Music of the Day: Charlie Parker, Groovin High After big band crossed over to mainstream white musicians and audiences in the 1930s and 1940s, black musicians forged a progressive and challenging new sound called be-bop. Bebop pushed the limits of jazz and improvisation, featuring blistering uptempo improvisational jams that required extreme mastery of an instrument and deep musical intellect. The music was, in a way, a rebuke to the take-over of big band by white musicians and audiences and the commodification of that music for mainstream audiences. It asserted black creativity, innovation and technical mastery. Bebop artists were also counter-cultural. They created a hip lingo and style, smoked reefer, and represented a cultural critique and challenge to the whiteness and homogeneity of mainstream suburban America. Many white counter-culturalists and hipsters, like the writers of the Beat Generation, romanticized the cultural freedom and rebelliousness of the bebop scene.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 22:52:35 +0000
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