Jazz drummer

Jazz drumming is the art of playing percussion (predominantly the drum set, which includes a variety of drums and cymbals) in jazz styles ranging from 1910s-style Dixieland jazz to 1970s-era jazz fusion and 1980s-era Latin jazz. 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, as well as numerous other regions of the world, including other parts of the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Jazz required a method of playing percussion different from traditional European styles, one that was easily adaptable to the different rhythms of the new genre, fostering the creation of jazz drumming's hybrid technique. As each period in the evolution of jazz—swing and bebop, for example—tended to have its own rhythmic style, jazz drumming continued to evolve along with the music through the 20th century. One tendency that emerged over time was the gradual "freeing" of the beat. But older styles persisted in later periods. The borders between these periods are unclear, partly because no one style completely replaced others, and partly because there were numerous cross influences between styles.

The rhythms and use of percussion in jazz, as well as the art form itself, were products of extensive cultural mixing in various locations. The earliest occasion when this occurred was the Moorish invasion of Europe, where the cultures of France, Spain, and Africa to some extent, encountered each other and most likely exchanged some cultural information. The influence of African music and rhythms on the general mix that created jazz was profound, though this influence did not appear until later.

There are several central qualities shared by African music and jazz, most prominently the importance of improvisation. Some instrumental qualities from African music that appear in jazz (especially its drumming) include using unpitched instruments to produce specific musical tones or tone-like qualities, using all instruments to imitate the human voice, superimposition of one rhythmic structure onto another (e.g., a group of three against a group of two), dividing a regular section of time (called a measure in musical terms) into groups of two and three, and the use of repetitive rhythms used throughout a musical piece, often called clave rhythms. This last quality is one of special importance, as there are several pronounced occurrences of this pattern and the aesthetics that accompany it in the world of jazz.

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