Small Changes Make Big Differences A living jazz legend once exclaimed “jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.” Herbie Hancock makes it clear that jazz has been an evolving form of art. And just as simple as the notion that music can change the world, music changes in itself. Jazz once evolved into something we call swing. Back in the roaring twenties people got up and danced to this kind of music. However, these simple and playful melodies that everyone were accustomed to transformed into intricate music with a different basis. When jazz was over everyone’s head and people stopped dancing, we call this period bop. Inevitably, new ideas emerged and jazz musicians decided to take a…show more content… Miles popularized cool through his album, Birth of the Cool, but this is only mistakenly believed to be the start of cool, as it was already being played. “He had a style like the players from St. Louis, singing sound, and he didn't play too many notes or play those real fast tempos” (Davis 1989: 62). From Miles Davis’ autobiography, it is clear that he heard a style that was much slower than the bop he was playing alongside Bird and Dizzy. He much rather preferred this style which became known as cool. Talking to his father about dropping Julliard, he was given invaluable advice to never be like a mockingbird and to have originality in whatever he does in life. Miles Davis is one of the defining giants in the cool era. David Brubeck and Stan Getz also influenced this new style of jazz. Brubeck explored and borrowed ideas from other parts of the world. He integrated new meters, melodic ideas, creating many jazz standards, and one of the top selling jazz albums, Time-Out. Getz popularized bossa nova, yet another jazz genre with many ties with cool. Getz brought in Latin ideas mixed with the more relaxed cool music. Brubeck and Getz epitomize what Herbie Hancock was talking about, borrowing ideas, creating new ones, and sharing.
The differences in ideas can be more clearly seen by a side-by-side comparison. Cool is identified as an easier to follow genre that avoided the loud and aggressive bop style. In
