It wasn’t called jazz.

It wasn’t called anything.

It started out as a matrix of African tribal rhythms, indigenous folk melodies and ceremonial dances. When it migrated to Europe, western harmonies and lyrics were added to the mix.

When it landed in New Orleans, this new music became infused with robust doses of blues, spiritual song and southern soul. It boogied to the jaunty ragtime piano of Jelly Roll Morton and stomped to the zesty swing of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five.

By 1915 it had a name: jazz. And it grew to become an indigenous music of the States. Some believe jazz is America’s only true art form.

There is no other music where the art of improvisation is so enthralling, so visceral, so electric. A simple riff can morph into a symphony of dueling hoofers dancing on the heads of a thousand pins.

Jazz lived outside the box. This powerful and seductive freedom fueled the desire for all kinds of musicians to express themselves in an exhilarating new world of sound.

Jazz could not only liberate those who played it, but emancipate those who heard it.

Jazz & Its Children

Ever since the 1920s, when Satchmo & his Hot Five produced some of the wildest improvisations this side of the moon, jazz has been evolving, transmuting, influencing and absorbing everything around it.

Jazz grew from the humid street corners of New Orleans, the dark cellars of New York and the blues enclaves of Chicago to become a musical form rich in style, authentic in spirit, and soulfully compelling.

Just take a peek at the children jazz has sired: R&B, funk, Motown, rock, disco, hip-hop, rap, techno, drum & bass, house.

And the dazzling artists who led the way: Lester Young, Duke Ellington, The Boswell Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Herbie Hancock. Help! I’m running out of breath.

The Beat On Goes

Everything from 50s R&B, to 90s break beat dance culture, owes its origins to the vibes laid down by jazz musicians of the 20s to the 70s. Even if these later artists weren’t aware of it.

Today the echoes of jazz can be felt in the sounds of D’Angelo, OutKast, Snoop Dogg, Jay Z., Kanye West, Beyoncé, Drake, Young Thug, Kamasi Washington and so many others. They adapted its irresistible appeal, weaving its glorious rhythms, harmonies, timbres and themes into their own music.

Jazz has an enduring spirit, a direct-to-the-bone visceral appeal, a thrust of improvisational mojo rarely, if ever, matched by any other musical form. Read Greg Tate’s impressive article from “The Fader” website. It’s a roiling romp through the history and ethos of that sublime noise we call jazz.

Just as they say a person’s soul lives on…jazz will forever swing to the beat of the human heart.