Billie Holiday and her influence on Jazz Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Billie Holiday and her influence on Jazz - Essay Example The way she sang was completely new to the genre of Jazz at that time and her contributions are still followed by Jazz musicians in today’s time period. There are several legends and myths regarding the personal as well as her life as a musician. Even though she was surrounded with several scandals and was in trouble for a major portion of her life, he life experiences became the real inspiration of her music. The huge amount of contributions she made to Jazz music can never be forgotten. She can easily be said to have been the one who made major transformations to the way Jazz music was being practiced during her time. If a survey of modern Jazz history is conducted, the survey would prove that the Jazz music that is experienced in current times was her innovation. When she started practicing jazz music, there were hardly any jazz musicians who were personalizing their own tunes. There were only a few singers at her time who were singing different from rest of the singers. These singers were not a part of the Jazz music industry. These singers were representative of the Blues genre of music. One of these singers was Bessie Smith wh o along with another great Jazz singer and trumpeter named Louis Armstrong influenced Billie Holiday’s Jazz music (Henderson 295). During her early life she was singing most of the songs that were quite popular. She found this form of music quite monotonous and she started experimenting with her music. During her experiments she altered both the melody as well as the rhythm of the songs. To create her own music, she started phrasing music in relation to the beat and she even included different harmonies that were played by some of her personal favorite horn players including Louis Armstrong (Henderson 295). This mixture of music and experimentation resulted in the development of music that was regarded as magical. Current Jazz musicians use their own vocals as instruments for songs.