“Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.” So said renowned musician Duke Ellington – and he should know. Jazz dance music reverberates back to the mid 1950’s and further. It was in the late 19th century through till the middle of the twentieth that most people considered jazz dance music to be associated with Tap Dancing. Tap, set to the jazz music of the time, was to inspire a whole raft of social dance music from the Charleston to the Boogie Woogie and later Swing and Lindy Hop (a flowing, sensual Jazz dance that came out of the Afro-American Jazz dance music of the late 20′s and 30′s).
After World War ID, a new generation of fun loving “flappers” soon became known as “The Lost Generation”. They changed dance partners continuously and enjoyed new dance music like the “Shimmy”, the “Rag” or the “Black Bottom”. At one time the very word “Jazz” was used as a common reference to sexual intercourse.
But after the 1950’s a raft of dancers began to take the very essence of Jazz dance music and use it to create a whole new performing art. The essence of the Caribbean traditions were there, but the music changed to be known as “Modern” jazz dance music. Modern Jazz dance soon established itself in Broadway musicals and was popularised by people such as choreographer Bob Fosse. Even today modern jazz (with the dancers wearing leather jazz shoes) and the dance music behind it, continue to be a corner stone of Musical Theatre.
Today true Jazz dance music is characterized by a tendency to stress the (second and fourth) beats in the bar. Originally in traditional jazz dance music the first and third beats in the bar were stressed. Jazz “Swing” animates the dance music and pulses through a 4/4 time.
Basically, a new genre of jazz dance music has emerged since the 1950’s. We may call it “modern jazz dance music,” but its roots can still be traced back to Caribbean traditional dance.