The roots of jazz
Jazz roots run so deep in American Culture that further attempts to define the elements of jazz become murky at best. Yet there are a few other facts that need mentioning.
Jazz pulls from the blues
Jazz is partly built on the blues, and some jazz pulls straight from the blues, utilizing the song structures of the traditional blues song structure known as 12 - bar blues. See the article "What is Jazz" where the 12 - bar blues is in action as explained in the improvisation part.
In good blues, jazz, and gospel, players listen intently to each other's playing, and have an almost intuitive connection to each other - an uncanny sixth sense felt between musicians. In the gospel church, the preacher sings out a line of sermon, and his congregation tosses it back to him. In blues and jazz, one musician plays or sings something, and another player throws it back in slightly new, altered form, adding a new variation to the theme and exploring a song further. Still another player may take a swing at the musical phrase, even adding a new melodic run. This tradition of call and response, and more simply improvisation, is a big part of jazz.
Jazz pulls from European traditions
European musical traditions are also a vital part of jazz. Elements like swing and improvisation found their way into jazz from Africa, but jazz's major instruments, including piano, saxophone (invented in Belgium about 1840 by Adolphe Sax), and assorted horns, came to jazz by way of Europe. Note that is you talk to a musicologist - someone who studies origin of music and instruments - you may hear that many European instruments are modified versions of instruments from the Middle East and Africa.
Jazz's basic system of notes is also derived from the European musical tradition. You can think of these notes as all the notes on a piano - together known as the western chromatic scale. This is in contrast to many systems of notes from other traditions in Africa and the Middle East which use quarter tone - notes that, if they were on a piano, would appear between keys - and gaps in scales where western ears would expect to hear a note. Within the western chromatic scale are all the various scale (major, minor, the various modes, and so on) that jazz players use to create melodies and improvise.
Departures from the Western chromatic scale
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