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The History of Jazz
The musical genre called Jazz has its origins at the start of the 20th century, and originated from the southern parts of the United States of America. Jazz is a mixture of musical influences from Europe and Africa, with many traditional elements of both musical cultures. Since its conception right up until today jazz has added musical influences from the 19th and 20th century that were popular at those periods in time. The African influences are clearly present as is proven by the presence of so called "blue notes" and the amount of improvising that is typically involved with creating Jazz music. However, jazz is a pure American invention, as was stated by Art Blakely on numerous occasions. At times Jazz has been said to have originated from Africa but the country did not play any part in its conception, other than providing influences that were from the Afro American population who resided in the Southern parts of the United States.
The term “Jazz" originated from the West coast, and referred to music typically associated with the US city Chicago around 1915. In the beginning the genre was also called “Jass”, which is considered to come from "jism", because this type of music was mostly played by artists who played the horn at the local brothels in New Orleans.
Since its conception the genre has created many varieties of itself, ranging from Dixieland to NUJazz. The very nature of the genre, inspired many artists in combining it with other countries musical traditions, creating various styles of jazz.
Over the years, many well known artists have achieved fame because of this genre of music, each making their mark with a distinctive brand of jazz, artists like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and many others.
Louis Armstrong became a well known jazz musician during the roaring twenties, and was regarded as a gifted player of the trumpet. Armstrong made a significant impact on the Jazz genre, changing the focus to solo performances. With his unique sound and voice he became a Jazz artist who excelled at bending lyrics and melodies. Armstrong is also known for his remarkable skills of scatting, a vocal art using syllables instead of words.
Duke Ellington is regarded as one of the most important artists in the long history of the genre. While not exclusively playing Jazz, he made his mark on the genre through innovative uses of the orchestra. In general he is considered to have lifted the perception of the genre to the same level as that of the classical music genre.
Lester Young started out as a musician in the band of Count Basie and is regarded as being amongst the best and most influential players of Jazz and as the inventor of the jazz sub genre called Bebop during the 1940's.
The Jazz genre cannot easily be defined, due to the many influences from different times ranging from early day waltzes to the modern music of today. Many attempts have been made to classify the genre, but to date none of the attempts have proven to be satisfactory.
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