Jazz, a musical genre, originated in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was born in the southern port city of New Orleans, with musical roots from the blues and ragtime. Jazz emphasizes improvisation and is based on the swinging Shuffle rhythm, which is a combination of black African culture and white European culture.
The first decade of the 20th century, jazz was mainly concentrated in the development of New Orleans, and after 1917, it shifted to Chicago, and then to New York in the 1930s, until today, jazz is popular all over the world. The main styles of jazz are: New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cold jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz, and fusion jazz.
Expanded profile:
Tracing the Roots
Music was an important part of the expression of self-life and emotion by black slaves on the plantations of the southern United States during the 19th century. who used it as an important means of expressing their lives and emotions. Beginning in the late 19th century, jazz was based on traditional Anglo-American music, mixed with blues, ragtime and other genres, and was a "hybrid" product.
Black music in the Americas has preserved a great deal of its African character, with distinctive rhythms and collective improvisation. The combination of this tradition with the music of the new settlements, much of it vocal, resulted in the creation not just of a new sound but of a whole new form of musical expression.
The most famous Afro-American music was religious. These beautiful, moving songs were listened to by whites, but with a bit more of an upper-class flavor than such songs sung in country black churches.
Gospel music as it is known today is more accurately a reflection of the emotional power and melodicism of early Afro-Americans than an inheritance of the religiosity of the music of the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers of the early decade of the twentieth century.
Other early forms of music include work songs, children's songs, and dance tunes dating back to the days of slavery, all of which have become important musical legacies, especially considering that musical activity was quite severely restricted under the system of the time.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Jazz