   Jazz  jazz, the most significant form of musical expression of African-American culture and arguably the most outstanding contribution the United States has made to the art of music.  Origins of Jazz Jazz developed in the latter part of the 19th cent. from black work songs, field shouts, sorrow songs, hymns, and spirituals whose harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic elements were predominantly African. Because of its spontaneous, emotional, and improvisational character, and because it is basically of black origin and association, jazz has to some extent not been accorded the degree of recognition it deserves. European audiences have often been more receptive to jazz, and thus many American jazz musicians have become expatriates. [b]At the outset, jazz was slow to win acceptance by the general public, not only because of its cultural origin, but also because it tended to suggest loose morals and low social status. However, jazz gained a wide audience when white orchestras adapted or imitated it, and became legitimate entertainment in the late 1930s when Benny Goodman led racially mixed groups in concerts at Carnegie Hall. Show tunes became common vehicles for performance, and, while the results were exquisite, rhythmic and harmonic developments were impeded until the mid-1940s.  Oh no, you got this from wikipedia huh:rolleyes: Yeah, jazz was not influenced by the White honky tonk later known as boogie woogie piano playing, and White horn players. No, not at all. They just stepped off the plantation, picked up European instruments like the saxaphone, trumpet, and piano and started going at it without any outside influence from Whites, uh huh;) Jazz became a Black style over time, but in the beginning.....it was heavily influenced by White music, which was influenced by Classical. I am sorry but it is true. Liberals and Black supremacists like to write all kinds of books claiming otherwise though. And then people like you believe everything you read on wikipedia word for word, so we get this confusion...That Whites had absolutley no influence over the birth of jazz. Whites were playing music that sounded basically like jazz, on the piano and horns, before the word jazz even existed.