Performer(s): Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
Culture/Origin: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Orchestration: trombone, guitar, bass guitar, tenor saxophone, drum set
Chapter 5 in the Wade text talks about improvisation in regards to structure. With Dr. Kang's permission, for this week's blog only, I have chosen jazz music, as improvisation is an important component to the structure of jazz. Although jazz originated in America, it is performed all over the world by different cultures.
Improvisation allows the performer(s) the freedom to compose new melodies and rhythms on the spot within the given material, such as chord progressions. Often times, improvers will borrow bits and pieces of melodies and rhythms either from the current song itself, or other songs as an homage to other performers and composers. With the addition of improvisation to jazz music, it allows for individual creativity of the performer(s) (Wade, 2013). The typical structure of jazz music is that it begins with a chorus (or the head), which can be followed up with more choruses, and then an improvisation section (where either one or more performers will improv for any length of time), before closing out with a repeat of all or part of the head (Smith, 2008).
Trombone Shorty and his band Orleans Avenue have been making a name for themselves in the world of today's jazz music. The song "Backatown" is the title track of Trombone Shorty's 2010 album, and represents the culture and neighborhood of his hometown of New Orleans (Hansen, 2010). At about the 2:00 mark in the video, you can hear Trombone Shorty begin the improv section of "Backatown". Now I gave you where the improv section is, but can you pick out where the choruses are? If so, how many?
I have actually gotten the privilege to have seen Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue perform live twice. The first was during my undergraduate studies in the spring of 2011 when they performed a concert at my university. A few of us even went out to dinner with the bassist in the video. The second time I saw them live was about a couple of years ago as part of our town's annual arts festival called Festivall. If you like jazz and Trombone Shorty is playing in your town, or close to, I highly recommend going and seeing him.
We've talked a lot about access points for students into different musics. I believe Trombone Shorty is a great access point into jazz music. His music includes elements of music that students would listen to on the radio while still maintaining its roots as jazz music.
References:
Hansen, L. (2010, May 1). Trombone Shorty: 'Backatown' New Orleans funk. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=126443793
Smith, S. (2008). Jazz theory (4th Rev. ed.) [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://www.cs.uml.edu/~stu/JazzTheory.pdf
Wade, B. C. (2013). Thinking musically: Experiencing music, expressing culture (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Hi Joshua,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts this week. I enjoyed reading about improvisation and jazz through your blog. I am not big into jazz music, however I do know this particular group so I suppose I am not as disengaged as I thought. You brought up a great point about improvisation being an important component to the structure of jazz. Even though jazz music was founded in the states, people from all over the world are playing this music. I believe the influences of music has really shaped and changed the authenticity of music in various cultures around the world. As cultures evolve and develop, I think they alter their musical styles based on what has been influencing them. Cultures hold true to their roots musically, just develop styles, genres, and techniques in time!