Voice = Roots of Jazz?

The Laura Pelligrinelli article, "Seperated at Birth," Brings up some really important factors of the roots of jazz music that might of been ignored by several other sources. When speaking of the beginnings of this music, most historians would mention the blues genre as a major leading force in jazz. Interestingly enough, blues music has a lot to do with vocal's since most of the songs were sung with lyrics having to do with day to day troubles or whatnot. This was an important factor once the instrumentalists came along and started playing this music.

To me the voice is a great tool to show emotion. It is a natural vorce that we all aquire because we talk with emotion every day. However when one is learning a new instrument we have to learn how to make it feel natural, like the voice. I believe that the beginning instrumentalists were imitating the voice to make their lines seem more natural to the listeners. This is important because of the importantance of sheer emotion in blues music. It is also interesting to think that the roots of jazz were coming from vocalists even though years later they were trying to imitate the sounds from the instrumentalists.

Pelliginelli writes, "If singers and vocal activities were prevalent during the music's formative years in New Orleans and possibly elsewhere, why do they only figure amoung jazz's precursors? What purposes does their erasure from histories serve?" This is an important question to consider. What and when was the turning point for vocalists to take an unwelcomed back seat in the history of the music. I think that the turning point for this subject would be the new setting for jazz in the BeBop era as serious music.

BeBop brought a lot of change to the jazz world, it was almost like an entirely new music independant of the swing era. Tempo's, chords, and melodies all became more complex as did the importance of improvisation. The "Heads" of tunes were almost just like a precursor to the real importance of the tune: Improvisation. This being said a lot of vocalists were not involved because new tunes didn't even include lyrics, not to mention each instrumentalist was supposed to improvise over the changes. Maybe this was not a natural idea to vocalists who originally focussed on lyrics and emotion. BeBop had a different kind of emotion in the music and it had to do with complex lines or phrases in the soloing, not on the slight adjustments of the melody or blues emotion that was attached to a tune. This was a turning point for vocalists in the small jazz ensembles.

It is interesting to think that now vocalists were trained to imitate the instrumentalists in their scat singing approaches. Just as Luis Armstrong would imitate the trumpet, other vocalists were trained to be like a saxophone and use complex bebop licks. Pelliginelli also brings up an important point that since this music was to be serious it should loose touch with the vernacular culture and lyrics that it was originally tied to. This meant that songs no longer included lyrics which led to less vocalists being involved.

Jazz has come a long way from its creation. It would be hard for someone who had never heard jazz to compare recordings of today to the original groups in New Orleans. However I believe that it is important to keep the spirit of jazz alive and this came from the vocalists. Our first display of emotion comes from our voice inflections way before we can show our feelings through any instrument. This is why jazz pioneers looked to the vocalists to find the emotion that they would need to interpret through their instruments in order to make this new music a success. It is not fair that vocalists are overlooked in jazz music because they provide so much of what makes jazz music important and fun to listen to. They were the driving emotions that spawned a great legacy that continues today.