Jazz Online - Jazz 101

Jazz 101 Styles

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Jazz 101 Style
Mainstream

The term "mainstream" was coined by jazz authority Stanley Dance in the 1950s in an effort to describe what was at that time the work of contemporary musicians who discovered the foundation for their inspiration and efforts in the music and approach of the swing era as it was developed in the 1930s and 1940s. It was meant to differentiate their work from the newly emerging schools of modern jazz, such as bebop. Labels like "big band music" and "swing" had already managed to attract a nostalgic glow about them, lessening their usefulness in describing the relevance of more recent recordings. The boundaries encompassed by the term "mainstream jazz" have gradually broadened over the years (today some elements of bebop and post-bop, for example, are widely considered mainstream) and today it is employed more liberally, although such esoteric developments as the avant-garde and fusion styles would still be considered to lie outside its scope.

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