ROCK MEDLEY: BLUES - OLD JAZZ - BOOGIE WOOGIE - JIVE - ROCK & ROLL

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1 ROCK MEDLEY: BLUES - OLD JAZZ - BOOGIE WOOGIE - JIVE - ROCK & ROLL BLUES The blues was born and developed from the black slave community, in the southern regions of the United States. The Blues sings about disparate topics that were directly inspired by their situation in slavery. Many styles of modern popular music were derived from or were strongly influenced by the blues. Although ragtime, jazz, and spiritual did not have the same origin as the blues, these three African American musical styles were strongly influenced by each other. Other genres are derivations or were otherwise strongly influenced by these styles: bluegrass, rhythm and blues, talking blues, rock and roll, hard rock, heavy metal, hip-hip, pop music in general. Blues derives from the expression to have the blue devils, which means to be sad, and for this reason, in the English language the color blue is commonly associated with suffering, sadness, misery, and melancholy. One of the most important ancestors of the blues is certainly the spiritual, a form of devotional singing often referring to the condition of humanity in general and its relationship with God. The melody or singing has an antiphonal system of question-answer, usually divided into three parts: question in the first 4 measures, answer in the next 4, and conclusion in the last. The first recordings of black secular music saw light in the 20s, and it was the record companies who called the blues the folk music of black people. The idea worked, and in the big cities, New York and Chicago, the number of professional singers of color multiplied (especially female singers, transported from street sideshows to vaudeville) that casually betrayed the authentic spirit of the blues and sold a watered-down version from the western variety and, increasingly, from jazz. In Memphis, black musicians would gather in small colored bands, equipped with traditional and homemade instruments. It is no coincidence that the jug originated here (around 1926). The term Blues derives from the English expression to feel blue, equivalent to saying to be gloomy. The blues is a popular song of African American origin and coarse character. Derived from the songs of slave workers (work songs), it was established around 1910 and entered as an essential component in the history of jazz.

2 JAZZ Jazz is a form of music that was born between the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s as a social phenomenon from African American slaves who found comfort and hope in their souls, collectively and individually improvising songs. Jazz is recognized as a musical phenomenon only between 1800 and Jazz was developed in the United States, first in the southern plantations, and then with jam sessions (collective improvisations of musicians who composed music by ear ), groups of musicians (maximum 3 instruments), and with jazz bands in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was born as a vocal musical style because it was sung while working on the plantations or during railroad and street construction, to give rhythm and coordinate the movements of the work (in fact, the pace was binary, resulting for example from the collection of cotton and placing it in the basket). Jazz also arrived in Chicago with Louis Armstrong, and then also in Europe where it had great success. Over the years it was modified and also became a commercial musical style with swing until the traditional African American culture of the first jazz band was resumed with bebop. There are two primary forms in jazz: the blues, in 12 beats (3 musical phrases), and the song, in 32 beats. The essence of improvisation is in the melody, which is due to the fact that the medium of prototypical (original) jazz is the brass group, in which, since each player can produce only one note at a time, the solos are necessarily melodic. The piano came later, still copying the characteristics of all the brass instruments. From the earliest times jazz had incorporated in its language the genres of American popular music, ragtime, blues, pop music, and classical music, especially from the US. In more recent times, jazz was mixed with all modern musical genres even outside the US, like the samba, Caribbean music, and rock. ROCK & ROLL Rock & roll: 4/4 music, born from a mix of black blues rhythms and white country rhythms. Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, or rock n roll) is a genre of popular music born in the United States between the end of the 40s and the beginning of the 50s, originating from the blues, bluegrass, country, R&B, jazz, gospel, and, to a lesser extent, folk. Rock and roll is a term of English origin with the literal meaning of rocking and rolling. It was in stark contrast to the prim music of the time with inflections of swing from mythical characters such as Dean Martin and Sinatra. Rock and roll therefore unleashed a real revolution, with its provocative and violent sound, joined with its rousing rhythmic pace. In the 50s and 60s, for contemporaries, rock was also an expression of contempt and anger at the power exercised by parents.

3 Elvis Presley: baptized as the king of rock n roll, was surely the most important standard bearer of this genre; with his piece Forever Young and Beautiful, he personified the rock myth of eternal youth. The term rockabilly often refers to the type of rock and roll played and recorded during the middle of the 50s by white singers like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. It has its origin in the union of the words rock and roll, and hillbilly; this latter term, which literally means mountain goat, was originally used to describe a primordial form of country music that was very popular among white audiences. Many other rock n roll singers of the era turned away from the rhythm of black music and the blues tradition, making their music more attractive to white audiences; generally these are not defined as rockabilly. The roots of Rock and Roll: Swing is the grandfather and Boogie Woogie is the father. Exploding in the middle of the 50s in the United States, Rock and Roll derives from the Lindy Hop, which was in turn born from the Swing in the 20s; the Lindy Hop was the first to also insert acrobatic elements in couples dance. It was then modified around 1940, due to the need to dance to faster and more rhythmic music; and so, shortly after, the Boogiewoogie made its appearance. When rock and roll music overwhelmed the competition around 1955, the Boogie-woogie was definitively transformed for the last time into a more vibrant and competitive dance, Rock n Roll. The special kick : here is what characterizes Rock and Roll more than any other movement. The kicks, however, must be brought forward in a dry and decisive manner, usually with the man toward the outside (starting with the left leg) and the woman toward the inside (starting with the right leg). The base step of Rock n Roll, in fact, is just the classic kick ball change (also present in Jazz and Lindy Hop dances) that consists, while the first leg is kicking, of a partial transfer of body weight to the toe of the second foot; vice versa the second kick is done from the leg that was originally the standing leg, while the kicking leg this time supports the body: a kind of change of the leg, just as the name says. In acrobatic Rock n Roll two steps are performed in syncopation: a continuous bouncing from one foot to the other (left foot man, right foot woman and vice versa). Another typical figuration is the break-away: the woman performs a separation and return, without letting go of the man s hold. She moves away for the entire length of her arm plus the length of her partner s arm, maintaining the rhythm of the dance; then she returns, creating a spring effect with this motion. Air-step: dynamic coordination of the woman in a number of turns and pirouettes. Regarding the position of the couple, there was not a precise rule, in the sense that the free interpretation meant that from time to time the couples would assume open, closed, and back-to-back positions. This key condition of freedom allowed for more acrobatic dancers to insert risky and dangerous figures: somersaults, throws of every kind, and lifts of the woman. In this way the foundations of rock n roll are presented.

4 BOOGIE-WOOGIE: 4/4 The term Boogie Woogie means turning together. It is in fact a couples dance and the name derives from the fact that the dancers are seen to perform a continuous reel of turns. This type of dance was born at the end of the 30s and it spread to its maximum in the USA, on the eve of the Second World War, until it became, in a very profound way, a part of the life and habits of Americans, both as a musical style and as a dance. It became very popular starting in the 40s, and as a dance it is part of the circle of spontaneous, unstructured dances, derived from the mixture of the styles of Charleston, Lindy Hop, Big Apple, Black Bottom, and Swing, with deep origins in the historical roots of the black people of America. As a dance it is very close to rock n roll, especially for its captivating rhythm. The boogie is presented as a pianistic style of jazz, an instrumental derivation of the blues evidenced by isolated chords, scales, and fast arpeggios. The words of the first successful songs like Pinetop s Boogie Woogie, were often the instructions to perform the dance. The Boogie is mostly characterized by a powerful style, very lively and effective. Most of the time the Boogie-Woogie was played on piano; with the left hand reproducing notes in a repetitive and syncopated manner, providing the characteristic powerful and regular rhythm of this musical style, while with the right hand often a simple melody was improvised. From this specific technique, with each hand playing a different role, a rhythmic and melodic music emerged. The predominant instrument in this music is the piano, accompanied by the bass and drums. It is characterized by a bass accompaniment performed with the left hand, the so-called ground bass, and by trills and embellishments performed with the right hand. Sometimes it is called eight to the bar (eight is for the division of the bar into eight bass notes). The Boogie-Woogie is a musical style born in the USA in the 30s and 40s, coming from the blues then developed into a faster and more rhythmic form by black pianists. The maximum spread came on the eve of the Second World War and, through the American troops, it arrived in Europe. The Boogie-Woogie is a couples dance with choreographic figures and acrobatic feats. JIVE : 4/4 The jive is one of the dances belonging to the JITTERBUG genre (Jitter = neurasthenia), developed in the USA in the period from the end of the First World War to the eve of the Second World War. The jive is a modern standardized version of the boogie woogie, so much so that after some years it became part of Latin American dance competitions. The jive is very elegant, softer than the old boogie woogie. It has a greater gesture, but the

5 most important thing is the fact that it was standardized throughout the world in the same way. The jive is a dance inserted as part of the five Latin Dances for competition. In its earliest form, the jive was danced exclusively by black dancers. Successively it was taken over by white dancers who added numerous figures and brought technical changes that complicated the execution and made it more difficult. In fact, in studies carried out on the jive as a dance, it became clear that it did not create specific figures, but rather it synthesized an assembly of everything that had been produced by dances in the Jitterbug genre (with the rhythm frequently shortened). After the Second World War, jazz became the base of rock n roll, while jive was subject to a series of revisions and stylistic refinements that have made it still to this day one of the most prestigious dances internationally.