American Dream: Joe Zawinul

Over the history of time, music has come to help define cultures and act as a voice for the emotion of different people all over the world. The first genre of music that can be considered truly an American creation is Jazz. I developed a love for jazz music in high school while playing bass in my school's band, but I never really appreciated the people behind the genre until I came to college and took a course in jazz history. One particular story of an Austrian jazz musician named Josef Zawinul, who played with greats like Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, Cannonball Adderley, and the Weather Report, is an example of the American Dream of jazz music.

Born into a family of gypsies in Vienna, Austria in 1932, Zawinul trained his entire childhood at a music conservatory in his homeland before emigrating to the United States for a career in jazz. He received a scholarship from Berklee School of Music in Boston to play the piano, one of the top music schools in our country. After playing with some of the original jazz greats like Adderley and Davis, Zawinul teamed up with a saxaphonist named Wayne Shorter to form the Weather Report. With the popularity of R&B and Rock music growing throughout this time in the 1960's and 70's, Zawinul and his group played music with the power of a rock group, all maintaining the technical musicianship of jazz musicians. Hits like "Birdland" thrust jazz music back into the mainstream, all be it for only a short time. But Zawinul's integration of electronic, jazz, rock, and R&B music to help form a new genre now known as 'jazz fusion' has had lasting impacts on American music to this day.

Zawinul studied music in Austria with the dream to come to America and be a part of the jazz music culture in America. Instead, he came to our country and created his own American Dream, revolutionizing the genre and reaching a level of creativity in music that is no longer seen these days. Zawinul once said, speaking of classic jazz, “It was great music, ... but it has passed. It is wonderful to recall it, fun to hear it, but that is not for me: I get too restless, too bored; I need something new". If all Americans had that level of motivation and passion to change the world, our nation would certainly be a better place.