All of us know what jazz is when we hear it, but trying to define it is a different matter. With so many variant styles, coming up with an accurate definition of jazz is difficult if not impossible.

But I suppose that an article on jazz really ought to attempt to define the term jazz. My Thorndike-Barnhart Dictionary defines jazz like this:

*jazz (jaz), noun. 1. American music with the accents falling at unusual places; syncopated music. 2. Slang, liveliness adj. of or like jazz: a jazz band.

Besides not telling us very much, it is also obviously false. I think immediately of ballads played by jazz musicians, such as Thelonious Monks Round Midnight and Bill Evans Peace Piece, and countless other examples. They are based on neither syncopation nor liveliness; they are slow, extremely thoughtful, and the antithesis of jazzy. Yet they are considered by both jazz musicians and jazz critics alike to be well within the mainstream of jazz.

Lets try A New Dictionary of Music and see if we can get closer to the essence of jazz:

*jazz, a term used at least from 1914 for a type of American popular music originating among blacks of New Orleans and taken over also by whites; also used generally for various types of dance music indebted to this (though purists reserve the term for such music as retains the original flavor and the original basis of improvisation.) The jazz idiom, characterized by certain syncopations over strongly reiterated rhythms, has influenced e.g. Lambert, Stravinsky, and Milhaud, as well as many American composers.

Thats better than the Thorndike-Barnhart definition, but it still leans heavily toward defining jazz in terms of rhythm alone: characterized by certain syncopations over strongly reiterated rhythms. I think again of ballads, but also of much contemporary jazz which is not characterized by certain syncopations,: such as the work of pianists Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea.

What then is jazz? If the general dictionaries and musical dictionaries cant satisfactorily answer the question, what hope is there for us?

Ask a hundred jazz musicians what jazz is, and youll get a hundred different answers (I know Ive asked at least a dozen and gotten as many different responses.)

I would like to suggest that the answer may lie, not in music, but in semantics.

I think it is entirely possible that we are lumping together widely disparate types of music, and labeling them all with the term jazz, then wondering why we cant come up with a lexical definition of the term. Maybe we should abandon the word jazz, and use terms such as improvised fast syncopated music, or improvised slow non-syncopated music. Maybe we should, but we wont. So we are stuck with the non-definable term jazz.

So lets not define jazz.

We all know what it is, more or less. We would disagree mainly in the grey areas, such as ballads, some contemporary works, and so forth. But lets agree not to disagree, and just enjoy it.

The following articles in this series will deal with the various styles we find in jazz, from ragtime to fusion.

So stay tuned.