The Evolution of Bop
In the seemingly endless sub-genres of jazz music, the word bop is a prominent descriptor among many of them. Like in nature, musical genres adapt and evolve over time, due to the interests of the artists and listeners of said genre. So, in this article, I’ll briefly go over the history of the “bop” sub-genres, how they came to be, and a few prominent faces of each sub-genre.
Bebop (or just “Bop”)
In the early 1940’s, jazz music at this point is American pop music. America is enamored in what could be considered its first original music genre. The main forms of jazz music that were popular around this time were blues and swing . Blues music was usually performed in smaller ensembles and the contents of the music varied heavily depending on what city you were in. Swing music, while possible in smaller ensembles, found a greater popularity in big-band settings (think of the black and white photos that you’ve seen of those dudes in the nice tuxedos in those large bands). How does bebop fit in this context, though?
Jazz music has been in the greater American consciousness for over 10 years at this point. The famous musicians at this time were getting older and a new generation of younger jazz musicians were entering the scene. While the older musicians continued their traditions of swing and blues music, a new movement was slowly gaining traction in the underground: bebop. Bebop didn’t reach the mainstream until the mid-1940s.The word “bebop” doesn’t hold any meaning, it’s just a combination of words commonly used in scatting (a vocal riff while making random noises with your mouth). I myself jokingly call bebop “tryhard music”, simply because you have to be REALLY good with your instrument to play. The genre consists of fast tempos and a heavy emphasis on soloing. The point of bebop wasn’t to dance to, like swing, but to simply appreciate the level of talent it takes to pull something like that off. Many enjoyers of bebop would listen to the music, wearing a pensive face and nodding at certain times.
The apocryphal inventor of bebop is credited to Charlie Parker. I like to imagine Parker as sort of a Jesus figure of bebop, going around spreading the word of bebop and converting souls, then tragically dying an early death at the age of 34. If Charlie Parker is Jesus in this analogy, then Dizzie Gilespie is St. Peter, the first Christian. Parker and Gillespie worked together for the most of their respective music careers, putting together classics such as Ornithology, A Night in Tunisia, and Koko. Bebop and swing music would coexist in the jazz world until they inevitably (and sadly) faded out of the spotlight. However, the sound of jazz would continue to evolve, even though it was out of the mainstream.
Hard Bop
In the late 40s and early 50s, the West Coast became more influential in the American pop culture in pretty much every single aspect; jazz music was no exception. Cool jazz emerged from the west around the same time. As the name suggests, the sound of cool jazz was lighter and slower — a sort of antithesis to bebop music. People like Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, and Lee Konitz were becoming household names in cool jazz. Even jazz titans like Miles Davis had a hand in creating the sound of cool jazz.
People from the East Coast disagreed with the sound of cool jazz, saying it strayed too far away from the cultural origins of jazz music (East vs West is a tale as old as time). So, in a “return to tradition” movement, the sub-genre of hard bop was thrown into existence, as sort of a response to cool jazz. Hard bop embraced the cultural origins of jazz, with obvious influences of blues, gospel music, and a few other black cultural signifiers. In my personal opinion, if you were to ask a random person off the street to think of “jazz music”, they would think of hard bop.
There were many players in the creation of bebop, but the most influential player was probably Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. The Jazz Messengers consisted of promising jazz musicians that Blakey would find and train in the ways of hard bop, then send them off to create their own names for themselves. The famous music label Blue Note was famous in putting out many famous hard bop jazz albums. Jazz music itself would continue to evolve in many ways, but bop would return in one final form…
Post Bop
Jazz in the 1960’s was going through an existential crisis. There was no real “main sound” to jazz music anymore, the sounds coming from this time were so diverse. I wrote a piece about 1959 being the “greatest year in jazz history”, partly due to it being a jumping off point for avante-garde jazz (referred to mostly as “free jazz”), and the convergence of the defining sounds of the jazz musicscape. I also wrote another piece going in-depth about the importance of free jazz, and how its existence is really significant.
Post bop came into existence in the middle of the free jazz explosion of the early to mid 1960s. It can be hard to distinguish free jazz from post bop, since they’re insanely similar. Post bop is a compromise between free jazz and hard bop. Post bop had all the irregularities and absurdities of free jazz, while maintaining the bare minimum of basic jazz theory (chord progressions, rhythms, more boring stuff like that). It’s fun to imagine post-bop musicians as these “architects of chaos”, as if they were Greek gods or something like that.
While there are no real musicians defined solely by post-bop, many famous jazz musicians have dabbled in post-bop, mainly Miles Davis and his second quintet. I’m definitely going to write an article about Davis in the future because his track record is literally insane and his influence cannot be denied. Davis recorded a few post bop records, most famously Miles Smiles.
So there you have it, a brief overview of the evolution of bop! I found this to be an interesting topic to write about, due to nobody really addressing it in the past. The evolution of jazz music is an fun thing to research and more fun to listen to. I may create a list in the future containing each and every jazz sub-genre out there, but we’ll see. Thanks for reading and I will see you next time!
