What happend to the arranging style of the Swing Era? What happened to the size of the band? Now the music emphasizes speed, technical fluidity, surprise, and almost entirely improvisation. Do you think dancers were happy with this new style?
. Dizzy Gillespie had a terrific big band for a few years in the late 40s, but for the most part bebop was played by small combos. A quartet doesn't need arrangements, of course, but in many cases the music wasn't even written down. Dancers stuck with swing, or moved on to R&B, or maybe Latin music. With bebop, jazz moved away from being mainstream popular music toward art music. Bands got smaller because the economy was bad at the time. Band leaders could not pay their musicians. Smaller bands were formed, and Bird and Dizzy created be bop. The music changed.
the dancers were not happy with the new style, for obvious reasons. |
