Todays Jazz

As time has evolved so has people, and as people have evolved they have changed. And as people change their needs and wants change as well but as people come and go they still live in other peoples life in one form or another, but just like people have changed so has music and a good way to show this is by playing some good ol jazz music. Because as you play it you will hear quickly hear that some of todays music has generated from the sounds of jazz. Even some of todays great artist have recreated some old jazz songs and blended them with more evolved sounds that todays technology can make that back in the day were not able to be made. Perfect example is artist Kanye West recreating Ray Charles song called Ive Got A Woman  and naming it Gold Digger he even uses the same chorus from the original song in fact he even uses the same beat, what he does to make it different is he adds more sounds and lyrics of his own to make it more relateable to the people of today.

   Jazz stories are always good to hear because even though you are going to hear alot of nonsense that you might think you will never expirience and you dont find interesting at all, you will always get a great life lesson at the end that will help you live life with a positive attitude. I read a story not long ago called Sonnys Blues that I have read that at first I didnt find interesting at all but then later on throughout the story it really impacted me and at the end it thought me that you have to find what makes you happy in life and once thats found that will help you live a positive life. It talked about Sonny not baing able to handle the pressure of school and looking to the bad life and drugs as an output to that, what got him out of that bad life was his love for playing the piano and performing jazz music, the type of jazz he played was the blues. After leaving the drugs and the bad life he expressed the way he felt through his music "Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life containd so many other"(Baldwin 63) every sonf that Sonny played symbolized a moment of his life and the way he felt, this realtes to how many new artist are expressing their life through music and basically making a self documentary with lyrics and sounds.
  
There is no actual definition to the word jazz but part of the definition says "to add ornamentation, color, or extra features to, in order to increase appeal or interest"(Webster) this same part of that definition can very precisely also define todays music.Todays music mainly talks about the interest of one sex in the other and all those thoughts in music trace back to the origins of jazz of how jazz was the first genre of music to involve sexual activity in its lyrics.


Works Cited: "Jazz".Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictioanry. Eleventh ed. 2004. print.

Kanye West. Late Registration. Jon Brion; Kanye West; Warren Campbell; Devo Sprinsteen, 2005. CD.

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "Sonnys Blues."James Baldwin Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 43-63.

Jazz Instruments

Jazz was created off of church music so it mainly used all the instruments they used, the main ones that brought life to jazz music were the trumpet, saxaphone, trambone, drums double bass and the clarinet. the piano wasnt added on to jazz until later when jazz was making its way through the north of the United States.

The saxophone is the musical instrument that creates the vibe to jazz music, many people are amazed on the sounds that a saxophone can make. The saxophone was used in jazz for the first time not by individual jazz musicians but by bands, the saxophone added the sound of intimacy and thats why many older people blamed jazz and said it was a bad inlfuence on young adults. The drums added a more fatser beat to jazz music that made people want to get up and dance, it gave jazz that fast vibe and thats another reason why young adults liked jazz so much because it was something different. it wasnt just the same old slow church songs, it was was something that they related to and that they could dance to.
When the piano was included to jazz music it changed the sound of it from classical jazz to a more soothing sound that later became known as "swing". Ray Charles was the main jazz musician to make the piano famous and later on many would follow.
The trumpet was always a part of jazz ever since the start of it and is a main factor to the development of jazz through the years because without the trumpet jazz is just not the same.
Putting all of these instruments together and playing them well will create an amzing sound that is called jazz. These instruments are still a big part of todays music, they are used in different genres of music to create different sounds needed for a song. Some artist still include jazz in some of their music, "gold digger" is a song that was released in 2007, this song was based on a song by Ray Charles called "I got a woman" and it just goes to show that jazz can still move todays young audience with the same instruments of a century ago.