Jazz Music on Your Cell Phone

Real Jazz Tunes as a Ringer

By far one of the most influential and complex of all true American music movements, jazz has spanned generations and spawned countless sub-genres of vocal and instrumental styles that have in turn gone on to influence modern rap and hard rock.

Early jazz emerged from the ragtime music popular in New Orleans during the early 1920s. At the same time, though, early Blues was finding its earthy homegrown sound in Mississippi with the likes of Robert Johnson. Both styles of music traveled, mostly north to large cities like Chicago and New York where artists collaborated with others and the styles evolved.

Jam and Improv

Outside of instrumental styles, though, both jazz and blues artists experimented freely with the range of sounds wrung from instruments when struck, plucked or stroked in a particular way. For example the use of a glass bottleneck drawn along the frets of a guitar produced a distinct slide sound that is indicative of the blues and follow-up country and rock and roll genres. This constant interpretation of jazz music, or improvisation, has led to a memorable jam sessions and notable artistic collaborations. Improv is an integral part of the jazz club scene where all night jam sessions are commonplace. Early jazz pioneers included Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.

Miles Davis Era

Later jazz styles were largely spearheaded thanks to the innovative styles of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk. This generation of jazz stylists created new jazz subgenres. Bop and hard bop along with acid jazz and free jazz borrowed urban sounds that later or simultaneously influenced funk and disco, even rock and roll. Herbie Hancock was one of the first jazz artists to get experimental with electronic and digital sound.

As much as jazz was a genre defined by instrumental interpretations, vocalists like Billy Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington were mainstays in the jazz world.

Contemporary Jazz

Modern true jazz artists are often classified in one of two ways: traditional or smooth jazz. The 70s and 80s fusion and avant-garde were relatively short-lived or morphed into more stable styles such as disco and funk. Wynton Marsalis is one of the more notable contemporary purists.

Modern jazz continues to build on itself with vocalists like Norah Jones, Diana Krall and even mainstream Harry Connick, Jr. The genre has direct lineage to forms of rap and hi-hop, R&B and rock and roll.