post-bop

Post-bop is a jazz term with several possible definitions and usages. It has been variously defined as a musical period, a musical genre, a musical style, and a body of music, sometimes in different chronological periods, depending on the writer. Musicologist Barry Kernfeld wrote in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that post-bop is "a vague term, used either stylistically or chronologically (with divergent results) to describe any continuation or amalgamation of bop, modal jazz, and free jazz; its meaning sometimes extends into swing and earlier styles or into fusion and third stream styles."

==Definitions and uses== The term post-bop has a variety of usages which vary widely. Jazz historian Stuart Nicholson wrote that "The term post-bop is a wonderful catch-all, used not so much to describe what a style of music is, but more what it isn't. Post-bop isn't free or fusion or hard-bop or modal or avant-garde." Some writers have defined post-bop with specificity, but these sources conflict with one another. One potential definition of post-bop is a musical period in which modern jazz was at its greatest mainstream popularity extending from the mid-1950s through to the mid-1960s. Others have written that post-bop is not a musical period but a specific body of music that emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s that combined principles of bebop, hard bop, modal jazz, avant-garde and free jazz, but also departed from earlier traditions in jazz.