When interviewed, many famous “popular” musicians like Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown  say they were influenced by the jazz records their parents used to play in their homes. That’s true for many people, both famous and otherwise, who love music. The exact origin of jazz music is difficult to pinpoint. What is sure is that it came about as a result of a mixing of musical cultures. When Africans were brought to America as slaves, they influenced American culture with their own.
In New Orleans in the mid-1800’s, African-Americans started to experiment with European musical instruments. Some of the first songs they experimented with were hymns from church. By the end of the 19th century, the piano was introduced as an instrument for producing jazz music. Unlike the saxophone or the trumpet that only play single notes, the piano plays chords. This added a new dimension to the jazz combo.
Slave emancipation coincided with the emergence of ragtime, a type of music that threw the conventional system of metrical beats into disarray. Instead, its rhythms were syncopated, which means they didn’t conform to a conservative beat succession system. Ragtime encouraged the listener to get up and move to the music.
Piano music came to the forefront in ragtime, giving way to stride piano where the right hand plays the melody along with supporting chords and runs and fills while  the left plays bass notes and chords and rhythm. Stride featured more improvisation and swing notes than ragtime. Scott Joplin, known at the time as the King of Ragtime, talked learning to pick up the “swing” of the music as you play. Swing was the next form of jazz than evolved from ragtime.
The early twentieth century saw the growth of jazz music in New Orleans, as more and more jazz combos played in the city’s clubs and bars. The first few jazz bands began recording their music at this time. By then, the piano had become an integral part of the jazz combo.
The Prohibition Era of the 1920’s didn’t slow the jazz bands down. In fact, it was during this era that the greats like Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Earl Hines emerged. Hines was probably the most influential pianist of the time, playing in the “Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five” band while cultivating a solo career.
Swing hit big in the 1930’s. It was bigger than ragtime, and songs often carried on for several minutes as each band member got a chance to play a solo. A party wasn’t a party without a big swing band belting out song after vibrant song, and soon swing was all over the radio in the United States.
Swing faded during the conflict of World War Two. Many band members were off fighting in the conflict. Bebop developed from swing during this time. Pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk rose as two of the great jazz pianists of the era. In the 1940’s and 50’s, cool jazz became popular, with pianist Bill Evans claiming a place in music history as one of the most inventive and creative jazz pianists of century.
The 1960s were all about free love, stringy hair and the beginning of Latin jazz and jazz fusion. Many Cuban and Brazilian musicians put their cultural stamp on American jazz and gave birth to a new genre. Jazz fusion came about with the electrification of jazz through the use of synthesizers, keyboards and electric guitars. They blended with brass instruments and the piano for a totally new sound.
Today, jazz is still one of the most influential music forms in the world. Jazz music has asserted itself as a contemporary force in the music world, and the success of current jazz artists is a testament to that.