Off the Wall

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was... born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note. As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles: New Orleans jazz dating from the early 1910s, big band swing, Kansas City jazz and Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s and on down through West Coast jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz in various forms, soul jazz, jazz fusion and jazz rock, smooth jazz, jazz-funk, punk jazz, acid jazz, ethno jazz, jazz rap, cyber jazz, Indo jazz, M-Base, nu jazz, urban jazz and other ways of playing the music. In a 1988 interview, trombonist J.J.
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Pop music is a genre of popular music which originated in the 1950s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms popular music and pop music are often... used interchangeably, even though the former is a description of any form of music which is popular , whilst the latter is a specific genre of music which has qualities which would make it appealing to a large audience. Pop music, as a genre, is very eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles throughout its course such as urban, dance, rock, Latin and country, yet there are core elements which define it. Such include generally short-to-medium length songs, written in a basic format which is often the verse-chorus structure, which generally make usage of repeated choruses, have a melodic sound, and have catchy hooks. So-called "pure pop" music, such as power pop, features all these elements, and for instrumentation uses electric guitars, drums and a bass; in the case of such music, the main goal is usually that of being pleasurable to listen to, rather than having much artistic depth.
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