Duke Ellington Biography

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Instructor

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Duke Ellington

Career and adult life

Duke Ellington was a real innovator; he used his band to influence the growth of jazz and the American music sector. Like Hajdu noted, I believe Duke Ellington’s music made the real sound of America (72). He was an American bandleader, jazz composer, and pianist, who served for long as leader of big-band jazz. Born to a negro Butler, Ellington took up his the piano at the age of seven searching for dignity, attention, and generational fame. He joined the Elmer Snowden, the Washingtonians in New York (Collier, 46). Snowden was impressed by his talent and passion for music, so he handed over the band to him as the leader. The band catered only to the whites, a factor that disturbed

The combinations composed individual performances that were favorite to his fans.

• Duke Ellington’s music had exceptional musical personalities, whom he had recognized their talents and exclusively wrote for them. This made his sounds unique, and could never give the same resonance when played by other bands.

• The music was rich in harmony, a characteristic that was uncommon in the music produced in the Swing Era. Ellington managed to develop unique harmony with unusual chord progressions. For example, using his unique harmony, Ellington was able to present pieces that had ambiguous introductions and interludes that connected the central themes.

• Some of the pieces were amazingly influenced by his everyday blues. For example, his travel would surprisingly appear in his piece serving as a primary inspiration. Notably sound of the train and its rhythms were used in his pieces; he usually used the train for travel with his band. A case in point is the piece, Daybreak Express, which had the sound and rhythms derived from train travel.

Five elements or devices used by

Ellington was concerned with the people relating his slave descendants and his music. He confessed that he did all the music and performance for dignity. In the film “Love you madly” he displayed his responsibility as a Swing Era bandleader to poetry and use jazz-oriented big band music to push the musician movement after the world war II.

Ellington paid tribute to the black artists figures, centers of autonomy and achievements to people such as Liberia and Harlem, amidst the intense criticism that he was not fighting for the black liberation. In the film, he shows his moving against its strictures, where he documented and celebrated black history and culture. The film portrays that his activism was significant, artistic, cultural, but not explicitly