View images of legendary Jazz bands and 20th century performers such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and more. Jazz is an original American form of music that favors improvisational performance. It originated in the 19th and early 20th centuries in New Orleans, where a richly diverse community of African Americans and other immigrant communities lived and mixed their musical traditions. Jazz grew out of a recombination of influences from these cultures in the African American community. It caught fire in Prohibition-era speakeasies in the 1920s, which became known as “The Jazz Age.