My Final Blog Entry

By: James Dalrymple

One of my first assumptions coming into the class was that different genres of jazz music were all starting at the same time. I did not understand that there was a swing era or a bebop era or a blues era. I didn't understand that jazz music evolved over time and moved from place to place. One of the many misconceptions that I had about jazz music was that it didn't all happen at once. There were periods of time where certain styles of music were more popular and jazz music evolved over time. One of the many things I learned in this jazz class was from the Miles Davis' autobiography. "Dizzy and Bird had told me to look them up if I ever came to the Big Apple. I knew I had learned all I could from playing around St. Louis, knew it was time to move on. So I packed up my stuff in the early fall of 1944 and took a train up to New York City, confident in my heart that I was going to have some shit for them motherfuckers playing up there," (Troupe 50). I didn't know that some of the greatest jazz players were interconnected and played music together. I had no idea that Dizzy and Bird were somewhat of a duo during the bebop era and created a sound that forever changed the generation.

Before, I came to this class I didn't understand how interconnected each genre of music was. I did not understand that swing slowly evolved into bebop and that the focus on the soloist was something that evolved over time. In Miles Davis' autobiography, I learned just how connected artists were to one another. Although the Davis biography focuses mainly on the story of Miles Davis and his career- it also discusses that Dizzy and Bird had invited him to play with him. It was shocking to me to learn that the greats of jazz music (Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis) all had a connection to each other and all had played or learned from one another. I learned about the importance of cities in the role of jazz music (the origin being New Orleans) and the transformation it took in the cities of New York and Chicago. During this class, I learned that jazz artists worked together, competed with each other, and created new styles and forms of music together. Jazz was not an individual experience as I learned- it was created by many artists. In fact, many musicians who later became great had to first "hang with the big boys" before they gained recognition (Troupe 51).

Commented on Bryan's Blog: http://blackstudiesbybryan.blogspot.com/2015/03/miles-away-from-old-assumptions.html?showComment=1426056979895#c6001821012598399643