Types of Jazz: The 14 Main Jazz Styles and Genres Explained

The main types of jazz, roughly in the order they appeared, are New Orleans jazz (Dixieland), swing, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, free jazz and fusion, with Latin jazz developing alongside them from the 1940s. Later styles such as smooth jazz, acid jazz and nu jazz grew out of fusion, funk and club culture. Below, each of the 14 main styles gets its period, its sound and one or two recordings to start with, followed by a few offshoots you will also see named.

The 14 Main Types of Jazz

1. New Orleans Jazz and Dixieland (1900s to 1920s)

Jazz took shape in the African American communities of New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century, out of blues, ragtime, brass band music and spirituals. Cornetist Buddy Bolden led one of the first bands to play it, at its peak from about 1900 to 1907; no recordings of him are known to survive. The sound rests on collective improvisation: cornet or trumpet carries the melody while clarinet and trombone weave lines around it, over banjo, tuba or bass and drums. The first jazz record ever issued, “Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, came out on Victor in 1917. Dixieland and, in Britain, trad jazz are later names for the same style. Louis Armstrong then turned it into a soloist’s art, as our piece on jazz in the 1920s explains.

Start with: “West End Blues” by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (Okeh, 1928), with its unaccompanied trumpet opening, and the 1923 recordings of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, with Armstrong on second cornet.

2. Swing and Big Band (1930s to mid-1940s)

Swing was the dominant form of American popular music from about 1935 to 1946. Big bands of ten or more musicians, split into saxophone, trumpet, trombone and rhythm sections, played written arrangements in which the sections traded riffs and soloists stepped out in between, over an even four-beat pulse built for dancing the Lindy Hop. Benny Goodman, billed as the King of Swing, broke through at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles in August 1935, often described as the start of the swing era. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford and Glenn Miller led other major bands.

Start with: Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” (Victor, 1941), written by Billy Strayhorn, and Benny Goodman’s The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Columbia, issued 1950).

3. Gypsy Jazz (from 1934)

Gypsy jazz, or jazz manouche, is swing played on strings. It began in Paris around 1934, when guitarist Django Reinhardt, of Manouche Romani descent, and violinist Stéphane Grappelli formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France. There were no drums: rhythm guitars kept the beat with a percussive strum called “la pompe,” with double bass underneath, while Reinhardt and Grappelli took the solos.

Start with: Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing” (1937) and “Nuages” (1940).

4. Bebop (1940s)

Bebop turned jazz from dance music into music for close listening. It grew out of after-hours jam sessions in Harlem in the early 1940s, notably at Minton’s Playhouse, where Thelonious Monk and drummer Kenny Clarke were in the house band; alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie were its leading soloists. A small group states a theme together at the start and end, with long solos on the tune’s chords in between, often at very fast tempos. Our full guide to bebop covers the players and the theory.

Start with: Charlie Parker’s “Ko-Ko” (Savoy, 1945) and Jazz at Massey Hall (Debut, 1953), a Toronto concert by Parker, Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach.

5. Cool Jazz and West Coast Jazz (late 1940s to 1950s)

Cool jazz kept bebop’s harmony but lowered the temperature: softer tones, more arranged writing and ideas borrowed from classical music. Its starting point is the nine-piece band Miles Davis led in 1949 and 1950, with arrangements by Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans and John Lewis, whose Capitol recordings were collected in 1957 as Birth of the Cool. In the 1950s a related sound took hold in Los Angeles and San Francisco as West Coast jazz, through Mulligan’s quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne. More in our cool jazz guide.

Start with: Birth of the Cool (Capitol, 1957) and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out (Columbia, 1959), built on unusual time signatures; its 5/4 “Take Five” was the first jazz single to sell more than a million copies.

6. Hard Bop and Soul Jazz (mid-1950s to 1960s)

Hard bop kept bebop’s vocabulary but drew in rhythm and blues, gospel and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing. The term came into use in the mid-1950s, the style grew up mainly in New York and Detroit, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers are generally seen as its starting point, with Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Cannonball Adderley among its central players. Soul jazz pushed the gospel side further, often with a Hammond organ at the center, as on Jimmy Smith’s Back at the Chicken Shack (Blue Note, 1963). See our history of hard bop for the full story.

Start with: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ Moanin’ (Blue Note, recorded 1958), whose title track was written by pianist Bobby Timmons, and Horace Silver’s Song for My Father (Blue Note, 1965).

7. Modal Jazz (late 1950s to 1960s)

Modal jazz replaces fast-moving chord changes with scales, or modes, that sit under the soloist for many bars at a time, so solos are built from melody and tone rather than from chasing chords. Miles Davis tried the idea on “Milestones” (1958) and made it the basis of Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959), recorded with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans. Its opening track, “So What,” gives the theme to the double bass and stays on one Dorian scale for 16 bars before moving up a half step. Kind of Blue was certified five times platinum in the US in 2019. Our explainer on modal jazz goes through the theory.

Start with: Kind of Blue and Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage (Blue Note, 1965).

8. Free Jazz and Avant-Garde Jazz (late 1950s onward)

Free jazz drops some or all of the rules earlier styles kept: set chord changes, steady meter, fixed song forms, sometimes a tonal center. Ornette Coleman led the way after moving to New York and signing with Atlantic, and the style is named after his album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1961), a single take in which two quartets improvise at once. Pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist Albert Ayler pushed further, and John Coltrane turned toward free playing with Ascension in 1965.

Start with: Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959), which opens with “Lonely Woman,” and Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk, recorded 1964).

9. Latin Jazz and Afro-Cuban Jazz (1940s onward)

Latin jazz sets jazz harmony and improvisation over Latin American rhythms. Its two main branches are Afro-Cuban jazz, built on the clave (a repeating two-bar rhythmic pattern) and on congas and bongos, and Brazilian jazz, built on samba and bossa nova. Mario Bauzá’s “Tanga” (1943), recorded by Machito and His Afro-Cubans in New York, is generally named as the first jazz piece based on clave. In 1947 Dizzy Gillespie brought Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo into his big band, and the bebop-meets-Cuba sound that followed was nicknamed Cubop.

Start with: “Manteca” by Dizzy Gillespie’s big band (recorded December 1947), co-written by Gillespie, Pozo and Gil Fuller, and Getz/Gilberto (Verve, 1964) by Stan Getz and João Gilberto, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

10. Spiritual Jazz (1960s and 1970s)

Spiritual jazz is defined more by its aim than by one sound: it treats improvisation as a search for transcendence, drawing on modal, free and avant-garde jazz. John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965), a four-part suite recorded in one session in December 1964, is its central record; in the first part, “Acknowledgement,” a four-note bass motif turns into Coltrane chanting the album’s title. After his death in 1967, Alice Coltrane and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who had both played in his band, carried the approach into the 1970s.

Start with: A Love Supreme, Pharoah Sanders’ Karma (Impulse!, 1969) and Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda (Impulse!, 1971).

11. Jazz Fusion and Jazz-Funk (late 1960s to 1970s)

Fusion, also called jazz-rock, combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock, funk and R&B, using electric guitar, bass guitar, electric piano and synthesizers. Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way (1969) is regarded as his first fusion record, and Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) later went platinum. Musicians from those sessions led the main fusion bands of the 1970s: John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea’s Return to Forever and Weather Report, co-founded by Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. Jazz-funk put the groove first: Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters (Columbia, 1973) reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200. Our jazz fusion guide has a longer listening list.

Start with: Bitches Brew, Head Hunters and Weather Report’s Heavy Weather (Columbia, 1977), which opens with Zawinul’s “Birdland.”

12. Smooth Jazz (late 1970s onward)

Smooth jazz grew out of the commercial side of fusion: melodic, polished instrumentals led by saxophone, guitar or keyboards over R&B and pop grooves, with short solos. George Benson’s Breezin’ (Warner Bros., 1976) topped Billboard’s pop, R&B and jazz album charts, and “This Masquerade” from it won the Grammy for Record of the Year. In the US the music got its own radio format, which spread after Los Angeles station KTWV “The Wave” launched in 1987. Kenny G’s Breathless (Arista, 1992) is certified diamond in the US for 12 million units.

Start with: Breezin’ and Grover Washington Jr.’s Winelight (Elektra, 1980), which includes “Just the Two of Us” with Bill Withers.

13. Acid Jazz (late 1980s and 1990s)

Acid jazz started in London clubs in the 1980s, when DJs from the rare groove scene played obscure jazz-funk and soul jazz records for dancers. DJ Gilles Peterson is credited with the name, a nod to acid house, and in 1987 he and Eddie Piller founded the label Acid Jazz Records. The music mixes live funk and jazz playing with hip-hop beats and samples; the Brand New Heavies, Incognito and Jamiroquai came out of the UK scene. Us3’s Hand on the Torch (Blue Note, 1993), became the label’s first platinum album, and its single “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),” based on Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island,” reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. More in our acid jazz history.

Start with: Hand on the Torch and Jamiroquai’s Emergency on Planet Earth (Sony Soho Square, 1993).

14. Nu Jazz (late 1990s onward)

Nu jazz blends jazz improvisation with electronic production: programmed beats, samples, loops and ambient textures, often with little swing. Two Norwegians were among its first names. Pianist Bugge Wesseltoft’s New Conception of Jazz (1996) won the Norwegian music award Spellemannprisen, and trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær’s Khmer (ECM) set his trumpet against sampled and electronic sounds. In France, St Germain’s Tourist (Blue Note, 2000) took the sound to a wide audience.

Start with: Khmer and Tourist.

Other Jazz Styles You Will See Named

• Kansas City jazz: the hard-swinging, blues-based, riff-driven style of Bennie Moten’s and Count Basie’s bands in the 1920s and 1930s, a bridge from swing to bebop.
• Post-bop: 1960s small-group jazz mixing hard bop with modal and free ideas, led by Miles Davis’s second quintet (1964 to 1968) with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.
• Third stream: jazz combined with classical music, a term composer Gunther Schuller coined in a 1957 lecture at Brandeis University.
• Chamber jazz: small acoustic groups built on close interplay, from John Kirby’s sextet of the 1930s and 1940s to the Modern Jazz Quartet; the German label ECM spread the sound from the late 1960s.

How to Tell Jazz Styles Apart by Ear

Start with the bass: an upright points to anything from New Orleans jazz to post-bop, while bass guitar and electric keyboards point to fusion, jazz-funk, smooth jazz or later. Several horns improvising around one melody at once suggests New Orleans jazz; a whole band improvising with no steady pulse suggests free jazz; a large band playing written section parts over a steady four-beat pulse is swing. Chords changing every bar or two at speed mean bebop, or hard bop if the feel is bluesy and gospel-tinged. One scale held for many bars means modal jazz. Clave, congas or bongos mean Latin jazz, and drum machines and samples mean acid jazz or nu jazz. For what each instrument does, see our guide to jazz instruments.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many types of jazz are there?

There is no official number. Reference lists name more than 50 subgenres and regional scenes, but most branch off about a dozen main styles: New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz, fusion, smooth jazz, acid jazz and nu jazz. Gypsy jazz and spiritual jazz are often listed as well.

What is the difference between bebop and hard bop?

Bebop, from the 1940s, is small-group jazz built on fast tempos, complex chord changes and long virtuoso solos, led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Hard bop, from the mid-1950s, keeps that vocabulary but brings in rhythm and blues, gospel and blues, as heard in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Horace Silver’s bands.

Is smooth jazz really jazz?

It depends on how you define jazz. Smooth jazz comes out of fusion and uses jazz instruments, but it puts melody, groove and studio polish ahead of improvisation, which is why many jazz critics and musicians do not count it. The industry has filed it under jazz since the 1970s: George Benson’s Breezin’ topped Billboard’s jazz album chart in 1976.

What is the most popular type of jazz?

Historically, swing, the dominant form of American popular music from about 1935 to 1946. Among albums, Miles Davis’s modal Kind of Blue was the highest-certified jazz album in the US until August 2026, when Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas reached six times platinum. If smooth jazz counts, Kenny G’s Breathless is far ahead, certified for 12 million units.