Louis Armstrong once said that if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know. But I wonder what he thought about some of the music that was categorized as ‘jazz’ today, or some of the artists headlining recent jazz festivals. For any category to be meaningful we have to have some idea as to what is not that category.

Here I explore some of the characteristics of jazz.

Wikipedia says it is “characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in African cultural and musical expression and in African American traditions”. But a lot of ‘jazz’ has only some of those characteristics. Some have none. And other kinds of music share some of those.

In this program you’ll hear music that everybody agrees is jazz. You’ll also hear some music that not many would call jazz. And a bit of one of the most popular songs on the itunes jazz chart that has none of the characteristics of ‘jazz’.