R+P Post 3: Music genres that interest me

I enjoy a lot of different genres of music as a consumer, but my favourites are probably jazz and rock.

JAZZ:

Jazz originated in African American communities of New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Some of my favourite jazz musicians include Benny Golson, JJ Johnson, Lee Morgan, Philly Joe Jones, Kenny Dorham, and Charles Mingus. 

The jazz sound was very new at the time, and involves swung rhythms, rather than on-beat rhythms heard in other popular music genres. The sound of the instruments is often unchanged, and very raw, with occasional use of mutes on brass instruments to change the actual effect of the instrument. Additionally, the music has the "live" feel to it, so in a lot of recorded tracks, there is dialogue between band members of the sounds of the instrumentalists warming up. 

 

A classic example of this would be Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Moanin', which begins with warming up and dialogue. (The first 10 minutes and 8 seconds for this song).

The look that most jazz musicians go for is the "live" look focused on the music itself, where in photos they are usually playing/holding their instrument and/or are placed in low-key/coloured lighting to produce the effect of a jazz club setting.

Jazz musicians on a Google search.

Additionally, famous jazz instrumentalists usually play instruments that take the melody, such as John Coltraine on the saxophone, and Kenny Dorham and Lee Morgan on the trumpet, and are known for their talent at their instruments. Musicians that do play instruments that do not take the melody are usually more known for their music writing, rather than their actual skill on the instrument.

Charles Mingus - Moanin'

Kenny Dorham - Afrodisia

I think that jazz music videos are really interesting to think about in terms of our project, as they are often extremely low budget and are incredibly performance based. For example, the music videos for The Girl From Ipanema (featuring Astrud Gilberto), and Ladybird (featuring Kenny Clarke and Lou Bennett) are both simple performance-based videos of what seems like a live performance of the song. Additionally, the cutting is very slow-paced and the shots are very focused on the singers. This shows me that a music video doesn't have to be fast-paced or narrative-based in order to appeal to the audience, as conforming to genre conventions is far more important, as it allows the video to convey the style and image of the artist.

 

The Girl From Ipanema

  

Ladybird

ROCK:

Rock music is a genre of pop music that originated as "rock and roll" in the US in the early 1950s, and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later. My favourite rock bands include Cage the Elephant, Savages, Parquet Courts, Cream, and The White Stripes. 

The rock sound usually involves heavy electric guitar, often with a lot of feedback, drums, and bass. Also, the (usually male) singers tend to have rough, almost gravelly voices, rather than soft voices. 

The look associated with rock artists is live music performers, and represents the artists as being into their music playing and live concert performances. The colours generally associated with them are usually dark and dangerous, and quite often they are black and white. 

Google search of rock artists.

Jack White of The White Stripes has the image of being a true performer who is doing it for the love of live music, and he has performed both as a duo and as a solo artist in concerts and albums. The White Stripes are associated with white and red, both of which appear on most of their album covers. These bands are not only known by their target audiences, but a lot of their songs are well-know world wide, such as The White Stripes's Seven Nation Army.

The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

Savages - Shut Up

In this music video by Savages, the focus is on live music performance and there is a lot of cutting on the beat of the music, as well as crazy stage lighting. This shows that the performance aspects of our music video can still be visually engaging without needing to cut away to narrative shots to try and engage the audience.