TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, I’m Mark Rapp, and this is Rapp on Jazz.
If you’ve ever heard a jazz tune that sounds familiar—but not quite—there’s a good chance it’s a contrafact.
A contrafact is a new melody written over the chord changes of an existing song. It’s a jazz tradition that goes back decades. Musicians use contrafacts to create fresh material without paying for the original copyright and to challenge themselves creatively.
Take Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology”—it uses the chord structure of “How High the Moon.” Or Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence,” based on “Just You, Just Me.”
Contrafacts let jazz players explore new ideas over familiar harmonic ground. They test a musician’s ability to navigate complex changes while bringing something original.
It’s a practice that continues today, not just as a workaround, but as a core part of jazz innovation.
This has been Rapp on Jazz, a co-production of ColaJazz and South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.