Bebop

This article is about the genre of music, for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character see Bebop and Rocksteady. For the anime series, see Cowboy Bebop

Bebop or bop is a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos and improvisation based on harmonic structure rather than melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. It first surfaced in musicians' argot some time during the first two years of the Second World War. Hard bop later developed from bebop combined with blues and gospel music.

1 Style
2 References
3 Samples
4 Bebop musicians
5 Categories

Style

Many bebop tunes were based on the chord progressions (also called chord changes) from popular songs. (The technical term for such tunes is contrafacts or contrafactions.) A (slightly shortened) version of the chord changes to the song "I Got Rhythm" by George Gershwin was so often used that they are often referred to simply as "Rhythm changes." Contrafaction was already a well-established practice in earlier jazz, but came to be central to the bebop style. In part this was because the extremely fast tempos favored by boppers often did not suit the original melody, and because they often further altered the original chords or even combined chords from two different tunes. In part the use of contrafacts had a practical purpose: small record labels like Savoy, which documented the early bebop movement, often wished to avoid paying copyright fees for pop tunes.

Bebop composers and improvisers, particularly Charlie Parker, stylistically employed frequent use of upper chord tones, i.e., flat and sharp ninths, sharp elevenths, and thirteenths, creating a more colorful and rich harmonic sound than past jazz styles. As the bebop language developed, these "altered chords" were used less for coloration than as fundamental building blocks of new harmonic spaces. The soloist's implied switch from an original to a reconstructed space created a narrative of liberation.

With the emergence of hard bop and modal jazz in the late 1950s and early 1960s, each altered chord was seen to imply a scale or mode (Gioia 299). The capacity to improvise over a complex sequence of altered chords using only the implied scales requires a mental agility of a mathematical, problem-solving kind that is another hallmark of bebop. These techniques have moved from the avant-garde to become part of the mainstream language of jazz, a language jazz musicians master as a rite of passage.

Bebop was also heavily characterized by the flatted fifth. The flattened fifth, one of the two strong dissonances on the diatonic scale, was a relatively new addition to popular music at the time. Although it had occasionally been used for passing chords or special harmonic effects in the 20s or 30s, and is an intrinsic member of the "blues" scale derived from African music (Gioia 9), the feature had never played an integral role in the foundation of a style to the extent it does in bebop. After roughly a decade, the flattened fifth would become a blue note just as common as the undetermined thirds and sevenths in traditional blues (Brendt 15).

This is related to the harmonic technique of tritone substitution. Here, the familiar series of perfect cadences is replaced by chromatic motion of the root. Thus, the standard "IIm7 - V7 - I" sequence, a building block of the 20th century popular song, is reconstructed as "IIm7 - ♭II7 - I". A bebop pianist, confronted with a chord marked as G7 (G dominant seventh) resolving to C, would often replace it with D♭7 (D♭ dominant seventh). The tritone substitution could also be used within a standard dominant (V7) chord: for example, the G7 chord above could be a Db7 chord with G as the bass (another example of a flatted fifth).

Bebop differed drastically from the highly organized compositions and “solid, yet springing 4/4 propulsion” of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, complex harmonies, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that laid down a steady beat only on the bass and the drummer’s ride cymbal (Rosenthal 12). The music itself was jarringly different to the ears of the public, who were used to the bouncy, organized, danceable tunes of those like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller during the swing era. Instead, bebop appeared to sound racing, nervous, and often fragmented. Everything was condensed, and no notes except the absolutely necessary were added. As one bop musician said, “everything that is obvious is excluded” (Gitler 16), which often resulted in the music going above the heads of listeners. The style was also highly dependent on improvisations, which even include non-traditional solo instruments such as the drums. In the playing, a theme would be presented in unison at the beginning and the end of each piece, with improvisational solos making up the body of the work.

The classic bebop combo consisted of saxophone, trumpet, bass, drums, and piano. This was a format used (and popularized) by both Charlie Parker (alto sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) in their 1940s groups and recordings, sometimes augmented by an extra saxophonist or guitar.

Later codifications of bebop harmony emerged, notably in the teachings of pianist/educator Barry Harris, who encouraged players to learn "bebop scales" for improvising such as the Bebop Dominant 7th Scale (8 7 b7 6 5 4 3 2 1) and the Bebop Major Scale (1 2 3 4 5 #5 6 7). A feature of these scales is that when they are played in 8ths, up or down, players automatically play a tone featured in the corresponding chord on every 4/4 beat. These scales are often disguised by playing them through segments of an octave, changing direction on chord tones, or enclosing chord tones with a chromatic tone above and below the chord tone. Both of these techniques allow the improviser to embellish the bebop scale without sacrificing the effect of chord tones on every 4/4 beat.

References

Berendt, Joachim E. The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond. Trans. Bredigkeit, H. and B. with Dan Morgenstern. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1975.
Deveaux, Scott.. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Gitler, Ira. Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition of Jazz in the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Rosenthal, David. Hard bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.