Glossary

A jazz style that stressed melodic improvisation and flourished between about 1944 and 1958. Typically, a small combo presents 12-bar blues or 32-bar popular tunes in a theme-solo-theme format.

Kernfeld, Barry.

"Bebop." The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.

To improvise in an informal setting.

"Jam."

The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.

Ragtime got its name from a reporter describing "the raggy sound"of a new syncopated piano music that he heard featured at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. From the 1890s through the mid-1920s, Kansas City was a major ragtime performance and publishing center. Two of the most famous rags that were published by Kansas City publishers were Scott Joplin's "Original Rags," published by Carl Hoffman in 1899, and Euday Bowman's "12th Street Rag " published by Jenkins Music in 1915. Ragtime composers who made their home in Kansas City included Charles L. Johnson, Scrap Harris, Charles Daniels, Charlie Watts, Clyde Glass and James Scott. These Piano "professors" were composers and educators as well as performers.

For Kansas City musicians in the first half of the 20th century, a riff was a melodic idea stated in forceful rhythmic terms usually contained in the first two bars of a piece, repeated in the second eight-bar section and concluding with a return to the original idea.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz defines riff more formally as a "short melodic ostinato, usually two or four bars long, which may either be repeated intact (strict riff) or varied to accommodate an underlying harmonic pattern. The riff is thought to derive from the repetitive call-and-response patterns of West African music, and appeared prominently in black-American music from the earliest times."

Robinson, J. Bradford.

"Riff." The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music, Inc., 1988.

Both the big band jazz style from the 1930s and the rhythmic momentum in jazz.

The New Harvard Dictionary of Music says this is "specifically manifested in a variety of relationships between long and short notes or in the presentation of single notes, swing defies analysis; claims for its presence may inspire arguments."

"Swing."

The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.

Very simply: to commit serious study or work to a specific task. In Charlie Parker's case, to get down to business and seriously practice his saxophone technique until it was perfect.

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