The Rock Explosion

At the end of the sixties, strengthened by his quintet's experiments, Miles Davis was ripe for bringing himself before rock and its immense audience.

Miles Davis as a Rocker?

A fusion of country music and black rock and roll (derived from boogie), rock was created by white artists in the mid-fifties. Over the next decade, it adopted the effective rhythm sections of rhythm and blues and profited by carrying soul and other types of American music forward. At the same time it received support from new recording and production methods and made use of the electric instruments that had appeared with the urban blues.

Jimi Hendrix onstage, Woodstock 1969

Instrumental performances became increasingly important not only with rock - leading to the appearance of 'guitar heroes' - but also with the transformation of musical forms. In the late sixties, 'rockers' invaded realms hitherto reserved for better-informed kinds of music, such as classical, jazz and certain types of traditional non-European music.

After this point rock could be played for extended periods, and huge sound systems were installed, making enormous outdoor concerts possible.

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The Tenor Saxophone, Mouthpiece Of The Black Community In Revolt

John Coltrane exerted an unequaled fascination on the young generation. His predominant instrument, the tenor saxophone, was particularly meaningful to them. In the fifties, 'the howling' saxophones  of rhythm and blues had reinforced the virile image of the tenor; this image allowed for the most direct expression,from the low, violent-tempered register to the exasperation expressed by the shrill.

Archie Shepp

 
During the period of free jazz, three other instrumentalist in particular used it for the requirements of their respective projects. Pharoah Sanders continued the work of John Coltrane, with whom he had been associated for some time. He developed an extremely mystical and incantatory approach and borrowed exotic musical forms and instrument from many non-Western musical sources. Archie Shepp turned himself into a historian of African-American music through his emotional re-readings of John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, and soul, blues and gospel music. Albert Ayler dared to scream. Mixing the most naive melodies for children with densely resonant fabrics, he placed conventional language beyond expression, favoring the immediacy of feeling.

Albert Ayler

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Hard Bop: A Return To Blues And Gospel

Having invaded the market during the first half of the fifties, cool jazz tempted certain black artists with its sophistication and restraint. It spurred the next new wave-hard bop, which featured loud, full-voices instrumental sound and emotional performances. It was opportunity for musicians to return to the root Africans-Americans music, blues and gospel, but it was also their opportunity to renew their ties with black audiences, baffled by the avant-gardist  aspects of modern jazz.

Benny Golson

The craze of rhythm and blues was as its peak, and suddenly everyone was talking about soul. Through this music the black community proudly displayed its cultural and spiritual differences, distinguishing itself from American puritanism by reconciling body and soul, dance and religious trances, sexual ecstasy and mystical heights. soul music of the black churches: it addressed the dancer and spoke of love.

Art Blakey

Blues March

In coming back to the forms of the blues or the spiritual, jazz became 'churchy'. Certain titles were entirely unambiguous: The Sermon, The Preacher, Prayers Meeting. But there was also funk (a word derived from slang allusions to bodily odours). Close to physical pleasures, simple, direct, peremptory and blatantly joyous, hard bop, feeding off both these currents, was the expression of a proud black community, sure of the outcome of its struggles. To be convinced all you have to do is listen to Benny Golson's compositions for Art Blakey - such as 'Blues March', 'Moanin' or 'Along Came Betty' - or Horace Silvers's themes - 'Song for My Father' or 'Nica's Dream'.

The Jazz Messengers

 Endowed with a vital energy, the drummer Art Blakey led the Jazz Messengers, the beacon group of hard bop. Blakey discovered many talents: Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett and dozens of others- and, in effect, conducted their apprenticeships in hard bop.

[left to right] Freddie Hubbard, Curtis Fuller, and Wayne Shorter during Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers' Mosaic Sessions' Englewood Cliffs NJ, October 2 1961 (photo by Francis Wolff)

  The indelible message was about the importance of the rhythm section. In early bop the rhythm section simply stated the chords and maintained the tempo., offering a stimulating contrast to the soloist.
In hard bop, however, its task wash to establish the atmosphere, according to repetitive formulas inspired by gospel and soul music. Rhythmic arrangements provoked dancers into swaying. As in rhythm and blues music, the hard bop beat relied strongly on syncopation in traditional four-beat measures. But even four-beat measures no longer had the exclusivity they had had since the twenties, as the three-part division became more and more frequently used: in fact, it is related to the very definition of swing, the essence of Africa-American music.

Keith Jarret

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