Bebop

Bebop is a style of Jazz characterized by fast tempos, improvisation, irregular melodic phrasing, and complex harmonies and chord structures. Though Jazz had always been less racially restricted than Blues, a number of black Jazz musicians felt the need to redefine black Jazz culture with this new radical genre.

Both taking inspiration from and serving as a counter to Swing music, these musicians utilized smaller combos and created music less suitable for dancing. Instead, this music was frantic, chaotic, and aggressive. It also happens to be one of the most revolutionary types of Jazz styles, or music genres in general. This is because it makes the music faster by making it slower. By stretching the tempo, a lot of silent gaps opened up between the beats. This free space could be filled in, or improvised, with drum rolls, rhythmic beats, and superfast, harmonic melodies which were usually in vibrato. The musicians also regularly imitate trumpet solos with their voice, leading to a new, fast singing technique called "scatting", which is where the word "bebop" comes from.

The difference between this Jazz and that from the past was so huge that people eventually coined the term "Modern Jazz" to distinguish this more experimental style from the traditional "Classic Jazz". This term also later included other genres such as Cool Jazz and Avant-Garde Jazz.

Initially outside of the mainstream, this genre - or more specifically, its subgenre Hard Bop - is now one of the most popular and well-known forms of Jazz.