History of Jazz

Jazz is a very popular style of music with a rich history, brought together in the streets of New Orleans. Jazz was created through many cultural elements, and eventually became extremely popular due to newly improved media; spreading it throughout the world.

There were many cultural elements that took part in creating jazz. Certain cultural elements such as the party environment, the mix of various cultures and their music styles, etc. According to the article, in 1989 after defeating Spain in war, returning troops brought home many European brass instruments. (Scaruffi 1). Soon after the arrival of these instruments, many brass bands began to pop up.This basically started the journey to create what we now know as jazz. People living in New Orleans also valued fun and parties, which was also a big reason that jazz was created and played. As said in the article, music was always very popular and "in demand", and due to the various ethnicities residing in New Orleans, they had very diverse music and dancing styles. (Scaruffi 2). Some of the places and people that influenced jazz includes Africa, the Iberian peninsula, the Caribbean, American Indians, etc. (Crouch 3). As a result of these many cultural elements, we were left with a very diverse music style, which would eventually spread world wide.

Movement had a big effect on the spread and the overall story of jazz. With many people moving around and returning from wars at the time, people were introducing new instruments that helped to shape and form jazz. During the 1920s, jazz music began to become more well known and spread among musicians of various races. The movement of musicians such as Nick LaRocca helped spike the popularity of jazz music. After moving to New York with other New Orleans natives, they began to record the first jazz record. The success of this record encouraged other New Orleans Jazz musicians to also move to New York. (Scaruffi 1-2). The creation of the record was a very significant...