Jazz drumming

The techniques and instrumentation of this type of performance have evolved over several periods, influenced by jazz at large and the individual drummers within it.

Stylistically, this aspect of performance was shaped by its starting place, New Orleans,[1] as well as numerous other regions of the world, including other parts of the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.

[5] It is also heavily influenced by the clave, and composers of the music require a knowledge of the workings of percussion in Afro-Cuban music—the instruments must combine with each other in a logical fashion.

[6] The specific genre of Afro-Cuban jazz is influenced by the traditional rhythms of Cuba, rather than from the entire Caribbean and other parts of the world.

Black drummers were able to acquire their technical ability from fife and drum corps,[2] but the application of these techniques in the dance bands of the 19th century allowed a more fertile ground for musical experimentation.

[2] The only area where enslaved persons were allowed to perform their music, other than private locations, was a place in New Orleans called Congo Square.

[1] The former Africans were able to play their traditional music, which started to intermingle with the sounds of the many other cultures in New Orleans at the time: Haitian, European, Cuban, and American, as well as many other smaller denominations.

They used drums almost indistinguishable from those made in Africa, though the rhythms were somewhat different from those of the songs of the regions the enslaved persons were from, probably the result of their having lived in America for several generations.

Syncopation is synonymous with being "off-beat", and it is, among many things, a result of placing African rhythms written in odd combinations of notes (e.g., 3+3+2) into the evenly divided European metric concept.

[3] This was one of the first "ride patterns", a series of rhythms that eventually resulted in a beat that functions in jazz as the clave does in Cuban music: a "mental metronome" for the other members of the ensemble.

Beneath the constant rhythmic improvisation, Dodds played a pattern that was only somewhat more sophisticated than the basic one/three roll, but was, in fact, identical to the rhythm of today, only inverted.

Eventually, however, due to various factors (not the least of which being the financial motivation), the number of drummers was reduced to one, and this created the need for a percussionist to play multiple instruments, hence the drum set.

The most common of the accoutrements were the wood block, Chinese tom-toms (large, two-headed drums), cowbells, cymbals, and almost anything else the drummer could think of adding.

It was not until a bit later, however, that the displays of technical virtuosity by these men were replaced by definite change in the underlying rhythmic structure and aesthetic of jazz, moving on to an era called bebop.

To a small extent in the swing era, but most strongly in the bebop period, the role of the drummer evolved from an almost purely time-keeping position to that of a member of the interactive musical ensemble.

[12] Another influential drummer of bebop was Kenny Clarke, the man who switched the four beat pulse that had previously been played on the bass drum to the ride cymbal, effectively making it possible for comping to move forward in the future.

[14] During this time, the drummer took on an even more influential role in the jazz group at large, and started to free the drums into a more expressive instrument, allowing them to attain more equality and interactivity with the other parts of the ensemble.

[15] The feel in jazz drumming of this period was called "broken time", which gets its name from the idea of changing patterns and the quick, erratic, unconventional movements and rhythms.

The concept of manipulating time, making the music appear to slow down or race ahead, was something that drummers had never attempted previously, but one that was evolving quickly in this era.

Layering rhythms on top of each other (a polyrhythm) to create a different texture in the music, as well as using odd combinations of notes to change feeling, would never have been possible with the stiffness of drumming in the previous generation.