Jazz music has a rich history full of artistic talent. The genre achieved many musical milestones and produced many phenomenal musicians in a relatively short period. From the very beginning, jazz was a groundbreaking art, one that opened doors for countless performers and composers.

Jazz music began soon after the Civil War, when, newly freed slaves in search of employment found little work available besides low-brow entertainment. Ragtime, the earliest form of jazz, was created by black musicians who were earning their rent by playing the piano in bars and vaudeville performances.

The fusion of traditional music from New Orleans with ragtime music spawned a brand new style that would remain popular in the southern states for decades: Dixie Jazz. In fact, the first known music recording of a jazz band was created in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

Although the Dixieland style of jazz music was popular down south, jazz music did not really take hold in the rest of the United States until prohibition laws of the 1920’s ushered in the famed “Jazz Age,” a true milestone in jazz history. Jazz music was most commonly listened to in the illegal speakeasies, which is why older Americans condemned it as “immoral.” During this time, however, jazz music dominated the younger scene. It was no longer only for African Americans-a large number of white musicians began to experiement with the unique rhythms and chord structure and soon, mixed race and all-white jazz ensembles began to form, bringing a little more diversity into the genre.

In the 1930s, Swing Music became the most popular type of jazz. Young couples requested songs played by popular big bands over and over again because they were perfect for carefree dancing. But by the end of the 1930’s, Dixieland music was seeing a revival. Critics largely ignored this style of jazz, but it Dixieland records continued to earn record companies huge profits all the way through the 1960’s.

The Dixieland revival helped transition live jazz music from the big band dance music of the Depression era to more artistic, but less commercially popular styles such as Bebop and Cool Jazz. Cool Jazz was distinctly different from former styles of jazz-it intentionally made use of extended melodic lines that seemed to flow together. It is the style of music that today is often labeled as “elevator music.” The style would go on to influence other types of jazz, such as bossa nova, modal jazz and other jazz styles that emerged in the 1970’s and beyond.

Unfortunately, jazz lost its place as the center of pop culture during the 1950s and 1960s. This is when early rock music emerged and was embraced by younger generations as the new music of rebellion. Jazz was, for the most part, left for the older generation. Fortunately, as many of this influential generation of jazz musicians dies out, there are newer, more experimental jazz musicians on the scene. Many of these musicians are attempting to bring jazz back into the mainstream by combining the older styles of bebop and fusion with more contemporary types of music.