International Jazz Day

"Jazz is restless. It won't stay put and it never will" 

J. J. Johnson

Jazz is a music that originated at the beginning of the 20th century, or earlier, within the African-American communities of the Southern United States. Its roots lie in the African-American adoption of European harmony and form onto existing African musical elements. Its African musical basis is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day, jazz has also incorporated elements from popular music especially, in its early days, from American popular music

About International Jazz Day

In November 2011, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) officially designated April 30 as International Jazz Day in order to highlight jazz and its diplomatic role of uniting people in all corners of the globe. International Jazz Day is chaired and led by Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General, and legendary jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, who serves as a UNESCO Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogue and Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. The Institute is the lead nonprofit organization charged with planning, promoting and producing this annual celebration, which began in 2012.   International Jazz Day is the culmination of Jazz Appreciation Month which draws public attention to jazz and its extraordinary heritage in April.

Istanbul, Turkey has been named the 2013 Global Host City for International Jazz Day. Today, the city hosted a daylong series of jazz events including workshops and seminars, panels and round table discussions, film screenings, student master classes led by prominent musicians and educators, and a major evening performance that will be broadcast on public television stations worldwide. The Institute and UNESCO will continue their partnership to encourage schools, universities, libraries, arts organizations, community centers and other entities in UNESCO’s 195 member states to host jazz concerts and educational programs on International Jazz Day in order to reach people of all ages and backgrounds.

"Like democracy itself, jazz has structure, but within it you can say almost anything."

Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Excerpt from Jelly Roll Morton's "New Orleans Blues" (c. 1902). The left hand plays the tresillo rhythm. The right hand plays variations on cinquillo.  Play (help·info)

History of Jazz
As the music has developed and spread around the world it has, since its early American beginnings, drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures, giving rise to many distinctive styles: New

Morton published "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first jazz work in print.

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, Afro-Cuban 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 and other ways of playing the music.  Read more here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#History

Steve Coleman, 2004 in Paris