How are you?
Following the last week, I am going to
start my 50th lecture.
I had conducted music lectures at Art
Collage JANG in Seoul, South Korea every Saturday from March 2015 to December
2017. I am going to introduce the lecture by
the lecture’s order every Saturday.
The 6th theme of “The history of Jazz”
I will introduce this week is “Vocal Jazz”.
It is a summary of the contents of
“50th ACJ Music Academy, The history of Jazz: 6. Vocal Jazz”, which was introduced
on June 4, 2016.
In the 1940s, with the development of TV,
the public's attention began to be focused on vocalists. Also, representative
vocalists of the jazz world appeared to the public before and after this
period, and this phenomenon increased after the end of World War II.
The important conditions of jazz vocals are
how well they understand and cover the theoretical and emotional elements
contained in the great flow of jazz and how much such elements are existed in
their music. Therefore, they are not included in jazz vocalists only because
they can show jazzy voice color to some extent, and the music that are technically
made without satisfying these conditions are called ‘Jazz-Influenced Pop.’
Based on the background of musical
activity, it is more likely that vocalists who worked at the center of the jazz
world, rather than vocalists who worked with musicians not related to jazz, are
included in authentic jazz vocals. The reason that Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald
and Sarah Vaughan are evaluated as the best jazz vocals is because they have
done a lot of activities with other major jazz musicians in the center of the
jazz world.
For example, in the case of ‘Frank Sinatra’,
there are jazzy elements in his music, but he is not included in the jazz
vocal.
Frank Sinatra
In the case of ‘Nat King Cole’, his famous “Autumn Leaves” or “Unforgettable” are not jazz music, but he is
considered one of the most successful jazz vocalists due to the fact that many
of his songs are jazz music and his performance style itself is based on jazz
vocals.
Nat King Cole
Looking at the status of jazz vocals, there
are currently not many authentic jazz vocalists, but rather, most of them
belong to Jazz-Influenced Pop. However, it is important to note that Jazz-Influenced
Pop is not a lower level of music than jazz vocals, but it is only a result of
popular taste and demand.
In foreign countries, almost all the jazz
vocalists are turning to Jazz-Influenced Pop, and almost all the jazz vocalists
except a few now sing Jazz-Influenced Pop.
Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah
Vaughan are usually selected as three major jazz vocalists.
Comparing them, Billie Holiday's music
often reminds of her unhappy life. Although Holiday’s vocal range wasn't wide
and her volume wasn't rich, she showed an excellent sense of bringing her
emotions into her songs.
Billie Holiday
Ella Fitzgerald was a singer who had covered wider range
of music than anyone else, with a voice that fits the most traditional sense of
swing, and is good at Scat. Although it is difficult to find the element of
blues in her song, her pitch was correct and she was a singer with a clean tone
even though her vocal range was not wide.
Ella Fitzgerald
Sarah Vaughan was a singer who has advanced
into the music world lately compared to Holiday and Fitzgerald, but had an
incredibly wide vocal range and rich volume, and had the ability to subdue the
entire song based on these advantages. She often deviated from the range of female
vocals in general, and in the low vocal range, she even covered the vocal range
of a male baritone. Her vocalization was fundamentally different from those of Holiday
and Fitzgerald.
Sarah Vaughan
You can also review this lecture from
following media.
Next week, I will introduce you “Bebop”
as the 7th theme of “The history of Jazz” lectures.
Thank you.
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