The History of Bebop and Hip Hop
Despite hailing from two different musical genres, bebop and hip hop share very similar characteristics. With rhythm structures that groove in comparable ways, bebop is a forerunner to the sounds found in modern hip hop. Both are crucial components to the American musical landscape.
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Bebop
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Bebop, a form of jazz, sprung from the swing scene of the early 1940s. With its fast tempo, changing time signatures and throbbing bass, bebop grew in New York City, where players such as Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk performed. Jam sessions were laid out in nightclubs such as Milton's Playhouse in Harlem where musicians would come to sit in on a variety of performances. One of these musicians was Miles Davis.
Miles Davis
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Miles Davis was the heir apparent to Charlie Parker. Building upon Parker's penchant for the fragmented playing that was the trademark of the bebop scene, Davis began to experiment with jazz, eventually bridging it with rock music to form jazz fusion. While jazz slowly faded out of the spotlight with the rise of rock 'n' roll, Davis was able to keep it in the limelight.
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The Beats
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During the 1950's, the Beat poets, best known through such writers as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, would often perform spoken word poetry. These shows were usually accompanied with a bebop type band, complete with a bass line that went along with the words. An early form of what would become hip hop culture, beat poetry enabled words to move along with the music.
Rise of Hip Hop
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By the 1970's, clubs such as Milton's had long since closed. The Beat Generation was in the past and Miles Davis had continued on a path that mixed funk, rock and jazz, continuing his experimentation. Like bebop, hip hop started as a New York art form, rising in predominantly black neighborhoods. Its earliest singles demonstrated a knack for spoken word mixed with funk or disco beats. But, by the 1980's with the creation of labels such as Def Jam and the emergence of Public Enemy and Run DMC, hip hop began to become a force.
Jazz-Rap
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After the initial wave of hip hop groups, a new crop emerged, this one taking note of the relationship between jazz and hip hop, especially bebop. Groups such as A Tribe Called Quest actively experimented with bebop in their music, sharing similar bass lines and throwing in jazz rhythms to accompany their rhymes. The Native Tongues Posse, a hip hop collective also became a prominent force, with hip hop musicians such as De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Common, and Mos Def continuing to bridge the divide between hip hop and bebop by expanding upon the ideas of groups like Public Enemy while exploring the jazz sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Even the Beastie Boys began to incorporate bebop into their sound going as far as to create their own jazz-based instrumentation on their records, something that helped them expand their sound. Today, many of these artists continue to use bebop rhythms in their music allowing for a new round of hip hop musicians to continue to create and unite the two musical genres.
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