Edu365.cat

For the whole of the month of June, the Ciutat Vella Festival of Creative Music and Jazz is being held in Barcelona for the sixteenth year. The event has the participation of three hundred performers and includes one hundred and fifty concerts. It provides us with the opportunity of discussing the subject of jazz and, in particular, the historical evolution of this musical genre in the Catalan-speaking lands.

Throughout its more than one hundred years of history, jazz has given rise to various different styles and variations, such as swing, bop, cool, free jazz, jazz-rock, and so on, as well as giving us world famous names, of both musicians and singers: Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and the list goes on.

As far as the origins of jazz are concerned, they can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century in the US city of New Orleans (Louisiana), when different elements and musical precedents were mixed, such as blues, ragtime and minstrel show.

This new form of music was closely linked to the Afro-American community and based on improvisation, and it spread to other US cities such as Chicago and New York. Because of record production and radio broadcasting, it left the US borders and began to penetrate Europe.