Jazz 215Th e origin of the word “jazz” is as conjectural and confl ict-
ing as its birthplace. Although some theories suggest jazz as
a result of the changing name of the early Mississippi drum-
mer Charles, others claim its descent from the French word
jaser, meaning “to speed up, to stimulate,” vaguely signify-
ing sexual copulation.
Developed by the black Americans, jazz is a unique
synthesis of the best elements from European and West Af-
rican musical heritage and the African American forms of
ragtime, minstrelsy, and the blues. But what diff erentiates
jazz from its cultural predecessors is the widespread use of
complex rhythms and improvisation. Jazz improvisation re-
fers to an artist’s creative response to a repertoire of songs
mostly drawn from blues, jazz tunes, or entirely new melo-
dies. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Houston A. Baker Jr., in Th e
Signifying Monkey: Towards A Th eory of Afro-American
Literary Criticism and Blues, Ideology and Afro-American
Literature, identify improvisation as fundamental to Afri-
can storytelling and signifying traditions. Closely related to
the call-and-response of African expressive cultures, jazz
improvisations are based on chord progressions and the
piano scales that correspond to the piano chords. Th e New
Orleans cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden is considered
the fi rst improvising jazz musician. Syncopated rhythms
(rhythms with offb eat accents), call-and-response patterns,
harmonic structures, and kinetic orality are other invari-
able features of jazz music. A typical jazz orchestra employs
trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and piano, though no in-
strument is foreign to jazz today.
Even though there are many confl icting theories, there
is a general consensus about the preeminent role of the New
Orleans, particularly Storyville, between 1890 and 1910 in
the growth and development of jazz music. During this
period, Joe “King” Oliver and his star trumpeter disciple
Louis Armstrong, taking cues from earlier masters, refi ned
and enlarged jazz music. In 1923, King Oliver’s orchestra
became the fi rst African American band to record for a
major label. Th e other key architects of this formative pe-
riod were Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard, Bunk John-
son, and Clarence Williams. With the fall of Storyville, the
Red Light district of New Orleans, during the World War
I, jazz migrated to Chicago and New York, developing new
musical idioms there.
Th e late 1920s and 1930s saw an unprecedented growth
of jazz music and can be seen as a progressive phase of
black popular music. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hotthe term seems to stick. In African cosmology, language
possesses numinous qualities, and a word is perceived as
a living entity that naturally attaches itself to the object or
idea it signifi es. Perhaps it is for this reason that the word
“jazz,” like living seeds, thrives and persists. Th e meaning of
“jas” is a succinct explication of the improvisational nature
and style of the music. It is spontaneous and unpredictably
improvised with unexpected breaks and cuts—that is to
say it is syncopated. “Jas” or “jazz,” therefore, denotes im-
provisation and syncopation in the Mandenka/Mandingo
language. Furthermore, according to Louisianan writer
George Washington Cable, who wrote about the activities
of 19th-century ethnic groups of New Orleans, jas was a
style of singing used by Mandenka lead singers when they
broke away from the base melodic line of a song and then
improvised around the melody, a technique later simulated
by jazz soloists. Th e lead singers of the Mandenka and the
jazz singers and soloists “break up” the original melody and
extemporaneously compose a new arrangement using the
same notes. Th e same technique was employed in work
songs and spirituals, and before the evolution of jazz, “jas”
was associated with slave songs and dances. “Jas,” then, is an
African word and aesthetic technique describing the struc-
tural elements of what became known as jazz.
See also: Africanisms; Black Folk Culture; Jazz
Nubia KaiBibliography
Feather, Leonard. Th e Pleasure of Jazz. New York: Bell Publish-
ing, 1976.
Jones, Leroi (Amiri Baraka). Black Music. New York: William
Morrow, 1970.
Major, Clarence, ed. Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African American
Slang. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.
Peretti, Burton W. Th e Creation of Jazz: Music, Race and Culture
in Urban America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: Th e Language of Black
America. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1977.
Spellman, A. B. Four Lives in the Bebop Business. New York: Lime-
light Editions, 1988.
Tucker, Mark, ed. Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992.
Jazz
Described as “America’s classical music,” jazz is the fi rst
indigenously developed musical expression of America.