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The Story of Jazz

Trace the music through its eras — from the blues to modal and beyond.

By the end You'll be able to place the major styles in order and hear what changed from one era to the next.

Begin with “The Blues” →
  1. 1 The Blues The blues is jazz's mother tongue — a musical language born in the late-19th-century Deep South out of work songs, field hollers, and spirituals sung by formerly enslaved and rural… styles & history tier 1 →
  2. 2 Early Jazz Early Jazz is what happens when a brass band, a blues singer, and a ragtime piano roll all move into the same house. Rather than one soloist backed by accompanists, a small New Orl… styles & history tier 2 →
  3. 3 Stride Piano Stride piano is what happens when one pianist decides to be the whole rhythm section — bassist, drummer, and comping guitarist rolled into a single left hand — while the right hand… styles & history tier 2 →
  4. 4 The Swing Era The Swing Era (roughly 1935–1946) is the moment jazz became America's popular dance music, and it did so by solving a mechanical problem: how do you make 15 musicians groove as har… styles & history tier 2 →
  5. 5 Bebop Bebop is what happens when dance music decides it doesn't want to be danced to anymore. In the early 1940s, young musicians tired of playing arranged riffs for big bands started me… styles & history tier 2 →
  6. 6 Cool Jazz Cool jazz is what happens when you take bebop's harmonic vocabulary and turn down the temperature: a light, nearly vibrato-less tone, softer attacks, time laid back behind the beat… styles & history tier 3 →
  7. 7 Hard Bop Hard bop is what happened when jazz musicians in the mid-1950s decided Bebop had gotten too cerebral for its own good. It pulls the music back down into The Blues, gospel church mu… styles & history tier 3 →
  8. 8 Modal Jazz Modal jazz was a rebellion against too many chords. By the late 1950s, Bebop soloists were navigating tunes whose chords could change every two beats—thrilling, but exhausting to s… styles & history tier 3 →
  9. 9 Latin Jazz Latin jazz takes jazz harmony — extended chords, Bebop-derived improvisation, horn-section arranging — and sets it on top of Afro-Latin rhythmic frameworks instead of the swung, ri… styles & history tier 3 →
  10. 10 Soul Jazz Soul jazz is what happens when Hard Bop leans all the way into the church and the corner bar. Instead of piling up chord substitutions and racing tempos, soul jazz strips the harmo… styles & history tier 3 →

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