Later when jazz musicians moved north, they didn't march but sat and played, the rest is history.

All the same, improv was in music way before jazz.

Did somebody invent it, no way.

On the jazz side you have Larry Coryell, Tony Williams, Miles etc 

On the rock side you have Cream and Hendrix

In Britian you have people in between like McLaughlin, Soft Machine Brian Auger etc

I'm sure there are people who will argue about who was the first jazz rocker, or the first be-bopper etc and I am sure soeone would point out who is missing from the above mentioned names.

When those musicians moved north what we now call dixieland developed, basically similar to original new orleans jazz but now they are seated so you could include a drum set and a piano player and replace the tuba with a string bass. From there you get jazz.

I'm sure other types of improvisation came in as things rolled along, gypsy music for instance or later Indian music.

QUOTE=Atavachron]Well I certainly agree improvisation has always been a big part of all music, but that being the case, then what would distinguish the development of jazz as jazz (other than an American art form) ?


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js wrote: Smack?     ..oh yeah, smack.  Thats probably how you got bop, cool, hard bop, post bop, avant-garde and lots of fusion too, basically a lot of modern jazz. Possibly part of the nu jazz scene too, I don't know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would have loved to have the wagons the bands that they all piled on to and go around town playing. They do it on trucks now, well Kermit Ruffins still does. Would have also loveed to have seen the old Dancehalls or bars where they played. I can tell you one thing, they did not sit around politely clapping like today which I find pretentious personally, if people start jumping around and yellin' for the band watch the band play better and the night will be great fun. Isn't that was Jazz is all about or music for that matter.  Buddy Bolden was the man they all said that his trumpet rang around New Orleans, bloody sad by the time they recorded him he had lost his teeth  Not much chop for a trumpet....no teeth

 

 

I guess you've heard Buddy Rich's famous diatribes against his players who would move to close to the mic, ouch.

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure I'd agree with this. As far as I understand, it has only been the past couple hundred years where improvisation has been removed from classical music. I've only become aware of this recently, and it's really interesting to me as well. My source is a composer family member, so I'm not incredibly confident in this fact, but it seems to be corroborate-able on the internet.

You could probably read more about how Baroque music notation worked by googling "ground bass baroque music" .

Ground bass was a notation similar to today's chord charts in that the performer was given a bass line and some interval symbols that were somewhat similar to spelling out chords. The performer was supposed to know how to improvise the music around that structure.

 

 

Elsewhere, in folk and medieval music, improv was common....

Classical music became a purely written form later after the actual classical period passed. 

After classical music had faded from the public interest during the romantic period, preservationists sought to bring it back to the concert stage, once they brought it back to the stage, its popularity grew from there.

Then we hear this old Parker record and our jaws just dropped you know, so this is what be-bop was really like, it was wild and intense and the crowd was sort of joining in.