William Parker (musician)
William Parker is an American free jazz double bassist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Parker was born in the New York City, he was not formally trained as a classical player, though he did study with Jimmy Garrison, Richard Davis, Wilbur Ware and learned the tradition. Parker is one of few jazz bassists who plays arco, he plays several other instruments from around the world, including the West African kora. While Parker has been active since the early 1970s, he is a prominent and influential musician in the New York City experimental jazz scene, has appeared at music festivals around the world, including the Guelph Jazz Festival in southern Ontario. Parker first came to public attention with pianist Cecil Taylor, he has long been a member in Peter Brötzmann's groups. Parker played with various other groups that included Paul Murphy whenever he was in town shopping for new drum sticks, he is a member of the cooperative Other Dimensions In Music. Together with his wife, Patricia Nicholson Parker, he organizes the annual Vision Festival in New York City.
The album Sound Unity by the William Parker Quartet was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005. His August 2008 CD Double Sunrise over Neptune was listed as one of the top 10 2008 Jazz CDs at Amazon. Released in 2008, Petit Oiseau was chosen as one of the best jazz disks of 2008 by The Wall Street Journal, the BBC's Radio Three, The Village Voice, PopMatters. In 2006, Parker was awarded the Resounding Vision Award from Nameless Sound. In March 2007, his book, Who Owns Music?, was published by buddy's knife jazzedition in Cologne, Germany. Who Owns Music? assembles his political thoughts and musicological essays. In June 2011, Parker's second book, Conversations, a collection of interviews with notable free jazz musicians and forward thinkers from the African-American community, was published by Rogue Art. Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace Flowers Grow in My Room In Order to Survive - with In Order to Survive Testimony - solo Compassion Seizes Bed-Stuy - with In Order to Survive Sunrise in the Tone World - with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Lifting the Sanctions Mass for the Healing of the World - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Zen Mountains/Zen Streets: A Duet For Poet & Improvised Bass The Peach Orchard - with In Order to Survive Posium Pendasem - In Order to Survive Fractured Dimensions Mayor of Punkville - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Painter's Spring - with Hamid Drake & Daniel Carter Piercing the Veil - with Hamid Drake O'Neal's Porch Song Cycle Bob's Pink Cadillac - Clarinet Trio The Last Dances - with Hamid Drake & Anders Gahnold Raincoat in the River - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra... and William Danced Raining on the Moon Eloping with the Sun - with Joe Morris & Hamid Drake Scrapbook - Violin Trio Spontaneous - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Luc's Lantern Requiem - Bass Quartet with Charles Gayle Sound Unity Long Hidden: The Olmec Series For Percy Heath - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Alphaville Suite The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Summer Snow - with Hamid Drake Corn Meal Dance - with Raining on the Moon Great Spirit - with Raining on the Moon Double Sunrise Over Neptune Petit Oiseau Beyond Quantum - with Anthony Braxton and Milford Graves Winter Sun Crying - with the ICI Ensemble Tender Exploration - with Hamid Drake & Conny Bauer Prism - with Ninni Morgia I Plan to Stay a Believer - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Uncle Joe's Spirit House - William Parker Organ Quartet Essence of Ellington - with the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra Centering.
Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987 Live In Wroclove Wood Flute Songs For Those Who Are, Still To Roy - with Oliver Lake Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind - with Cooper-Moore & Lisa Sokolov Bass Duo -- duos with Stefano Scodanibbio.
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1970s. Used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was used interchangeably with alternative rock; as grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term. Sometimes used interchangeably with "guitar pop rock", in the mid-1980s, the term "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels; some prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. During the 1990s, grunge bands broke into the mainstream, the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning.
The term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s, indie rock developed several subgenres and related styles, including lo-fi, noise pop, slowcore, post-rock, math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success. In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped-down, back-to-basics version of guitar rock emerged into the mainstream; the commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives and The Vines. Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s. By the end of the decade, the proliferation of indie bands was being referred to as "indie landfill"; the term indie rock, which comes from "independent," describes the small and low-budget labels on which it is released and the do-it-yourself attitude of the bands and artists involved. Although distribution deals are struck with major corporate companies, these labels and the bands they host have attempted to retain their autonomy, leaving them free to explore sounds and subjects of limited appeal to large, mainstream audiences.
The influences and styles of the artists have been diverse, including punk, post-punk and country. The terms "alternative rock" and "indie rock" were used interchangeably in the 1980s, but after many alternative bands followed Nirvana into the mainstream in the early 1990s, "indie rock" began to be used to describe those bands, working in a variety of styles, that did not pursue or achieve commercial success. Aesthetically speaking, indie rock is characterized as having a careful balance of pop accessibility with noise, experimentation with pop music formulae, sensitive lyrics masked by ironic posturing, a concern with "authenticity," and the depiction of a simple guy or girl. Allmusic identifies indie rock as including a number of "varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes". Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie rock movement encompassed a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge-influenced bands, through do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement, to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco.
In fact, there is an everlasting list of subgenres of indie rock. Many countries have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country, but unknown elsewhere. However, there are still indie bands that start off locally, but attract an international audience. Indie rock is noted for having a high proportion of female artists compared with preceding rock genres, a tendency exemplified by the development of the feminist-informed Riot Grrrl music of acts like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, 7 Year Bitch, Team Dresch and Huggy Bear. However, Cortney Harding pointed out that this sense of equality is not reflected in the number of women running indie labels; the BBC documentary Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie pinpoints the birth of indie as the 1977 self-publication of the Spiral Scratch EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks. Although Buzzcocks are classified as a punk band, it has been argued by the BBC and others that the publication of Spiral Scratch independently of a major label led to the coining of the name "indie".
"Indie pop" and "indie" were synonymous. In the mid-1980s, "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels themselves; the indie rock scene in the US was prefigured by the college rock that dominated college radio playlists, which included key bands like R. E. M. from the US and The Smiths from the UK. These two bands rejected the dominant synthpop of the early 1980s, helped inspire guitar-based jangle pop. In the United States, the term was associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of the Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr. and The Replacements. In the United Kingdom the C86 cassette, a 1986 NME compilation featuring Primal Scream, The Pastels, The Wedding Present and other bands, was a document of the UK indie scene at the start of 1986, it gave its name to the indie pop scene that followed, a major influence on the development of the British indie scene as a whole. Major precursors of indie pop included Postcard bands Josef K and Orange Juice, significant labels included Creation and Glass.
The Jesus and Mary Chain's sound combined the Velvet
Chuck D
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, known professionally as Chuck D, is an American rapper and producer. As the leader of the rap group Public Enemy, he helped create politically and conscious hip hop music in the mid-1980s; the Source ranked him at No. 12 on their list of the Top 50 Hip-Hop Lyricists of All Time. Ridenhour was born in New York, he began writing rhymes after the New York City blackout of 1977. After graduating from Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School, he went to Adelphi University on Long Island to study graphic design, where he met William Drayton, he received a B. F. A. from Adelphi in 1984 and received an honorary doctorate from Adelphi in 2013. While at Adelphi, Ridenhour co-hosted hip hop radio show the Super Spectrum Mix Hour as Chuck D on Saturday nights at Long Island rock radio station WLIR, designed flyers for local hip-hop events, drew a cartoon called Tales of the Skind for Adelphi student newspaper The Delphian. Upon hearing Ridenhour's demo track "Public Enemy Number One", fledgling producer/upcoming music-mogul Rick Rubin insisted on signing him to his Def Jam label.
Their major label albums were Yo! Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black, Greatest Misses, Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, they released a full-length album soundtrack for the film He Got Game in 1998. Ridenhour contributed to several episodes of the PBS documentary series The Blues, he has appeared as a featured artist on many other songs and albums, having collaborated with artists such as Janet Jackson, Kool Moe Dee, The Dope Poet Society, Run–D. M. C. Ice Cube, Boom Boom Satellites, Rage Against the Machine, John Mellencamp and many others. In 1990, he appeared on "Kool Thing", a song by the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, along with Flavor Flav, he sang on George Clinton's song "Tweakin'", which appears on his 1989 album The Cinderella Theory. In 1993, he executive produced Got'Em Running Scared, an album by Ichiban Records group Chief Groovy Loo and the Chosen Tribe. In 1996, Ridenhour released Autobiography of Mistachuck on Mercury Records.
Chuck D made a rare appearance at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, presenting the Video Vanguard Award to the Beastie Boys, whilst commending their musicianship. In November 1998, he settled out of court with Christopher "The Notorious B. I. G." Wallace's estate over the latter's sampling of his voice in the song "Ten Crack Commandments". The specific sampling is Ridenhour counting off the numbers one to nine on the track "Shut'Em Down", he described the decision to sue as "stupid."In September 1999, he launched a multi-format "supersite" on the web site Rapstation.com. A home for the vast global hip hop community, the site boasts a TV and radio station with original programming, many of hip hop's most prominent DJs, celebrity interviews, free MP3 downloads, downloadable ringtones by ToneThis, social commentary, current events, regular features on turning rap careers into a viable living. Since 2000, he has been one of the most vocal supporters of peer-to-peer file sharing in the music industry.
He loaned his voice to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as DJ Forth Right MC for the radio station Playback FM. In 2000, he collaborated with Public Enemy's Gary G-Whiz and MC Lyte on the theme music to the television show Dark Angel, he appeared with Henry Rollins in a cover of Black Flag's "Rise Above" for the album Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. He was featured on Z-Trip's album Shifting Gears on a track called "Shock and Awe". In 2008 he contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky, turned up on The Go! Team's album Proof of Youth on the track "Flashlight Fight." He fulfilled his childhood dreams of being a sports announcer by performing the play-by-play commentary in the video game NBA Ballers: Chosen One on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In 2009, Ridenhour wrote the foreword to the book The Love Ethic: The Reason Why You Can't Find and Keep Beautiful Black Love by Kamau and Akilah Butler.
He appeared on Brother Ali's album, Us. In March 2011, Chuck D re-recorded vocals with The Dillinger Escape Plan for a cover of "Fight the Power". Chuck D duetted with Rock singer Meat Loaf on his 2011 album Hell in a Handbasket on the song "Mad Mad World/The Good God Is a Woman and She Don't Like Ugly". In 2016 Chuck D joined the band Prophets of Rage along with B-Real and former members of Rage Against the Machine. Chuck D is known for his powerful rapping voice - How to Rap says, "Chuck D of Public Enemy has a powerful, resonant voice, acclaimed as one of the most distinct and impressive in hip-hop". Chuck D says this was based on listening to sportscasters such as Marv Albert. Chuck D comes up with a title for a song first and that he writes on paper, though he sometimes edits using a computer, he prefers to not punch in vocals, he prefers to not overdub vocals. Ridenhour is politically active, he continues to be an activist, publisher and producer. Addressing the negative views associated with rap music, he co-wrote the essay book Fight the Power: Rap and Reality, along with Yusuf Jah.
He argues that "music and art and culture is escapism, escapism sometimes is healthy for people to get away from reality", but sometimes t
Public Enemy (band)
Public Enemy is an American hip hop group consisting of Chuck D, Keith Shocklee, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, Khari Wynn, DJ Lord, Sammy Sam, the S1W group. Formed in Long Island, New York, in 1986, they are known for their politically charged music and criticism of the American media, with an active interest in the frustrations and concerns of the African American community, their first four albums during the late 1980s and early 1990s were all certified either gold or platinum and were, according to music critic Robert Hilburn in 1998, "the most acclaimed body of work by a hip hop act". Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called them "the most influential and radical band of their time." They were inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Carlton Ridenhour and William Drayton met at Long Island's Adelphi University in the mid-1980s. Developing his talents as an MC with Flav while delivering furniture for his father's business, Chuck D and Spectrum City, as the group was called, released the record "Check Out the Radio", backed by "Lies", a social commentary—both of which would influence RUSH Productions' Run–D.
M. C. and Beastie Boys. Chuck D put out a tape to fend off a local MC who wanted to battle him, he called the tape Public Enemy #1 because he felt like he was being persecuted by people in the local scene. This was the first reference to the notion of a public enemy in any of Chuck D's songs; the single was created by Chuck D with a contribution by Flavor Flav, though this was before the group Public Enemy was assembled. Around 1986, Bill Stephney, the former Program Director at WBAU, was approached by Ali Hafezi and offered a position with the label. Stephney accepted, his first assignment was to help fledgling producer Rick Rubin sign Chuck D, whose song "Public Enemy Number One" Rubin had heard from Andre "Doctor Dré" Brown. According to the book The History of Rap Music by Cookie Lommel, "Stephney thought it was time to mesh the hard-hitting style of Run DMC with politics that addressed black youth. Chuck recruited Spectrum City, which included Hank Shocklee, his brother Keith Shocklee, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, collectively known as the Bomb Squad, to be his production team and added another Spectrum City partner, Professor Griff, to become the group's Minister of Information.
With the addition of Flavor Flav and another local mobile DJ named Terminator X, the group Public Enemy was born." According to Chuck, The S1W, which stands for Security of the First World, "represents that the black man can be just as intelligent as he is strong. It stands for the fact that we're not third-world people, we're first-world people. Hank Shocklee came up with the name Public Enemy based on "underdog love and their developing politics" and the idea from Def Jam staffer Bill Stephney following the Howard Beach racial incident, Bernhard Goetz, the death of Michael Stewart: "The Black man is the public enemy."Public Enemy started out as opening act for the Beastie Boys during the latter's Licensed to Ill popularity, in 1987 released their debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, their debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, was released in 1987 to critical acclaim; the album was the group's first step toward stardom. In October 1987, music critic Simon Reynolds dubbed Public Enemy "a superlative rock band".
They released their second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988, which performed better in the charts than their previous release, included the hit single "Don't Believe the Hype" in addition to "Bring the Noise". Nation of Millions... was the first hip hop album to be voted album of the year in The Village Voice's influential Pazz & Jop critics' poll. In 1989, the group returned to the studio to record Fear of a Black Planet, which continued their politically charged themes; the album was supposed to be released in late 1989, but was pushed back to April 1990. It was the most successful of any of their albums and, in 2005, was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, it included the singles "Welcome To The Terrordome", "911 Is a Joke", which criticized emergency response units for taking longer to arrive at emergencies in the black community than those in the white community, "Fight the Power". "Fight the Power" is regarded as one of the most popular and influential songs in hip hop history.
It was the theme song of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. The group's next release, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black, continued this trend, with songs like "Can't Truss It", which addressed the history of slavery and how the black community can fight back against oppression; the album included the controversial song and video "By the Time I Get to Arizona", which chronicled the black community's frustration that some US states did not recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday. The video featured members of Public Enemy taking out their frustrations on politicians in the states not recognizing the holiday. In 1992, the group was one of the first rap acts to perform at the Reading Festival, in England, headlining the second day of the three-day festival. After a 1994 motorcycle accident shattered his left leg and kept him in the hospital for a full month, Terminator X relocated to his 15-acre farm in Vance County, North Carolina. By 1998, he was ready to retire from the group and focus full-time on raising African black ostriches on his farm.
In late 1998, the group started looking for Terminator X's permanent replacement. Following several months of searching for a DJ, Professor Griff saw DJ Lord at a Vestax Battle and approached
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures is an American film studio owned by Comcast through the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane, Jules Brulatour, it is the oldest surviving film studio in the United States, the world's fifth oldest after Gaumont, Pathé, Nordisk Film, the oldest member of Hollywood's "Big Five" studios in terms of the overall film market, its studios are located in Universal City and its corporate offices are located in New York City. Universal Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, was one of the "Little Three" majors during Hollywood's golden age. Universal Studios was founded by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane and Jules Brulatour. One story has Laemmle watching a box office for hours, counting patrons and calculating the day's takings.
Within weeks of his Chicago trip, Laemmle gave up dry goods to buy the first several nickelodeons. For Laemmle and other such entrepreneurs, the creation in 1908 of the Edison-backed Motion Picture Trust meant that exhibitors were expected to pay fees for Trust-produced films they showed. Based on the Latham Loop used in cameras and projectors, along with other patents, the Trust collected fees on all aspects of movie production and exhibition, attempted to enforce a monopoly on distribution. Soon and other disgruntled nickelodeon owners decided to avoid paying Edison by producing their own pictures. In June 1909, Laemmle started the Yankee Film Company with partners Abe Julius Stern; that company evolved into the Independent Moving Pictures Company, with studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where many early films in America's first motion picture industry were produced in the early 20th century. Laemmle broke with Edison's custom of refusing to give screen credits to performers. By naming the movie stars, he attracted many of the leading players of the time, contributing to the creation of the star system.
In 1910, he promoted Florence Lawrence known as "The Biograph Girl", actor King Baggot, in what may be the first instance of a studio using stars in its marketing. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company was incorporated in New York on April 30, 1912. Laemmle, who emerged as president in July 1912, was the primary figure in the partnership with Dintenfass, Kessel, Swanson and Brulatour. All would be bought out by Laemmle; the new Universal studio was a vertically integrated company, with movie production and exhibition venues all linked in the same corporate entity, the central element of the Studio system era. Following the westward trend of the industry, by the end of 1912 the company was focusing its production efforts in the Hollywood area. On March 15, 1915, Laemmle opened the world's largest motion picture production facility, Universal City Studios, on a 230-acre converted farm just over the Cahuenga Pass from Hollywood. Studio management became the third facet of Universal's operations, with the studio incorporated as a distinct subsidiary organization.
Unlike other movie moguls, Laemmle opened his studio to tourists. Universal became the largest studio in Hollywood, remained so for a decade. However, it sought an audience in small towns, producing inexpensive melodramas and serials. In its early years Universal released three brands of feature films—Red Feather, low-budget programmers. Directors included Jack Conway, John Ford, Rex Ingram, Robert Z. Leonard, George Marshall and Lois Weber, one of the few women directing films in Hollywood. Despite Laemmle's role as an innovator, he was an cautious studio chief. Unlike rivals Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Marcus Loew, Laemmle chose not to develop a theater chain, he financed all of his own films, refusing to take on debt. This policy nearly bankrupted the studio when actor-director Erich von Stroheim insisted on excessively lavish production values for his films Blind Husbands and Foolish Wives, but Universal shrewdly gained a return on some of the expenditure by launching a sensational ad campaign that attracted moviegoers.
Character actor Lon Chaney became a drawing card for Universal in the 1920s, appearing in dramas. His two biggest hits for Universal were The Phantom of the Opera. During this period Laemmle entrusted most of the production policy decisions to Irving Thalberg. Thalberg had been Laemmle's personal secretary, Laemmle was impressed by his cogent observations of how efficiently the studio could be operated. Promoted to studio chief, Thalberg was giving Universal's product a touch of class, but MGM's head of production Louis B. Mayer lured Thalberg away from Universal with a promise of better pay. Without his guidance Universal became a second-tier studio, would remain so for several decades. In 1926, Universal opened a production unit in Germany, Deutsche Universal-Film AG, under the direction of Joe Pasternak; this unit produced three to four films per year until 1936, migrating to Hungary and Austria in the face of Hitler's increasing domination of central Europe. With the advent of sound, these productions were made in the German language or Hungarian or Polish.
In the U. S. Universal Pictures did not distribute any of this subsidiary's films, but at least some of them were exhibited through othe
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression, it emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes and response vocals and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms"; as jazz spread around the world, it drew on national and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation.
In the 1930s arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, a hard-swinging, improvisational style and Gypsy jazz were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music", played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines; the 1950s saw the emergence of free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter and formal structures, in the mid-1950s, hard bop emerged, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues and blues in the saxophone and piano playing. Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music's rhythms, electric instruments, amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay.
Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Afro-Cuban jazz. The origin of the word "jazz" has resulted in considerable research, its history is well documented, it is believed to be related to "jasm", a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning "pep, energy". The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a "jazz ball" "because it wobbles and you can't do anything with it"; the use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916 Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, "When Broadway picked it up, they called it'J-A-Z-Z', it wasn't called that. It was spelled'J-A-S-S'; that was dirty, if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies."
The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to the rock-infused fusion. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music, but critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time defined as'swing'". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". In the opinion of Robert Christgau, "most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz".
A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, group interaction, developing an'individual voice', being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". In contrast to commentators who have argued for excluding types of jazz, musicians are sometimes reluctant to define the music they play. Duke Ellington, one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations; these work songs were structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was improvisational.
Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score, with less attention given to interpretation and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition. In contrast, jazz is characterized by the product of i
