A Cry for Bop!

Bebop was hip. All the musicians I listed in my previous post with the addition of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis created a style of music all there own, different from the touring swing bands of the World War ll era. This music was labeled Bebop. They began to compose their own tunes over the pre-existing chord changes of popular standards of the day. Tin Pan Alley served as an endless source of popular songs, but they tended to be sentimental in nature. This group of musicians far extended the status quo of the music at that time. They began improvising over "chromatic altered tones" rather than the notes in the chord itself. They wrote more complex melodies that were played at break neck tempos raising the excitement level of the performances. This new music was confusing to some and pundits speculated if it was not exclusionary to the dancer patrons of the Swing Era. It didn't matter. It was freedom, liberation. To me democracy can be no better characterized than with jazz music. This music allows the musician the freedom to play whatever they want with no regards to trends, corporations, or radio stations. It is the ultimate freedom. With a compatible group of musicians, the experience of playing in a jazz band can be unrivaled. Unfortunately I have not been able to find that group of musicians.