Jazz
· Musical. The form that emerged in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century from the
convergence of African rhythmic tradition, European harmonic vocabulary, and the specific social conditions of the
city's Creole community — and then dispersed globally, becoming the first American musical form to achieve
worldwide adoption and transformation.
Diaspora
· Cultural. The dispersion of a tradition across geographic and cultural boundaries — carrying its
origin while becoming something the origin could not have anticipated. Jazz did not merely travel; it became
something different in each place it landed while remaining recognizably itself.
The Jazz Diaspora
adj. Of or pertaining to the global transformation of jazz — the process by which a form
rooted in New Orleans became bebop in New York, cool jazz in Los Angeles, free jazz in Europe, bossa nova in
Brazil, and something else entirely in every other city that received and reinvented it.
n.(a The Jazz Diaspora) (a Jazz Diaspora) The network of jazz traditions worldwide
that trace their lineage to the American source while constituting distinct national and regional forms —
Brazilian, European, Japanese, African jazz as independent traditions that remain in conversation with their
origin.