Name That Genre
This musical genre, created while Black folks were enslaved, is spontaneously created and performed in a repetitive, improvised style. The most common song structures are the call-and-response (“Blow, Gabriel”) and repetitive choruses (“He Rose from the Dead”). The call-and-response is an alternating exchange between the soloist and the other singers. The soloist improvises a line to which the other singers respond, usually by repeating the same phrase.
Folk Spiritual
This singer was an American blues singer and influential early blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues," she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers.
Ma Rainey
This style of music derives from funeral, brass, and dance bands; cornet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, banjo, and drums became the core instrumentation. Other distinctive features are the improvisatory style with a blues feeling and a unique ragged approach to the rhythmic interpretation of songs, as heard in the recordings of Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band (“Dippermouth Blues”), Louis Armstrong (“Strutting with Some Barbeque” and “Mack the Knife”), and Freddie Keppard (“Stock Yard Strut”).
New Orleans Jazz
How old is Tyler?
30
If Louis Armstrong is playing, he's probably playing what instrument?
Trumpet
This genre is considered to be the first piano style in jazz, is an outgrowth of ragtime. Evolving on the East Coast following World War I, it is characterized by a fast tempo and improvised solos by the right hand. The left hand covers a 10-note stretch playing single bass notes or octaves on the strong beats and chords on the less prominent beats.
Stride Piano
This musician, nicknamed "Satchmo," "Satch," and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz.
Louis Armstrong
Singers in this genre were accompanied by a New Orleans–style band or a blues-, ragtime-, or jazz-style pianist, and the vocalist interacted with the instrumentalists in a call-and-response structure. Their vocal styles singers varied and were influenced by the venues in which they performed. Singers such as Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, and Bessie Smith, who performed without megaphones in outdoor traveling shows, developed a “shouting” style characterized by a percussive quality, coarse texture, and limited range.
Vaudeville Blues
What town in Ohio is Tyler from?
Hamilton
If Duke Ellington is playing, he's probably playing what instrument?
Piano
This early secular genre is sometimes known as folk blues because the music and lyrics were widely shared in oral tradition, was the earliest and most basic incarnation of this genre that has assumed many forms since its introduction.
Rural Blues
This person was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues," she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s.
Bessie Smith
Songs in this genre are performed a cappella, as heard in “Roll Jordan Roll” by the Fisk Jubilee Quartet, and “He Arose” (compare to the folk spiritual version of “He Rose from the Dead” and “Rockin’ Jerusalem” by the Fisk Jubilee Singers). While arrangements retain the call-and-response, melodic and textual repetition, percussive vocal effects, and dialect of the folk idiom, the introduction of European elements (vocal style/quality and 4-part harmony) and the elimination of such elements as hand clapping, foot stomping and improvisation in conforming to the European performance aesthetic distinguish them from the folk idiom.
Concert or Arranged Spirituals
How many cats does Tyler have?
Four
This instrument has four 180 degree curves in its tubing whereas the trumpet has only two curves. This instrument also has a conical shaped bore (the main bit leading up to the bell where the sound comes out) whereas the trumpet has a cylindrical shaped bore.
Cornet
This genre's name derives from the military-type ensembles that performed in this rhythmic style are called syncopated brass bands. They often “rag” or syncopate the melodies of songs to produce the “ragged” rhythmic quality associated with ragtime. Their diverse repertoire included marches, hymns, and other religious songs, patriotic songs, popular ballads, and stylized dance music used for religious, cultural, and social events in African American communities.
Syncopated Brass Bands
This man was an African-American composer and pianist. Dubbed the "King of Ragtime," he composed more than 40 ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas.
Scott Joplin
During the early jazz era, orchestras expanded from seven to 16 instrumentalists. Although, as bands increased in size, some larger ones were successful playing without written arrangements, it was more difficult to improvise adequate performances. This resulted in an increased use of written arrangements, unnecessary for smaller New Orleans ensembles. What genre is this?
Big Band
Should I stay in touch with Tyler after this class ends because he supports my Landmark journey, and considers my success his success?
That'd be kewl.
If Ma Rainey is performing a song, what instrument is she using?
Her voice!
This genre is primarily a piano-based style, and is one of the most rhythmically intense forms of blues music. Its evolution began in the late 1800s among pianists in the rough-and-tumble city taverns and rural juke joints, and it spread to the traveling vaudeville shows. It was a feature in the barrelhouses in the logging, sawmill, turpentine, levee, and railroad camps throughout the South. In Texas the piano style was known as “fast western.” The basic rhythm of this genre is an outgrowth of ragtime and rural blues, is said to have been inspired by the rhythmic clacking of steam locomotives throughout the Deep South.
Boogie Woogie
This man was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key figures in the evolution of ragtime into what was eventually called jazz.
James P. Johnson
The name of this genre is in reference to large dance bands of 15 or more musicians that played written arrangements using improvised sections alternating with arranged passages by brass and/or reeds. The style features prominent horn riffs, call and response between the brass and reed sections, and a consistent rhythmic drive derived from walking and/or boogie-woogie-type bass lines. This developed in the 1930s and continued to be popular throughout the 1940s and beyond as a distinctive genre.
Swing
What town in Vermont does Tyler live in?
Brattleboro
If I wanted a brass instrument to make a "bass voice" type of sound, what instrument would I use?
Trombone