Continuing your entry point into jazz through voice. The listener, to go deeper, must pay attention to vocal improvisation. Improvisation, in this case, is an unprepared melody involving musical imagination, which carries the spirit and sentiment of the song. Improvisation allows the musician and the listener to travel beyond the melodic boundaries of the song to a place that hinges on emotion and attitude. More commonly known as scat singing the vocalist at times mimics the voicings and style of a musical instrument in an improvisational mode. The listener and the musician both have an experience with the music and a response to the music.
What is Clark Terry Saying?
In this entry point listen to the charismatic vocals of trumpeter Clark Terry in his song Mumbles. In this song Terry doesn’t sing a word, his vocal improvisation is incomprehensible. The listener must use imagination and create their own lyrics or narrative. Together, Terry and the listener move beyond the melody of the song and improvise a unique narrative. What is this song about? What is Terry saying? The listener has to create a narrative of their own. If the listener creates their very own unique narrative then they have moved deeper into the jazz genre.
Go further: Listen to “One Note Samba” and great scat singing by you guessed it, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald. This is crazy good!
When attempting to enter and appreciate the jazz genre there is no doubt a vocal narrative provides the smallest barrier into the musical art form. In fact, listening to the narrative and tone of the voice draws the listener close. (See the last post) However, to further consume the jazz genre, the listener must also pay attention to the melody. Melody is the satisfying tonal succession of musical sounds that incorporate tempo (is it fast or slow?), rhythm (it’s what makes you move), and is pleasing to the ear. In short, a melody is the portion of a tune that is easily sung, hummed, or whistled.
Chet Baker and the melancholy melody
Focusing on both the voice and melody will lead the listener deeper into the realm of jazz. Take a listen to Chet Baker’s recording of “My Funny Valentine.” Baker’s unique melancholy voice softly carries the listener through the paces of one of the most easily memorable and haunting melodies of all time.
Just listen. How do the narrative, voice, and melody make you feel?
Go Further: Check out Ella Fitzgerald’s catchy vocal melody on “A Tisket A Tasket” Try to sing, hum, or whistle her toon.
Jazz! A musical art form, which emerged in the U.S. by way of the long-suffering toil of black bodies desperately in search of freedom, peace, and a place to belong. Jazz developed as the musical expression of the black condition. Historically, for unyielding bodies that were in search of their own space to exist, jazz music provided that headway to cultivate a solid identity and establish a strong urban culture. As such, jazz became a fully capable medium able to express a range of emotions from sadness, solitude, anger to pensive, festive, and free. In this way, jazz was uncompromisingly bold. It was responsive to its time. It was present.
The mere mention of the term jazz beyond its musical history holds a myriad of meanings. For some, the word jazz evokes feelings of happiness, joy, freedom, connectedness, excitement, peace, and love. While for others (this may be you), the word conjures feelings of dread, confusion, anxiety, purposeless, and boredom. Indeed, the jazz genre, in all its renderings, can be quite complex in its audible space, not to mention the countless presentations and consumption by its many fans.
To be sure, over time, jazz has certainly attracted a crowd of eager and sophisticated listeners who are keen to genre parameters, are musically inclined, well acquainted with personnel, familiar with essential solos, and are intimately familiar with the social and cultural meanings of any particular recording. Consequently, the uncompelled and less than sophisticated listener may find the jazz genre non-approachable or better yet elusive. For the unsophisticated listener (one who is not yet familiar with jazz and thus has a weak attraction to it) there are several methods one can utilize when approaching (listening to) the genre. For one, the listener must allow themselves to become emotionally available to listen; steady themselves to absorb the unfamiliar and not resist the sound of a riff (anything sounding ‘jazzy’). And two, the genre must be gently delivered so a sophisticated ear is not employed. Easily digestible tunes. One has to just sit, listen and feel! So, if jazz has been difficult to grasp, but you want to give it one more try, take a few minutes to listen for your entry point into the genre.
One of the easiest ways to enter jazz is to allow a vocal narrative to lull the listener into the subtleties of the genre. So, the first listen will be through the voice of jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald. Relax, breathe, and take a close listen to Ella as she sings “How Long Has This Been Going On?” Listen as her fully formed satin voice pulls the listener close. Ella is here to tell a story; a story of the sudden realization of the spine-tingling sensation of a kiss and her dramatic shock of never realizing the specialness of it before. How is this possible? Let Ella tell it! While listening, only assess the feeling/s the song arouses. How does it make you feel? If you have an answer to this question then you are at the doorway of becoming a sophisticated listener of jazz.
Go further: Take a listen to the incomparable Nancy Wilson’s narrative and her exemplary jazz voice in “Guess Who I Saw Today?” Oh, damn!
Just SOul You Know 