J
jamming - playing music with other people in a casual, spontaneous manner. Usually a song is started by someone and others will join in. The best jams occur when each member has different songs or progressions to offer and can also take different functions of the ensemble like singing harmonies, and taking turns playing solos or parts of the rhythm section.
jazz - originated in the southern United States, in the late nineteenth century. The main credit is given to African Americans as the pentatonic scales, polyrhythms, and call and response traditions of West African music became combined with European music.
As the genre became more sophisticated, jazz evolved into ragtime by African American composers like Ernest Hogan and Scott Joplin in the late 1890s. By the 1930s, jazz had developed into blues and Dixieland by musicians like Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton, moved from New Orleans to Chicago and New York, then across the Atlantic to Europe as musicians like Django Reinhardt popularized "hot jazz".
Today, jazz encompasses a very wide range of styles including swing, cool, modal, Latin and fusion. Innovators of modern jazz include musicians and composers like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
jingle - a song or short piece of music used for advertising.
