater,"—sometimes called "the original bluegrass band"—created the definitive sound and instrumental configuration that remains a model to this day. By some arguments, as long as the Blue Grass Boys were the only band playing this music, it was just their unique style; it could not be considered a musical style until other bands began performing in similar fashion. In 1947, the Stanley Brothers recorded the traditional song "Molly and Tenbrooks" in the Blue Grass Boys' style, and this could also be pointed to as the beginning of bluegrass as a style. As Ralph Stanley himself says about the origins of the genre:
"Oh, (Monroe) was the first. But it wasn't called bluegrass back then. It was just called old time mountain hillbilly music. When they started doing the bluegrass festivals in 1965, everybody got together and wanted to know what to call the show, y'know. It was decided that since Bill was the oldest man, and was from the Bluegrass state of Kentucky and he had the Blue Grass Boys, it would be called 'bluegrass.'"<2>
Bluegrass was generally used for dancing in the rural areas, a dancing style known as buckdancing, flat-footing, or clogging, but eventually spread to more urban areas and became more popular. Bluegrass is typically performed on acoustic, non-electric instruments, since the genre originated before widespread availability of household electricity. Electric instruments were frowned upon by conservative country music people, like the founder of the Grand Ole Opry, George D. Hay. In 1948, bluegrass emerged as a genre within the post-war, country music industry. This period of time is characterized as the golden era, or wellsprings of "traditional bluegrass."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluegrass_musicI am going with Jazz after reading these entries and the other replies to this thread. :) :hi:
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