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Jazz is a musical form that evolved from African American and European influences, featuring improvisation, syncopation, and original timbres. Learn about the history, styles, and characteristics of jazz, from ragtime to free jazz, and its prominent musicians and composers.
jazz, Musical form, often improvisational, developed by African Americans and influenced by both European harmonic structure and African rhythms. Though its specific origins are not known, the music developed principally as an amalgam in the late 19th- and early 20th-century musical culture of New Orleans.
Learn about jazz music, a genre that originated in the early 20th century and blends African rhythms and European harmony. Explore the history, styles, and artists of jazz, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis, from Latin jazz to hip-hop.
Louis Armstrong, the leading trumpeter and one of the most influential artists in jazz history. He was also a bandleader, singer, film star, and comedian. With his great sensitivity, technique, and capacity to express emotion, Armstrong led in the development of jazz into a fine art.
Jazz dance is any dance to jazz accompaniments, composed of a profusion of forms. It developed from both 19th- and 20th-century stage dance and traditional Black social dances, and influenced modern dance and motion picture choreography.
Blues is a form of secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, expressing feelings of sadness or melancholy. Learn about the origins, influences, styles, and artists of the blues, and how it shaped jazz, R&B, rock, and country music.
Bebop, the first kind of modern jazz, which split jazz into two opposing camps in the last half of the 1940s. The word is an onomatopoeic rendering of a staccato two-tone phrase distinctive in this type of music.
Jazz grew from a mix of African and European music. Ragtime, a form of piano music, and blues music also influenced jazz. New Orleans, Louisiana, is often called the home of jazz. Many important early jazz musicians, such as pianist Jelly Roll Morton, were from New Orleans.
Ragtime is a syncopated musical style that influenced jazz and was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Learn about its origins, characteristics, composers, and revivals from Britannica's editors and experts.
The credit for being the first to perform and record orchestral jazz must go to Henderson, who, starting in about 1923, gathered together from the small beginnings of quintets and sextets a growing number of notable New York-based players and formed a full orchestra.