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Jazz is a genre of music which originated in the African American communities in southern parts of the US in the early 20th century. Jazz music resulted as a fusion of African and American music traditions. Right from the earlier development and to date, jazz has made music from the American Popular Music of the 19th and 20th century. The West African origin of Jazz is quite evident in the way it uses improvisation, syncopation, polyrhythm, swing note and blue notes. Jazz was also known as Jass in the beginning. Jazz began as West coast slang and it was used to refer to the music in the city of Chicago in 1915.
From its inception in early 20th century, various sub-genres of Jazz have been created. These include, Dixieland from New Orleans, the big band style swing of the 30s and 40s, bebop from the 40s, a range of Latin Jazz fusions like Brazilian Jazz, free jazz, jazz fusion, acid jazz and Nujazz. The music genre has spread right across the world since then and has been influenced by different local regional musical cultures. The aesthetics of the genre have been adapted in different environments and as a result we now have many distinctive styles of jazz.
The origin of the word Jazz is easily one of the sought after names in modern English. The American Dialect Society named Jazz as the word of the century (20th). The word has resulted in a lot of research and the history of the word is quite well documented. After its beginning as west coast slang in 1912 the meaning of it changed however did not refer to either sex or music. In 1915 it started referring to music in Chicago. The same music was played in New Orleans before this but was not referred to with the same name.
In early 19th century many slaves from Africa reached US and were basically from West Africa and bought many musical traditions to the US with them. Many music festivals were arranged in New Orleans until 1843 and in the earlier part of 19th century, a large number of black musicians learned to play European instruments and music, particularly the violin. They used to parody the European dance music into their dances.
The alcohol prohibition in the US from 1920-1933 resulted in the illegal speakeasies turning into venues of Jazz music. Jazz music unfortunately started to get a reputation of being immoral and the older generation saw it as something threatening their values and culture. As a result even the media started to criticize Jazz.
Jazz went through many transitions till today. In 1987, the senate and House of Representatives passed a bill that was proposed by the Democrat John Conyers for declaring jazz as a unique type of American music. Jazz was designated as a valuable and unique American music treasure.
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