Birth and evolution of Jazz as effects of cultural transfers

Abstract

The mission of this essay, based on the book Storia del jazz. Una prospettiva globale [The History of jazz in a global perspective] by Stefano Zenni (Storia del jazz. Una prospettiva globale. Viterbo: Stampa Alternativa, 2012), is to treat cultural transfer in jazz as an example of complex influences caused through migration and forced migration. The paper will show how jazz evolved from such complex transfer, considering different layers of cultural interaction through geographical, economical and musical forces. This complex transfer is still in place in more recent developments of the music due to its productive nature. What interests us here is to understand how those forces one century ago produced a new music, which, moreover, was immediately perceived by contemporaries as something innovative, breaking the traditional rules of music.