Bebop, or bop, was the first style of modern jazz. It developed in the early 1940s in New York, notably in after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, as young musicians pushed beyond the arranged dance music of the swing big bands. Its leading figures included the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, and the drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach.
Bebop was played by small groups, often at very fast tempos, with improvisation built on a tune’s chord structure rather than its melody. Players drew on all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, added substitute chords to familiar songs and broke up the drummer’s steady pulse with displaced accents. It turned jazz into music for listening rather than dancing. Lo-fi rarely borrows its speed, but much of the harmonic language later used in jazz-flavoured beats grew out of bebop.