Falling Up

This article investigates melodic figures and harmonic sequences that miraculously only step up to illuminate an aesthetic lineage that connects gospel to electronic dance music. It argues that the synth-risers and ever-opening filters of contemporary euphoric rave music like happy-hardcore and uplifting-trance find precedence in compositional devices that made their way into funk/soul and disco/garage from Black gospel music, and that these gospel inventions were derived from the Afro-diasporic ring-shout. Cognitive linguistic and psychoacoustic theories premise an analytical framework for musical representations of endless ascent. Through close readings of representative recordings—a 1927 Pentecostal sermon by Reverend Sister Mary Nelson, James Cleveland’s “Peace Be Still,” Chic’s “Le Freak,” Trussel’s “Love Injection,” and DJ Hixxy’s remix of Paradise's “I See the Light”—the article examines various historical intersections with parlour music, European art music, and modal jazz, and suggests that musical ascent has a non-causal but, nevertheless, objective relationship with a type of spiritual transcendence.

The Fragmentation of Jazz Styles

In the post–World War II years, jazz started to split off into many different directions, spurring a fragmentation that expanded the creative range of the idiom but caused long-lasting divisions among artists and fans (the so-called jazz wars). The first fault lines emerged between traditional and modern jazz exponents, but during the 1950s and early 1960s, many different styles emerged—including cool jazz, hard bop, soul jazz, West Coast jazz, modal jazz, Third Stream jazz, and various experimental approaches. This chapter traces these stylistic developments, and their leading exponents. It looks at the life and work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, and Bill Evans, among other major jazz stars of the era, and assesses key albums such as Kind of Blue, Mingus Ah Um, and Giant Steps.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis is consistently regarded as one of the most iconic, impactful, and creative innovators in the history of jazz. He is recognized by most jazz historians as being a key player in the development of several of the major subgenres in modern jazz. As a bandleader, Miles Davis repeatedly created some of the most cohesive, integrated, and innovative groups in jazz. Many of the musicians who joined Miles Davis groups became major voices in jazz, both with his groups and as leaders; a short list includes John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Chick Corea. Born Miles Dewey Davis III on 26 May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, Davis was the son of a dentist and was raised in a middle-class lifestyle, yet one amid the endemic racism of the Midwest in the 1930s. While still in his teens, Davis moved to New York City and almost immediately was playing music with the progenitors of the modern jazz movement. After replacing Dizzy Gillespie in the frontline of Charlie Parker’s quintet, Davis went on to lead his own mid-sized group, the Miles Davis Nonet, which explored a novel approach to modern jazz that was later associated with the cool jazz subgenre. Never willing to compromise and striving for continual development, Davis fought through heroin addiction in the early 1950s and produced music in 1954 associated with the development of yet another subgenre, hard bop. With the critical and popular success of a 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, Davis ascended to the highest ranks of jazz stardom, and formed the 1950s Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane, regarded as a model of modern jazz interaction and performance. 1959 saw Davis exploring another new approach termed modal jazz and producing what is commonly regarded as the best-selling record in the history of jazz, Kind of Blue. By 1964, Davis had retooled his quintet to produce the Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s (known to many as Davis’s Second Great Quintet), featuring Wayne Shorter, which created an approach to composition and group improvisation subsequently referred to as post bop. Refusing to become static creatively, Davis was innovative in the application of popular and rock music influences to jazz, helping lead the way toward the development of jazz-rock fusion. Davis continued to explore electronic forms of jazz until his death in 1991. This article generally privileges scholarly writing and collections to best aid the Miles Davis researcher.

Booker Little, Joe Henderson, and Woody Shaw

The compositions of Booker Little, Joe Henderson, and Woody Shaw use characteristic harmonies of tonal jazz (major seventh, minor seventh, dominant seventh) that nevertheless progress in ways that do not always reflect earlier tonal jazz practices. Booker Little’s career, if short-lived, offered compositions with formal and harmonic ambiguity. His “We Speak” (Out Front) combines the faster harmonic rhythm of postbop jazz with slower harmonic rhythm characteristic of modal jazz, and his three-horn scoring reflects the manner in which Little negotiates both. Joe Henderson’s “Punjab” (In ’n Out) uses axis progressions in an 18-bar form with built-in metrical ambiguities. Woody Shaw’s “Beyond All Limits” (Larry Young, Unity) exhibits a melodic structure characterized by pentatonic and perfect fourth designs, appearing within an AABA form consisting of 14-bar A sections and a 12-bar B section.

Postbop

Innovations in postbop jazz compositions of the 1960s occurred in several dimensions, in the areas of harmony, form, melody, and cadence. Postbop composers abandoned or muted many techniques of tonal jazz, the jazz standards and original compositions that defined small-group repertory through the 1950s: single-key orientation, schematic 32-bar frameworks (in AABA or ABAC forms, often with tonal cadences at the ends of constituent 8-bar sections), and tonal harmonic progressions. Attributes of postbop compositions rely on a series of family resemblances that include axis progressions (harmonic, melodic, or bass sequences by a single interval, such as major third or minor third); absence or suppression of functional harmonic progressions; common structure progressions; bass pedal points beneath shifting harmonies; and harmonic rhythm with chord changes every half-measure, measure, or every two measures. The last feature distinguishes postbop jazz from that of so-called modal jazz, which relies on a slower harmonic rhythm. One of the significant precedents for postbop jazz is to be found in John Coltrane’s 1959 composition “Giant Steps,” which provided potent alternatives to more conventional tonal designs.

Davis, Miles Dewey III, (1926–1991)

Jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis is one of the most significant artists in the history of jazz. He stood at the forefront of post-World War II developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, postbop, and jazz-rock fusion. His trumpet playing was renowned for a breadth of timbres, unique spatial arrangements, and emphatic use of the middle register. As a bandleader he hired and subsequently launched the careers of some of the most important and innovative jazz artists, including tenor saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, pianists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, guitarists John McLaughlin, Mike Stern, and John Scofield, drummer Tony Williams, and bassist Marcus Miller. His 1959 recording Kind of Blue remains one of the best-selling, most critically acclaimed, and iconic jazz albums of all time.

The effect of polyphonization of Hüseyni maqam melodies within modal jazz harmony and dorian scale on success in piano educationHüseyni makamı içerikli ezgilerin modal caz armonisi ve doryen dizi kapsamında çokseslendirilmesinin piyano eğitiminde başarıya etkisi

This research aims to determine effects of polyphonic performance of Turkish Music melodies containing Hüseyni maqam with modal jazz harmony on undergraduate piano students. Accordingly, “one group pretest-posttest pattern”,one of the weak experimental modals, has been used in the survey. In scope of the research, a piano curriculum based upon the components such as a general information about modal jazz harmony and chord setups has been applied to the students over two studies that are composed with dorian scale and two folk songs performed polyphonically in Hüseyni maqam. The effect of the applied piano curriculum on students’ piano performance has been analysed. As Hüseyni maqam in Turkish Music resembles dorian scale, the studies used for the curriculum have been made based on dorian scale. A six-week curriculum was applied to the students in the process level of the experimental period of the research. The pretest-posttest piano performance success of the students has been analysed by using piano performance rating form prepared pursuant to learned opinion. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and r effect size were calculated in the analysis process. As a result of the survey, it has been determined that the piano curriculum based on dorian scale and modal jazz harmony, enhances the piano performance success of the students noteworthily. Moreover, it has also been identified that the influence quantity is in a high level. ÖzetAraştırma ile Türkiye'de lisans düzeyinde piyano eğitimi gören öğrenciler için modal caz armonisi ile çokseslendirilen Hüseyni makamı içerikli Türk müziği ezgilerinin, öğrencilerin piyano performanslarına olan etkisinin belirlenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda, araştırmada zayıf deneysel modellerden "tek grup ön test-son test desen" kullanılmıştır. Araştırma kapsamında, öğrencilere; doryen dizi ile bestelenmiş iki etüt ve çokseslendirilmiş iki hüseyni içerikli türkü üzerinden modal caz armonisine ilişkin genel bilgiler, akor kurulumları vb. öğelere dayanan bir piyano öğretim programı uygulanmıştır. Uygulanan piyano öğretim programının öğrenci piyano performanslarına olan etkisi incelenmiştir. Türk müziğindeki Hüseyni makamı dizisi ile doryen dizi benzerlik gösterdiği için öğretim programında kullanılan etütler, doryen dizi temel alınarak oluşturulmuştur. Araştırmanın deneysel sürecinin işlem evresinde öğrencilere altı haftalık piyano öğretim programı uygulanmıştır. Öğrencilerin öntest-sontest piyano performans başarıları, uzman görüşleri çerçevesinde oluşturulan piyano performans değerlendirme formu uygulanarak incelenmiştir. Analiz işlemlerinde Wilcoxon İşaretli Sıralar testi ve r etki büyüklüğü değerleri hesaplanmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda doryen dizi ile modal caz armonisine dayanan piyano öğretim programının, öğrencilerin piyano performans başarılarını anlamlı düzeyde arttırdığı tespit edilmiştir. Etki büyüklüklerinin ise yüksek düzeyde olduğu belirlenmiştir.