The History of Jazz Music

It is impossible to establish the exact beginning of jazz as a distinct self-contained music. However, New Orleans appears in the standard legend of the origin of Jazz. Early New Orleans sounds obviously contains many music forms and styles like a Negro music, black church music, regtime and the blues. Tribal African drum beats and European musical instrumentals are the basic jazz feature. When Negro slaves were taken to United States, their culture and music style has mixed. New Orleans was the most prosperous city in the jazz history of the1920’s. Additionally, Trumpet player and vocalist Louis Armstrong was the most important figure of this period.
The 1930s and early '40s was known as the swing era or big-band era. Since during the1920s, musicians has begun playing together and formed the social dance bands. Most swing-style groups had at least 10 musicians and featured at least three or four saxophones, two or three trumpets, two or three trombones, piano, guitar, bass violin, and drums. Also, they have had an up-beat rhythm and simple repeating melody in ‘30s. During the 1930s, the strict blues form was being used more in jazz recordings as the tempos were speeding up. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie led some of the more popular bands. This era had a jazz improvement in its band form and musical theory.
Modern jazz, which contained some new styles like bebop or bop, became the main style of jazz in the 1940s. Their music reached a much higher technical improvement and more complex harmonies. Also, music was more intensive and had solo play parts for each instrument. This is the basic form of present jazz style. Additionally, Bop became the first jazz style that was not used for dancing. The best known musician in this age is Alto saxophonist Charley Parker, and he could do anything on the saxophone, in any tempo and in any key. He created beautiful melodies that were related in advanced ways to the underlying chords,
As you see, Jazz has been improving their music, style, and music forms. They have been divided to many styles in past 100 year.
http://www.wnur.org/jazz/styles/