:For other article subjects named Jazz see jazz (disambiguation).
Jazz is a musical art form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. It has been called the first original art form to develop in the United States of America.
Jazz is rooted in West African cultural and musical expression and in African American music traditions, in folk blues and ragtime. Originating in African American communities near the beginning of the 20th century, by the 1920s it had gained international popularity. Since then, jazz has had a profoundly pervasive influence on other musical styles worldwide. The word jazz itself is rooted in American slang, probably of sexual origin, although various alternative derivations have been suggested.
Rather than being a single, narrowly definable style, in the early 21st century, jazz is an ever-growing family of musical styles, many of which continue to develop.
According to Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American composer and classical and jazz trumpet virtuoso Wynton MarsalisWynton Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a well known African American trumpeter and composer in the jazz and classical music fields. The best known and arguably most important jazz musician of the modern era, Wynton Marsalis has made his reputation wit, "Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music."
