Essay
Dizzy Gillespie a Jazz Legend 
The world is full of legendary people in various spheres of human activities. Music sets its legends to a different level, as they not only change the flow of music culture development and stimulate others to create something new and strive to achieve success. Dizzy Gillespie is not only a jazz legend, he is the starting point for new music waves and original styles. There is a saying that the trumpet creator new that there were the things impossible to do with this musical instrument but he forgot to tell about these things to Dizzy Gillespie. The analysis of Dizzy Gillespie role in the process of world music flow revealed the fact that his contributions and innovative approaches to music are enormous, making him one of the most prominent musicians and composers and proving him to be a real jazz legend.
The future jazz legend was the ninth child in his family and, due to the presence of musical instrument in the house, got accustomed to playing on the trumpet, as well as some other musical instruments. Dizzy Gillespies real name was John Birks Gillespie and the Dizzy nickname stuck to him for his unpredictable and extravagant character (Maggin 24). Dizzy was fond of mad actions, provoking the anger and misunderstanding of his orchestra and band partners. Later he created his own band and performed on tours in Europe and later all over the USA (Maggin 38). He invented and developed the bebop music style together with Charlie Parker. The style was not close to the bigger part of the audience, as it was different from the dance music direction and did not promote an easy listening, but interesting, complicated and awkward performance (Gillespie and Fraser 68). Bebop was the creation of Gillespie and his colleagues-musicians, making a solid start for a new era of jazz music (Josephson 21). Gillespie liked to perform the solo parts and he promoted the importance of solo players on stage, making an accent on their power on the whole band play during the gig. Dizzy Gillespies performance style was always spectacular, but he managed to show his audience the beauty of music by directing peoples attention to listening but not to watching him play. He used his cheek muscles to be able to play longer, as the trumpet performers had more severe conditions, comparing to saxophone players (Smith 32). The tension of trumpet musician is usually higher and requires more power and Dizzy was able to perform long hours with the help of his cheeks (Smith 44). Moreover, Dizzy added more percussion instruments to his performance to enhance the feeling of African roots in this music style (Gillespie and Fraser 115). The new concerts filled the audience with more energy by combination of percussion sounds and solo play of the leading musicians.
As it was previously mentioned, there was a reason why the musician got his new name Dizzy. The most important reason was his behavior that the surrounding people noticed due to its inadequacy, fast mood changes, unexplained actions, constant jokes and instable attitude to the surrounding objects and people. Moreover, such behaviors could not pass by his professional sphere of music (Josephson 22). The style of his performance was with the tone of craziness, constant change of flow and mostly absolutely unpredictable. Besides, his transit technique of music making was unusual for the ordinary lovers of swing music (Larkin 87). Gillespies music was not rhythmical in the general understanding of rhythm. His performance was filled with nervousness, impulsiveness, and unpredictable changes of music flow, sudden stops and starts, musical sets torn apart. The performance style was famous by melody bursting, change of tones determined by endless enlarging of his cheeks and masterly choice of music making on stage.
The numerous music bands started their professional careers with support and help of Dizzy Gillespie. He managed to become the second most influential jazz person in the world after the admired Louie Armstrong. The numerous concerts of Dizzy Gillespie took place in Carnegie Hall and White House (Larkin 56). He went on tour all over Europe during the 1942, and in 1990 he visited Moscow with the concert. The importance of this performer is difficult to overestimate as he promoted new style of music, and changed the understanding of performance on stage. Dizzy Gillespie is famous for his participation in numerous orchestras all over the world, but due to his difficult character, he was not able to stay in one band for a long time (Boone 14). The manner of his performance was based on his explosive character that was not easily understood by his companions and band partners. This determined his desire and successful creation of numerous own bands that successfully performed in America and abroad. Besides, Dizzy also owned the sound company that made it possible to enhance the influence of new music tendencies by distribution of the records (Boone 65). Moreover, he changed the accent of music to significant influence of solo players, which played the most important role in development of bebop music style.
In general, the role of Dizzy Gillespie in the history of world music is enormous, as he changed the general understanding of performance on the stage. Moreover, Dizzy changed the accent of performance, driving the attention to the solo players and their mastery paly. Together with Charlie Parker, he created a new music direction that until now remains one of the leading music flows around the world. Dizzy Gillespie remains in the history of music known by his madcap character, unusual ability to master the trumpet and use it to produce the sounds creating a new world of performance and style. He filled the world of music with new music bands under his direction and enhanced the importance of African style music by his contributions and talent.
