West Coast jazz refers to various styles of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a sub-genre of cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily arranged, and more often composition-based. While this style was prominent for a while, it was by no means the only style of jazz played on the West Coast, which exhibited more variety than could be conveyed by a simple name.
Famous quotes containing the words west, coast and/or jazz:
“Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa.... We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bought them; white people changed their names ... my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend, but really, what is my maiden name? What is my name?”
—Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)
“Beyond this island bound
By a thin sea of flesh
And a bone coast ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)