The root of jazz is the blues, the folk music of former African slaves in the U.S. and their descendants, heavily influenced by West African cultural and musical traditions that evolved as black musicians migrated to the cities.

Early jazz influences found their first mainstream expression in the marching band and dance band music, which was the standard form of concert music at the turn of the century. The instruments of these groups became the basic instruments of jazz is, brass, woodwinds, and drums.

Black musicians used the melody, structure, and beat of marches as points of departure. A black musical spirit (involving rhythm and melody) was bursting out of the confines of European musical tradition, even though the performers were using European styled instruments. This African-American feel for rephrasing melodies and reshaping rhythm created the embryo from which many great black jazz musicians were to emerge. Many black musicians also made a living playing in small bands hired to lead funeral's in the New Orleans African-American tradition. These Africanized bands played a seminal role in the making of early jazz. Traveling throughout black communities in the Deep South and to northern big cities.

For all its genius, early jazz, was primarily self-taught musicians. But an impressive postbellum network of black-established and -operated institutions, schools, and civic societies in both the North and the South plus widening opportunities for education, produced ever-increasing numbers of young, formally trained African-American musicians, some of them schooled in classical European musical forms.