African American Jazz Greats Say Jazz is Derived From White European Classical!

[Snouter]

Bary Harris, Miles Davis, etc. indicate "Classical" was actually "Jazz" since the composer and performers naturally improvised but since certain performances were transcribed note for note, (no recording in the 1700's obviously, the White man had not invented that yet) musicians then simply played what was written note for note. That is fine as a learning tool and a way to study the theory and the chord changes. But the Black musicians like Miles Davis along with ****** Bill Evans had to resurrect live European Classical and the result was American Jazz

 

[Erinwltr]

Snout, have one last drink and go to bed. M'kay?

 

[fncceo]

Jazz didn't originate with the Bop Jazz of Davis, Coltrane, and Parker. The roots of Jazz lay in Ragtime and even older African ethnic music. Jazz has unique music forms, such as the Tresilo, that don't exist in European Classical Music.

Jazz, however, isn't exclusively a Black Music genre. Jazz was influenced by many other forms of music including Spanish Habanera, and Jewish Klezmer,

Jazz is, however, one of the purest examples of an American art form ... fusing influences from the many cultures that make up our national culture.

 

[badger2]

Post #3 is correct. See Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Development.

 

[badger2]

'Even the early writings of sympathetic composers like Aaron Copland, Edward Burlingame Hill, Constant Lambert, Darius Milhaud, and Virgil Thomson and of critics like Alfred Frankenstein and Masimo Mila failed to capture the elusive essentials of jazz, or they fell prey to basic misconceptions. For the rest there was an avalanche of derogatory articles and pamphlets by popular writers who fantasized relentlessly over the pernicious influence of jazz on music and morals. Moreover, the statements of many jazz musicians themselves in the early years of jazz encouraged others to treat the subject lightly.

After 1930, however, there appeared a number of books that were not only sympathetic and serious in intent but revealed an understanding of the essential nature of jazz: Robert Goffin's Aux Frontieres du Jazz (1932), Wilder Hobson's American Jazz Music (1939), Frederic Ramsey's and Charles Edward Smith's Jazzmen (1939), and Hugues Panassie's The Real Jazz (1942). But even in these books, a musician interested in learning about jazz as a (musical language [italics]) could learn very little about its harmonic and rhythmic syntax, its structural organization, its textures and sonorities, or what in technical terms made one performance better than another. In addition, these authors were so committed to propagating the absolute primacy of New Orleans jazz that their books were anything but comprehensive.'
(Schuller, G, Early Jazz, pp. vii-viii)