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Year 10 elective music – Assessment task No. 2 Musicology Introduction When I first got this assignment, there are many types of music that I could have chosen to do. Church music, brass bands, Australian music, baroque, pop music and all the other ones out there. But I wanted to do something that would be more interesting to define. When asked what the real meaning of jazz was, Louis Armstrong’s famous reply was “if you had to ask, you’ll never know”. Whatever else he meant, he was at least saying that jazz is knowable, but not necessarily explainable in words, and true enough, jazz resists definition like no other music Beginnings of Jazz Consider the usual definitions: jazz is said to be an African American music, originated by black people for black people; an improvised music; a music characterized by arrhythmic feel called swing; and a music influenced by the blues. But race and ethnicity are not as clear as what the American myths would say. Throughout the history of jazz, there have been people of other races and religions – whites of several nationalities, Cubans, Mexicans, native Americans, Haitians and overseas Europeans of all sorts involved in its creation. The first proble