A first-timer's listening guide
What to listen for at a jazz club
Swing, Dixieland, bossa nova and standards in plain terms, so a first night at a Prague jazz club makes sense from the first chorus.
Reserve your seat at Reduta ↗Before the band starts
A night at a jazz club rewards a little listening practice, and a quick read of this page will do it. Reduta's programme moves between swing, Dixieland, mainstream and modern jazz, big band, blues, funk, bossa nova and jazz pop, so the band you hear on your date may play any of them. You do not need to know the names. What helps is knowing what each style is trying to do, because that tells you where to point your ears when the lights go down.
Swing: the feel that makes you tap your foot
Swing developed in the United States in the late 1920s and early 1930s and was national entertainment from the mid-1930s. Its big bands had a rhythm section of drums, bass and piano or guitar, with brass and reed sections trading short phrases while soloists improvised over the arrangement. Wikipedia credits string bass players with making the faster 4/4 tempos possible. When people say a band swings, they mean the rhythm has a lilting drive that falls between the beats as well as on them.
Dixieland: everyone improvises at once
Dixieland, also called traditional jazz, grew out of the music of New Orleans in the early twentieth century. A standard band has a front line of trumpet or cornet, trombone and clarinet, with a rhythm section behind them. Usually one instrument states the melody while the others improvise around it at the same time. Wikipedia calls this collective improvisation the defining feature of the style. If it sounds like a conversation where everyone talks at once, you are hearing it correctly.
Bossa nova: jazz with a calmer pulse
Bossa nova is a Brazilian style that developed in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Wikipedia calls it a relaxed style of samba, with a calm, syncopated rhythm and no dance steps, played fingerstyle on a nylon-string guitar. João Gilberto's 1959 album Chega de Saudade helped to establish it, with harmonies by Tom Jobim. Jazz musicians absorbed it, and many bossa nova songs are now jazz standards, so a bossa nova number may turn up in an otherwise swinging set.
Standards: the songs everyone knows
A jazz standard is a composition widely known and played by jazz musicians. Many began as Broadway or Hollywood songs. Wikipedia names George and Ira Gershwin's Summertime from 1935 and Rodgers and Hart's My Funny Valentine from 1937 among the most recorded ones, and they are the two tunes Bill Clinton played with a Czech band at Reduta in 1994. At a club, a band often plays a standard, lets each musician improvise on it, then returns to the tune.
Why a small room changes how you hear
Big bands were built for dance halls, and small groups are built for rooms like a club. In a hall with a low stage you hear the instruments before the sound system does: the pluck of the bass, the brush on the snare, the breath before a sax phrase. The club's programme includes big bands and smaller groups, so a night with a quartet gives you a very different texture from one with a dozen players. Neither is better. Pick the sound that you are curious about.
How to listen, bar by bar
Pick one instrument and follow it for a chorus. Then switch to the bass, which keeps the harmony moving, and finally to the drummer. When a soloist finishes, the room often applauds mid-song, and that is normal. In a small hall like Reduta's you will also hear the players react to each other, so watch their faces as much as their hands. Finally, put your phone away: the hall goes dark for a reason, and the evening is built for listening.
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