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Jazz has been present for more years than anyone can tell, with its melodies that reach the depths of the soul, intense lyrics, interpreted by mournful, hurtful and dreamy voices, there is nothing else to do but surrender to its spell. A loud history of female voices has contributed to the genre’s sense of desolation, of bitterness, of background music for the most heartfelt drunken nights. It's hard to talk about female voices in jazz without mentioning the names of Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday among other great interpreters of the genre. But, what about those voices that are hardly...

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It's considered that in the 80s the history of Jazz had reached a point where all the basic trends were consolidated. The 70s drove to the rise of what is considered the last new style of Jazz since its beginning, at the end of the 19th century. Jazz in the 80s So, what's going to happen now? A creative pause? A continuous repetition of the things already listened until exhaustion? Of course not! In the approximately eight decades of history of Jazz, no one has played "the last definitive note" of each style. And indeed, in the first place, the...

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August 21st, 1935 has been designated as the beginning of the Swing decade. It was the night that Benny Goodman's orchestra triumphed in the Palomar hall in Los Angeles, with a young audience devoted to the music they made, dancing the rhythms of that time like the shag or the jitterbug, or shortly after, the Boogie-woogie. Radio had already invaded homes in the 1930s, and if earlier in that decade, large soft-sounding orchestras were preferred, faster dances would now be imposed to the rhythm of jazz-inspired music, that some fine artists, such as Benny Goodman, had contributed to spread through...

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The melody of blues doesn’t go with the sense of the key that rules in Western European music, nonetheless is still closely related to classical music. Back in the day, original blues musicians adopted as their own the traditional "major" and "minor" scale. All these adaptations that give birth to all the rich spectrum of black music; when blacks began to make music in America, faced with European music and adopted with amazing rapidity the pentatonic musical feeling to the European tonal system and instruments. So, the problem was in the two notes that were missing for the European "octave"....

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Back in 1940s America, when the cultural seeds of rock & roll were first beginning their growth, the musical landscape was dominated by just three major labels: DeccaRCA Victor Columbia These labels owned all the means of production, all the licences and all the distribution channels. Through their contacts in the media, they (for the most part) were essentially in control of the popular music that was played across the USA. Rock & Roll’s emergence changed all that. These new musicians, producers and distributors were not beholden to the wishes of the majors. Their pioneering desire was to encourage a...

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In modern history, three of the most popular and meaningful music genres are definitely rock, jazz and blues. These three also could be considered close relatives, the rupture that jazz meant for the canons of composition and execution was fundamental for the emergence of rock and, on the other hand, many can say that blues is a kind of melancholic exploration of jazz. Let's explore these three fundamental genres in musical culture: But how to know this if it’s not following that story hearing it? Although like other arts, music also has its technical specificities, its theories, and foundations, here...

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When did jazz begin? It's a question that will remain forever unanswered. There’s proof that the first jazz recording was made back in 1917, but as a musical genre, jazz existed at least in its initial state for 20 years prior. Influenced by classical music, marches, spirituals, work songs, ragtime, blues and popular music at the time, jazz was already a particular form of music when its documentation began. There’s no specific starting date for jazz as definite and autonomous music. It’s usually placed between 1895 and 1917, when the term jazz was widespread and where the Original Dixieland Jazz...

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No river on the planet has inspired as much music as the Mississippi. The so-called "father of waters" born in Minnesota travels down the country for over 6,400 km, falls capriciously curving, separating States, eroding lands, creating marshy deltas to reach its mouth in the port of New Orleans; the cradle of jazz, an illustrious son of the blues. This legendary river divides the enormous territory of the US in East and West. Without this river one couldn’t understand the history of the United States, nor would there have ever existed a city like New Orleans, that grew between rhythms...

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The following question is a tricky one: are there innocent or guilty instruments? Before answering, let us remember that each instrument comes to us full of evocations, of recent or ancient history. Anyone can feel the chills with the noble telluric sound of the Basque txalaparta if they know the ceremonies with which the environment etarra honors his gudaris. Besides, musical instruments do not lack sex appeal and orientation. The Pet Shop Boys despised electric guitars for decades, which they identified with heterosexual rock and their macho culture. And there are few women who play the different modalities of the...

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