Analyzing American Music Jaco, Imaginary Day, and Strange Fruit, all are wonderful musical pieces in their own distinctive way. Jaco sounds like it derived from the traditional percussion music; yet, this particular piece created its own unique style of percussion. In fact, all of these musical pieces modified traditional music, and left a lasting impression on the music industry and on society, in general. Each piece makes one want to explore its origins and analyze the true meaning of its poignant message. These exuberant pieces defined what jazz really is, and should be attributed to helping develop the diverse historical perspective of American Jazz.Jaco was played by, The Turtle Island String Quartet, in 1989. This particular version of Jaco lasted for about 4 and minutes. The instruments played consisted of, cello, which was used for the bass, two violins and the viola, which were used to establish the brilliant harmony. Jaco, “employed irregular phrase lengths and sophisticated formal schemes, including the use of a succession of different rhythmic speeds” (p401). This is interesting because the classical Jaco is composed much differently. In comparing the two distinctive versions of Jaco, the classical Jaco lacks soloist, whereas, The Turtle String Quartet’s recording of Jaco is overwhelmed with creative soloist. Even though this piece created the pseudo effect that a bass instrument was being utilized, percussion came from plucking the cello and by banging against the hollow instruments, which add various sounds. Further, this piece is a type of acoustic jazz because each instrument played is acoustic; however, the piece can’t be solely classified as acoustic. In fact, there isn’t any specific category to label this piece under.A common question that should be explored is, how was Jaco organized in form and variation? The piece starts off with a solo violinist playing ...
