Jazz

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /d͡ʒæz/

Definitions

1. A style of music characterized by improvisation, syncopated rhythms, and blues influences that originated in African American communities
2. A genre of music known for its expressive improvisation and complex harmonies, often incorporating elements of blues and swing
3. A musical style that emphasizes free-form expression and rhythmic complexity, rooted in African American musical traditions

Etymology: In April 1912 a minor-league pitcher named Ben Henderson told the Los Angeles Times about a new pitch he had worked up over the winter: "I call it the jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it." That is the earliest known appearance in print of the word that would name America's great musical art form. It came from a ballfield, not a bandstand. For the next year or so it stayed in the sports pages. In 1913 a San Francisco sportswriter reported that the city's baseball club, the Seals, had come back to town "full of the old 'jazz'". The word meant pep, vim, fighting spirit. By 1915 it had crossed into music in Chicago, where it was attached to the loud, syncopated new sound that Southern musicians were bringing north. In 1917 a group of white New Orleans players working in New York made what is usually counted as the first recording of the style. They were billed as the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a spelling that soon settled into the one we know. What came before 1912 is unknown. The leading explanation is "jasm," nineteenth-century American slang for energy or spirit. It was a variant of "jism," which carried the same meaning before it came to mean semen. That fits the baseball sense of pep remarkably well. It also connects to an earthier current that nobody can quite pin down. "Jazzing" was widely used for sex, and some early musicians remembered hearing the word used erotically in both New Orleans and San Francisco around the turn of the century. The circumstantial case that it was long a bedroom word in the South is strong, but no one has proved that sense came before the musical one. Where the word came from and how it got attached to a style of music may be two separate stories. Other origins have been proposed, and none holds up. One is a musician called Jasbo Brown, who has never been documented. Another is "Chas." or "Jas.," abbreviations of Charles and James. Others are the French "jaser," to chatter, and "chasser," to hunt, or supposed African and Arabic roots. None of them explains why the written evidence begins in West Coast sports pages. The music took its name from a slang term that was first printed in California, about a pitch that wobbled.

Synonyms: music, jive, swing