Claim: Count Basie took his 16 to 18 piece orchestra to Chicago in 1936.

Jazz is a music genre that originated in African American communities of New Orleans , United States , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries , and developed from roots in blues and ragtime . Since the 1920s Jazz Age , jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression . It then emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles , all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical parentage with a performance orientation . Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression , and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime , as well as European military band music . Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States , different cultures have contributed their own experience and styles to the art form as well . Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as `` one of America 's original art forms '' .   As jazz spread around the world , it drew on different national , regional , and local musical cultures , which gave rise to many distinctive styles . New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s , combining earlier brass-band marches , French quadrilles , biguine , ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation . In the 1930s , heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands , Kansas City jazz , a hard-swinging , bluesy , improvisational style and Gypsy jazz -LRB- a style that emphasized musette waltzes -RRB- were the prominent styles . Bebop emerged in the 1940s , shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging `` musician 's music '' which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation . Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s , introducing calmer , smoother sounds and long , linear melodic lines .   The 1950s saw the emergence of free jazz , which explored playing without regular meter , beat and formal structures , and in the mid-1950s , hard bop emerged , which introduced influences from rhythm and blues , gospel , and blues , especially in the saxophone and piano playing . Modal jazz developed in the late 1950s , using the mode , or musical scale , as the basis of musical structure and improvisation . Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s , combining jazz improvisation with rock music 's rhythms , electric instruments , and highly amplified stage sound . In the early 1980s , a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful , garnering significant radio airplay . Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s , such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz .