Bop [bebop, rebop]

One of the main styles of jazz

It was first developed in the early and mid-1940s by such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and Max Roach. During the 1950s and 1960s the term "bop" was used more generally to encompass also the various substyles that grew out of the original genre: cool jazz, West Coast jazz, hard bop, soul jazz, and funk.

The word "bop" is a shortened form of the vocables (nonsense syllables) "bebop" or "rebop," which were commonly used in scat singing. Although bop was solidly grounded in earlier jazz styles (New Orleans jazz and swing), it represented a marked increase in complexity, and was considered revolutionary at the time of its development. Perhaps its most significant characteristic was the highly diversified texture created by the rhythm section - a considerable contrast to the insistent four-beat approach that was taken by swing musicians. In the newer style, the basic beat was stated by the double bass player and elaborated by the drummer on ride cymbal and hi-hat while a variety of on- and off-beat punctuations were added on the piano, bass drum (see Bomb), and snare drum. These punctuations sometimes reinforced and sometimes complemented the melody, causing much rhythmic interplay during improvised solos; spurred on by an active rhythm section, the best bop soloists were adept at extemporizing rapid melodies filled with asymmetrical phrases and accent patterns. The bop style used an enriched harmonic vocabulary, which made far more frequent use of altered 9th, 11th, and 13th chords than earlier jazz. Moreover, since many bop themes and improvisations were based largely on such chords, the melodies of bop were also more complex (i.e., more chromatic) than those of swing.

Many early bop themes, such as Ornithology (Parker and Little Benny Harris), Anthropology (Parker and Gillespie), Groovin' High (Gillespie), Donna Lee (Parker), and Hot House (Gillespie), were intricate melodies based on the harmonic structures of earlier popular songs. However, by the late 1940s the most common themes had become simpler, and some were even based on the overworked swing-era device known as the riff (e.g., Milt Jackson's Bag's Groove and Clifford Brown's Blues Walk). The shift from complex to simple themes had no effect on the procedures followed by the rhythm section or the style of the improvised solos. Other developments did cause slight alterations in the character of the music. In the late 1940s and 1950s, for example, a number of bop musicians (Miles Davis, Lee Konitz, Paul Desmond, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Milt Jackson, and John Lewis, among others) began playing in a soft, subtle manner later called Cool jazz. From the mid-1950s other bop players (including Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, and Art Blakey) began incorporating folk elements from the blues and black gospel traditions into their playing, attracting such labels as Hard bop, Soul jazz, and funk. In most cases the differences between the parent style and these subspecies were too minor to warrant reference to distinct styles.

Bop players generally rejected the elaborate written arrangements of swing music for a straightforward pattern: a unison statement of the theme followed by a string of improvised solos, then a concluding unison statement (see Forms, Bop). They also preferred to work in small groups, a typical instrumentation being that of the quintet led by Charlie Parker (trumpet, saxophone, piano, double bass, and drums). (For further discussion of bop ensembles see Bands, Bop bands.) Nonetheless, some big bands that were formed in the 1940s (notably those led by Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie), played in the bop style, but these were short lived. Permanent inroads into the big-band style were made in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when swing bandleaders such as Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and Count Basie began employing younger bop musicians. Arrangers and players, finding that bop rhythm sections could support large brass and reed sections, and that the harmonies of swing-style riffs could be modernized, developed ways of fusing the two styles. Later bop bands, among others those led by Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Louie Bellson, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin, and Rob McConnell, gained widespread acceptance in the jazz world.

In addition to the aforementioned musicians, other important American bop players include Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, J. J. Johnson, Bob Brookmeyer, Sonny Stitt, Jackie McLean, Art Pepper, Phil Woods, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Serge Chaloff, Pepper Adams, Billy Taylor, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, George Benson, Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Percy Heath, Charles Mingus, Philly Joe Jones, Shelly Manne, and Elvin Jones.

From the late 1940s musicians outside the USA began to perform in the bop style. Some emigrated to America and competed successfully with the native-born players: George Shearing and Victor Feldman from England, Joe Zawinul from Austria, Toshiko Akiyoshi from Japan, Bobby Jaspar and Toots Thielemans from Belgium, Valery Ponomarev from the USSR, and George Mraz from Czechoslovakia. Others earned a position of respect while working principally outside the USA: the British players Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott, and John Dankworth, the Swedes Lars Gullin and Arne Domnérus the Dane Niels-HenningØrsted Pedersen, the Germans Joki Freund and Albert Mangelsdorff, the Spaniard Tete Montoliu, the Algerian Martial Solal, the Canadian Rob McConnell, and the Japanese Sleepy Matsumoto and Sadao Watanabe, among others. The Canadian Oscar Peterson, who has performed internationally throughout his career, has become one of the best known of all jazz musicians.

Bop was overshadowed from around the late 1950s to the mid-1970s by other new styles: modal jazz, free jazz, jazz-rock Latin jazz, and fusions of jazz and soul music. While some players, including Gillespie, Monk, the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Silver, Smith, Mulligan, Griffin, Gordon, and, most fervently, Blakey, remained faithful to bop, other major figures turned to the new genres, among them Davis, Coltrane, Pepper, Woods, Rollins, Benson, Mingus, and Elvin Jones. A new generation of innovative musicians, many of whom were not skilled at playing bop, had also appeared. From the late 1970s, however, there has been frequent mention in jazz literature of a bop revival. It has been marked by specific events: for example, the expatriates Gordon and Griffin returned to the USA and took part in performances that were highly acclaimed; Woods formed a quartet (later a quintet) that proved long lived; free-jazz musicians such as Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders began to perform and record bop; a formidable new player, Wynton Marsalis, became an articulate spokesman for the style. More generally, the bop revival is distinguished by the perception that the once revolutionary bop style has become - together with New Orleans jazz and swing, and in contrast to the newer styles - a "classic" jazz genre.

Thomas Owens