What is jazz music?

Jazz is a musical genre that originated around 1900 in the southern states of the USA, originally invented and practised by African-Americans, which has been further developed in a variety of ways and is often found in crossovers with other musical traditions and genres. Jazz has also left its mark on other modern music genres; without jazz, many genres would not exist today in the form we know them. As a result, many forms of music that are often only loosely or barely connected to the African-American tradition are now also categorised as jazz

Jazz draws on a predominantly European tonal system and uses European melodies and harmonies, as well as European instruments. However, these European components are utilised in jazz in their own way. Characteristic are, for example, a special rhythm based on a sense of movement and a lot of improvisation. These elements, especially the rhythm, can be traced back to the musical sensibility of African music cultures, which characterised jazz, especially at the beginning.

To this day, numerous sub-genres of jazz have developed, such as bebop, swing and Latin jazz. Even today, the development of jazz continues. The more modern jazz genres include smooth jazz, ethno-jazz and electroswing.