Jazz is a musical form that has its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when American and European classical music intertwined with African and slave folk songs and the influences of West African culture. It developed in the United States, with New Orleans playing a key role in its evolution. This port city was more diverse than anywhere else in the South, and people of African, French, Caribbean, Italian, German, Mexican, and American Indian descent, as well as English ancestry interacted with each other. This mix of musical traditions gave rise to jazz. In the beginning, jazz was mostly for dancing.
Later on, people began to sit and listen to it. The evolution of jazz was led by a series of brilliant musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Jazz developed a number of different styles, including traditional jazz, swing, bebop, fresh jazz and jazz-rock. At the same time, jazz spread from the United States to many parts of the world. Today, jazz musicians and festivals can be found in dozens of countries.
Jazz is one of the largest U. S. exports to the world. Where did jazz originate from? Jazz originated in New Orleans in the second half of the 19th century. This port city had people who came from all over the world and socialized with each other.
You could hear music from all over the world on the streets of New Orleans. New Orleans was also one of the only places in the United States that allowed slaves to own drums. Jazz wasn't born on a particular day; it was created over time. It was a meeting, a mix, a fusion of many cultures, a lot of emotions and a lot of skills. Jazz is characterized by syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensembles, varying degrees of improvisation, often deliberate deviations in tone and the use of original timbres. The jazz era culminated with the historic Benny Goodman concert of 1938 at Carnegie Hall.
This event brought together musicians of various ethnicities to play jazz inside this sacred hall. Certain types of jazz (or at least music adjacent to jazz) have used straight eighth notes while preserving other elements that we associate with music. This fusion of jazz with music from other cultures was a tradition that had existed at least since Dizzy Gillespie mixed bebop with Cuban music in the 1940s. Jazz has bequeathed a musical gift that has enriched cultures around the world. With strong roots in improvisation, jazz continues to evolve while transforming other genres around the world. The syncopations of jazz were not entirely new; they had been present in ragtime and blues before and could be heard even before in minstrel music and in the work of Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Bamboula, subtitled Danse des Nègres, 1844-1845; Ojos Criollos, 1859).Jazz was the popular music of the United States during this period.
Leaders of bands such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw became big stars playing for a large audience of dancers. The most important jazz creator and first great soloist (improviser) was trumpet player Louis Armstrong. Marsalis compared Miles Davis' belated embrace of pop music to “a general who has betrayed his country”. He is clear about what he thinks jazz is and is not making the case in an essay on his website. Whatever made jazz grow, it has bequeathed a musical gift that has enriched cultures around the world. With strong roots in improvisation, jazz continues to evolve while transforming other genres around the world.
