what is bebop music

Bebop is a style of jazz that emerged in the 1940s in New York City. It was developed by younger jazz musicians who wanted to expand the creative possibilities of jazz beyond the popular, dance-oriented swing music-style. Bebop was not intended for dancing, and it demanded close listening. It marked a shift from jazz as entertainment to jazz as an intellectual art form. Bebop musicians explored advanced harmonies, complex syncopation, altered chords, extended chords, chord substitutions, asymmetrical phrasing, and intricate melodies. Rather than playing heavily arranged music, bebop musicians typically played the melody of a composition (called the "head") with the accompaniment of the rhythm section, followed by a section in which each of the performers improvised a solo, then returned to the melody at the end of the composition. Bebop was characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic playing, and complex melodies. It took the harmonies of old jazz and superimposed on them additional "substituted" chords. Bebop broke up the metronomic regularity of the drummers rhythmic pulse and produced solos played in double time with several bars packed with 16th notes. The resulting improvisation was complicated. Some examples of famous bebop tunes include "Scrapple From The Apple," "Ornithology," "Ill Remember April," "A Night In Tunisia," and "Confirmation".