Style of African American music that started in the South, particularly in New Orleans, around the end of the nineteenth century Syncopated and polyrhythmic, jazz’s early influences can be found in nineteenth-century vernacular forms: ragtime, spirituals, stringbands, Dixieland. Jazz bands used European symphonic instruments, but emphasized the brass sections. Bands often had more than one trumpet or saxophone player as well as a string section, piano and rhythm sections. As jazz spread throughout the country and into Europe by the 1920s, bandleaders and composers such as Louis Armstrong became prominent. Bands became larger in the 1930s, and the complex music became simplified by white big bands such as those led by Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey.

In the 1940s, swing music ended and bop emerged as the predominant form, originating from jazz clubs of New York City, NY. A new generation of musicians emerged such as Charlie Parker (saxophone), Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) and Thelonious Monk (piano) who left the big bands to start their own smaller, more experimental ensembles. The great jazz vocalists of the era—Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Betty Carter—took bop’s vigorous rhythms and harmonic changes into singing styles and took up what came to be called scat singing: improvisations based on—but not necessarily loyal to—a recurring melody that mimicked instruments in their phrasing.

In the 1950s, jazz splintered off into a few styles. On the West Coast, a “cool” school emerged with practitioners such as Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. In the late 1950s, a fusion between jazz and classical music emerged, exemplified by the Modern Jazz Quartet. Hard bop or soul jazz also emerged as a style that used blues themes in the music—this was performed by Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Also in the 1950s, an avant-garde developed that was less concerned with improvisations built around the melody and harmonic structure, but were investigating sound textures. These innovators were Miles Davis on the trumpet, Ornette Coleman on the saxophone, trumpet and violin and John Coltrane on the saxophone.

In the 1960s, jazz music was influenced by the rise of protest in the African American community Saxophonist Charlie Shepp, for example, played angry plaintive music that rejected the standard theme-improvisational solos-theme format of small ensembles. This music, however, never developed great commercial appeal. Instead, fusion music of the 1970s that moved to the more standard rhythms of rock ’n’ roll and utilized electronic instruments reached a mass audience.

By the end of the century neo-classicist virtuosos such as Wynton Marsalis emerged as key players in the world of jazz, bringing back the melodycentered musics of the 1920s and 1930s. Marsalis is currently artistic director of the jazz program at Lincoln Center of Performing Arts in New York City, signaling that jazz is now considered an officially recognized form of music, alongside European-based classical music in its rigor and history.