Jazz

Jazz is a musical art form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. It has been called the first original art form to develop in the United States of America.

Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African American music traditions including blues and ragtime. After originating in African American communities near the beginning of the 20th century, jazz gained international popularity by the 1920s. Since then, jazz has had a profoundly pervasive influence on other musical styles worldwide. Today, various jazz styles continue to evolve.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American composer and classical and jazz trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, "Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music."

The word jazz itself is rooted in American slang, probably of sexual origin, although various alternative derivations have been suggested.