Difference Between Jazz and Blues

Jazz vs Blues

Jazz and blues are musical genres or styles that can also be regarded as two distinct American musical traditions. They are interrelated most likely because of the fact that they originated from the American South. The confusion in discerning the two genres is probably because of the numerous music crossovers that artists do these days.

Hailing from New Orleans, jazz music was first known as “jass” then later dropped the two “ss” into “zz” which means “cool.” During the later part of the 19th century, jazz took shape in several brass bands. The jazz style then was dominated by the use of the saxophone, piano, cornet, and the trombone.

Particularly from the southern part of Mississippi, blues came into being with its first ever recorded blues music in the 1920s. Around that time, blues was usually played as a solo compared to the ensembles of jazz music. Although blues music has long since grown to utilize intricate bands, the first blues solo player just used a slide guitar as his primary musical instrument.

The penetration of jazz music since its inception has moved north towards Chicago and New York. Having an interracial feel in jazz music, many from the North embraced jazz music making it a popular music nationwide. Contrary to the boom in jazz popularity, blues had a pocketed penetration in Texas and Chicago. And so blues found its own range of supporters making it a more urban style of music before the rock ‘n’ roll revolution of the 1950s.

Technically speaking, there is more syncopation (rhythmic deviations from the regular beats) in jazz music as opposed to blues. Jazz was principally more instrumental compared to blues which was primarily a little bit more vocal.
In terms of the noteworthy artists, the pioneering jazz album came from Edward Ory alongside the Creole Orchestra. Other popular and noteworthy jazz musicians in the scene were George Lewis and Louis Armstrong just to name a few. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1960s that jazz icons like John Coltrane and Miles Davis became overly remarkable successes. On the other hand, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson were the front-liners of blues music. B.B. King with his electrical blues also became a major influence to today’s modern blues musicians.

Summary:

1.Jazz originally came from New Orleans whereas blues originated from Mississippi.
2.Jazz enjoyed nationwide penetration in America compared to the pocketed popularity of blues music during their early heydays.
3.Jazz has more syncopation than blues making it a more complicated music style.
4.Blues was ordinarily a more vocal form of music unlike the more instrumental jazz music.

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