![Max roach](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Max_roach.jpg)
Jazz drumming is the art of playing percussion (predominantly the
drum kit
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player ( drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsti ...
, which includes a variety of drums and cymbals) in
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
styles ranging from 1910s-style Dixieland jazz to 1970s-era
jazz fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...
and 1980s-era
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin American rhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, whic ...
. The techniques and instrumentation of this type of performance have evolved over several periods, influenced by jazz at large and the individual drummers within it. Stylistically, this aspect of performance was shaped by its starting place, New Orleans,
[Gioia, T. (1997). ''The History of Jazz''. Oxford University Press: New York. ] as well as numerous other regions of the world, including other parts of the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.
[Brown, T, D. (1976). ''A History and Analysis of Jazz Drumming to 1942''. University Microfilms: Ann Arbor, Michigan.]
Jazz required a method of playing percussion different from traditional European styles, one that was easily adaptable to the different rhythms of the new genre, fostering the creation of jazz drumming's hybrid technique.
[Brown, T, D. (1969). The Evolution of Early Jazz Drumming. ''Percussionist'', ''7''(2), 39–44.] As each period in the evolution of jazz—
swing and
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
, for example—tended to have its own rhythmic style, jazz drumming continued to evolve along with the music through the 20th century. One tendency that emerged over time was the gradual "freeing" of the beat. But older styles persisted in later periods. The borders between these periods are unclear, partly because no one style completely replaced others, and partly because there were numerous cross influences between styles.
Early history
Preliminary cultural mixing
The rhythms and use of percussion in jazz, as well as the art form itself, were products of extensive cultural mixing in various locations. The earliest occasion when this occurred was the
Moor
Moor or Moors may refer to:
Nature and ecology
* Moorland, a habitat characterized by low-growing vegetation and acidic soils.
Ethnic and religious groups
* Moors, Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during ...
ish invasion of Europe, where the cultures of France, Spain, and Africa to some extent, encountered each other and most likely exchanged some cultural information.
The influence of
African music
Given the vastness of the African continent, its music is diverse, with regions and nations having many distinct musical traditions. African music includes the genres amapiano, Jùjú, Fuji, Afrobeat, Highlife, Makossa, Kizomba, and others. The ...
and rhythms on the general mix that created jazz was profound, though this influence did not appear until later.
African influence
There are several central qualities shared by African music and jazz, most prominently the importance of
improvisation
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
.
Some instrumental qualities from African music that appear in jazz (especially its drumming) include using unpitched instruments to produce specific musical
tones or tone-like qualities, using all instruments to imitate the human voice,
superimposition of one rhythmic structure onto another (e.g., a group of three against a group of two), dividing a regular section of time (called a
measure
Measure may refer to:
* Measurement, the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event
Law
* Ballot measure, proposed legislation in the United States
* Church of England Measure, legislation of the Church of England
* Mea ...
in musical terms) into groups of two and three, and the use of repetitive rhythms used throughout a musical piece, often called
clave rhythms. This last quality is one of special importance, as there are several pronounced occurrences of this pattern and the aesthetics that accompany it in the world of jazz.
Clave
Clave is a tool for keeping time and determining which beats in a composition should be accented. In Africa, the clave is based on division of the measure into groups of three, on which only a few beats are emphasized. The Cuban clave, derived from the African version, is composed of two measures, one with three beats, one with two. The measures can be played in either order, with either the two or three beat phrase coming first, and are labeled "2-3" or "3-2", respectively.
Within the jazz band, phrases known as ''
comping patterns'' have included elements of the clave since the very early days of the music.
[Washburne, C. (1997). The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic Foundation of an African-American Music. '']Black Music Research Journal
The ''Black Music Research Journal'' was a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Center for Black Music Research at the Columbia College Chicago. It covers the philosophy, aesthetics ...
'', ''17''(1), 59–71. Comping is support of other musicians, often soloists, and echoing or reinforcement of the composition.
Cuban influence
The culture that created the most commonly used version of this pattern was that of Cuba. The circumstances that created that music and culture were very similar to those that created jazz;
French, African,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, and native Cuban cultures were all combined in Cuba and created many popular musical forms as well as the clave, which was a rather early invention. The music also affected the development of a variant of jazz, known as
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin American rhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, whic ...
.
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is generally characterized by the use of even note combinations, as opposed to the ''
swung'' notes common in most other varieties of jazz. It is also heavily influenced by the clave, and composers of the music require a knowledge of the workings of percussion in Afro-Cuban music—the instruments must combine with each other in a logical fashion.
The specific genre of Afro-Cuban jazz is influenced by the traditional rhythms of Cuba, rather than from the entire Caribbean and other parts of the world.
American influence
The
military drumming of America, predominantly fife and drum corps, in the 19th century and earlier supplied much of the technique and instrumentation of the early jazz drummers. Influential players like
Warren "Baby" Dodds and
Zutty Singleton
Arthur James "Zutty" Singleton (May 14, 1898 – July 14, 1975) was an American jazz drummer.
Career
Singleton was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, United States, and raised in New Orleans. According to his ''Jazz Profiles'' biography, his unusual ...
used the
traditional military drumstick grip, military instruments, and played in the style of military drummers using
rudiment
In ''rudimental drumming'', a form of percussion music, a drum rudiment is one of a number of relatively small patterns which form the foundation for more extended and complex drumming patterns. The term "drum rudiment" is most closely associa ...
s, a group of short patterns which are standard in drumming.
The rhythmic composition of this music was also important in early jazz and beyond. Very different from the African performance aesthetic, a flowing style which does not directly correspond to Western time signatures, the music played by military bands was rigidly within time and metric conventions, though it did have compositions in both duple and
triple
Triple is used in several contexts to mean "threefold" or a " treble":
Sports
* Triple (baseball), a three-base hit
* A basketball three-point field goal
* A figure skating jump with three rotations
* In bowling terms, three strikes in a row
* ...
meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
.
The equipment of the drummers in these groups was of particular significance in the development of early drum sets.
Cymbal
A cymbal is a common percussion instrument. Often used in pairs, cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys. The majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs soun ...
s,
bass, and
snare drums
The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used in ...
were all used. Indeed, a method of damping a set of cymbals by crunching them together while playing bass drum simultaneously is probably how today's
hi-hat
A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist o ...
, a major part of today's drum set, came about.
Military technique and instrumentation were undoubtedly factors in the development of early jazz and its drumming, but the
melodic
A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinat ...
and metric elements in jazz are more easily traced to the dance bands of the time period.
Dance bands
Black drummers were able to acquire their technical ability from fife and drum corps,
but the application of these techniques in the dance bands of the 19th century allowed a more fertile ground for musical experimentation. Slaves learned traditional European dance music that they played at their masters' balls, most importantly a French dance called the
quadrille
The quadrille is a dance that was fashionable in late 18th- and 19th-century Europe and its colonies. The quadrille consists of a chain of four to six '' contredanses''. Latterly the quadrille was frequently danced to a medley of opera melodie ...
, which had a particular influence on jazz and by extension jazz drumming. Musicians were also able to play dances that originated in Africa and the Caribbean in addition to the European repertoire. One such dance was the "congo".
The performers of this novel music (to the predominantly white audience) created music for their own entertainment and uses as well.
Slave traditions
![Slave dance to banjo, 1780s](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Slave_dance_to_banjo%2C_1780s.jpg)
Enslaved persons in America had many musical traditions that became important to the music of the country, particularly jazz. After work was done, these people would hold musical performances in which they played on pseudo-instruments made of washtubs and other objects newly used for musical purposes, and also played rhythms on their bodies, called "
pattin' juba".
The only area where enslaved persons were allowed to perform their music, other than private locations, was a place in New Orleans called
Congo Square
Congo Square (french: Place Congo) is an open space, now within Louis Armstrong Park, which is located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. The square is famous for its ...
.
Congo Square and New Orleans
The former Africans were able to play their traditional music, which started to intermingle with the sounds of the many other cultures in New Orleans at the time:
Haitian, European, Cuban, and
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
, as well as many other smaller denominations. They used drums almost indistinguishable from those made in Africa, though the rhythms were somewhat different from those of the songs of the regions the enslaved persons were from, probably the result of their having lived in America for several generations. A large number of musicians that played in Congo Square were from the Caribbean as well.
Blues
Another important influence to jazz was
the blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African- ...
, an expression of the hardships experienced daily by enslaved persons, in direct contrast to the work song, a celebration of work. Its musical inspiration came from where its players did, Africa. The rhythmic form of blues was a basis for many developments that would appear in jazz. Though its instrumentation was mostly limited to melodic instruments and a singer, feeling and rhythm were tremendously important. The two primary feels were a pulse on alternating beats that we see in countless other forms of American music, and the shuffle, which is essentially the pattin' juba rhythm, a feel based on a division of three rather than two.
Second line
One of the final influences on the development of early jazz, specifically its drumming and rhythms, was Second line drumming. The term "
Second line" refers to the literal second line of musicians that would often congregate behind a marching band playing at a funeral march or Mardi Gras celebration. There were usually two main drummers in the second line: bass drum and snare drum players. The rhythms played were improvisatory in nature, but similarity between what was played at various occasions came essentially to a point of consistency, and early jazz drummers were able to integrate patterns from this style into their playing as well as elements from several other styles.
Ragtime
Before jazz came to prominence, drummers often played in a style known as
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...
, where an essential rhythmic quality of jazz first really began to be used: syncopation. Syncopation is synonymous with being "off-beat", and it is, among many things, a result of placing African rhythms written in odd combinations of notes (e.g., 3+3+2) into the evenly divided European metric concept.
Ragtime was another style derived from black musicians playing European instruments, specifically the piano, but using African rhythms.
Modern jazz drumming
Early technique and instrumentation
![Jazzing orchestra 1921](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Jazzing_orchestra_1921.png)
The first true jazz drummers had a somewhat limited palette to draw on, despite their broad range of influence. Military rudiments and beats in the military style were essentially the only technique that they had at their disposal. However, it was necessary to adapt to the particular music being played, so new technique and greater musicianship evolved. The
roll
Roll or Rolls may refer to:
Movement about the longitudinal axis
* Roll angle (or roll rotation), one of the 3 angular degrees of freedom of any stiff body (for example a vehicle), describing motion about the longitudinal axis
** Roll (aviation), ...
was the major technical device used, and one significant pattern was simply rolling on alternate beats.
This was one of the first "ride patterns", a series of rhythms that eventually resulted in a beat that functions in jazz as the clave does in Cuban music: a "mental metronome" for the other members of the ensemble.
Warren "Baby" Dodds, one of the most famous and important of the second generation of New Orleans jazz drummers, stressed the importance of drummers playing something different behind every chorus. His style was regarded as overly busy by some of the older generation of jazz musicians such as
Bunk Johnson
Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson (December 27, 1879 – July 7, 1949) was an American prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans. Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a dec ...
.
Beneath the constant rhythmic improvisation, Dodds played a pattern that was only somewhat more sophisticated than the basic one/three roll, but was, in fact, identical to the rhythm of today, only inverted. The rhythm was as follows: two "swung" eighth notes (the first and third notes of an eighth note
triplet), a quarter note, and then a repeat of the first three beats (sound sample "Inverted ride pattern" at right). Aside from these patterns, a drummer from this time would have an extremely small role in the band as a whole. Drummers seldom
soloed, as was the case with all other instruments in earliest jazz, which was based heavily on the ensemble. When they did, the resultant performance sounded more like a
marching cadence than personal expression.
Most other rhythmic ideas came from ragtime and its precursors, like the dotted eighth note series.
1900s to 1940s
![Sonny Greer 1943](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Sonny_Greer_1943.jpg)
The drummers and the rhythms they played served as accompaniment for dance bands, which played ragtime and various dances, with jazz coming later. It was common in these bands to have two drummers, one playing snare drum, the other bass. Eventually, however, due to various factors (not the least of which being the financial motivation), the number of drummers was reduced to one, and this created the need for a percussionist to play multiple instruments, hence the drum set. The first drum sets also began with military drums, though various other accessories were added later in order to create a larger range of sounds, and also for novelty appeal.
The most common of the accoutrements were the
wood block, Chinese
tom-toms
A tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snares, named from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala language. It was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Most toms range in size between in diameter, though floor toms can go as l ...
(large, two-headed drums),
cowbell
A cowbell (or cow bell) is a bell worn around the neck of free-roaming livestock so herders can keep track of an animal via the sound of the bell when the animal is grazing out of view in hilly landscapes or vast plains. Although they are t ...
s, cymbals, and almost anything else the drummer could think of adding. The characteristic sound of this set-up could be described as "ricky-ticky": the noise of sticks hitting objects that have very little resonance.
However, drummers, including Dodds, centralized much of their playing on the bass and snare drums.
[Riley, J. (1994). ''The Art of Bop Drumming''. Manhattan Music, Inc: Miami, Florida. ] By the 1920s and '30s, the early era of jazz was ending, and swing drummers like
Gene Krupa
Eugene Bertram Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973), known as Gene Krupa, was an American jazz drummer, bandleader and composer who performed with energy and showmanship. His drum solo on Benny Goodman's 1937 recording of "Sing, Sing, S ...
,
Chick Webb
William Henry "Chick" Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer and band leader.
Early life
Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. and Marie Webb. The year of his birth is disputed. ...
, and
Buddy Rich
Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.
Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York ...
began to take the bases laid down by the early masters and experiment with them. It was not until a bit later, however, that the displays of technical virtuosity by these men were replaced by definite change in the underlying rhythmic structure and aesthetic of jazz, moving on to an era called
bebop
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...
.
Bebop
To a small extent in the swing era, but most strongly in the bebop period, the role of the drummer evolved from an almost purely time-keeping position to that of a member of the interactive musical ensemble. Using the clearly defined ride pattern as a base, which was brought from the previous rough quality to the smooth, flowing rhythm we know today by
"Papa" Jo Jones, as well as a standardized drum set, drummers were able to experiment with comping patterns and subtleties in their playing.
One such innovator was
Sidney "Big Sid" Catlett. His many contributions included comping with the bass drum, playing "on top of the beat" (imperceptibly speeding up), playing ''with'' the soloist instead of just accompanying him, playing solos of his own with many melodic and subtle qualities, and incorporating melodicism into all of his playing. Another influential drummer of bebop was
Kenny Clarke
Kenneth Clarke Spearman (January 9, 1914January 26, 1985), nicknamed Klook, was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. A major innovator of the bebop style of drumming, he pioneered the use of the ride cymbal to keep time rather than the hi-ha ...
, the man who switched the four beat pulse that had previously been played on the bass drum to the ride cymbal, effectively making it possible for comping to move forward in the future.
Once again, this time in the late 1950s and most of the '60s, drummers began to change the entire basis of their art.
Elvin Jones
Elvin Ray Jones (September 9, 1927 – May 18, 2004) was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era.
Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such widely celebrate ...
, in an interview with ''
DownBeat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...
'' magazine, described it as "a natural step".
1950s and 1960s
During this time, the drummer took on an even more influential role in the jazz group at large, and started to free the drums into a more expressive instrument, allowing them to attain more equality and interactivity with the other parts of the ensemble. In bebop, comping and keeping time were two completely different requirements of the drummer, but afterward, the two became one entity. This newfound fluidity greatly extended the improvisatory capabilities that the drummer had.
[Riley, J. (2006). ''Beyond Bop Drumming''. Alfred Publishing: Van Nuys, California. ] The feel in jazz drumming of this period was called "broken time", which gets its name from the idea of changing patterns and the quick, erratic, unconventional movements and rhythms.
Rhythm section
A rhythm section is a group of musicians within a music ensemble or band that provides the underlying rhythm, harmony and pulse of the accompaniment, providing a rhythmic and harmonic reference and "beat" for the rest of the band.
The rhythm sec ...
s, in particular those of
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...
and
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...
, the former including Elvin Jones; the latter,
Tony Williams,
Philly Joe Jones
Joseph Rudolph "Philly Joe" Jones (July 15, 1923 – August 30, 1985) was an American jazz drummer.
Biography Early career
As a child, Jones appeared as a featured tap dancer on ''The Kiddie Show'' on the Philadelphia radio station WIP. He was ...
, and
Jimmy Cobb
Wilbur James "Jimmy" Cobb (January 20, 1929May 24, 2020) was an American jazz drummer. He was part of Miles Davis's First Great Sextet. At the time of his death, he had been the band's last surviving member for nearly thirty years. He was a ...
, were also exploring new metric and rhythmic possibilities. The concept of manipulating time, making the music appear to slow down or race ahead, was something that drummers had never attempted previously, but one that was evolving quickly in this era. Layering rhythms on top of each other (a
polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music (cross-rhyth ...
) to create a different texture in the music, as well as using odd combinations of notes to change feeling, would never have been possible with the stiffness of drumming in the previous generation. Compositions from this new period required this greater element of participation and creativity on the part of the drummer.
Elvin Jones, a member of John Coltrane's quartet, developed a novel style based on a feeling of three partly due to the fact that Coltrane's pieces of the time were based on triple subdivision.
Free jazz
Throughout the history of jazz drumming, the beat and playing of the drummer have become progressively more fluid and "free", and in
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
and
free jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ...
, this movement was largely fulfilled.
A drummer named
Sunny Murray is the primary architect of this new approach to drumming. Instead of playing a "beat", Murray sculpts his improvisation around the idea of a pulse, and plays with the "natural sounds that are in the instrument, and the pulsations that are in that sound”.
Murray also notes that his creation of this style was due to the need for a newer kind of drumming to use in the compositions of pianist
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.
Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex ...
.
See also
*
Beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
*
List of jazz drummers
Jazz drummers play percussion (predominantly the drum set) in jazz, jazz fusion, and other jazz subgenres such as latin jazz. The techniques and instrumentation of this type of performance have evolved over the 1900s, influenced by jazz at large a ...
**
List of American jazz drummers
References
External links
Article on the rhythmic aspects of jazz improvisationSymposium at ''All About Jazz''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jazz Drumming
Jazz instruments
Music performance
Drumming
Accompaniment
Occupations in music