Asian American jazz is a subcategory of jazz that combines a more traditional jazz sound with Asian influence, and occasionally Asian instruments. There is an entire festival dedicated to Asian American Jazz in San Francisco that came to be in the early 80’s, but the genre has been around for far longer. Asian American influence on jazz took off in the 40’s during the height of WWII and Japanese internment. Since that time there have been more artists contributing there perspective to jazz.

Source:

“Asian American Jazz Festival.” Brenda Wong Aoki & Mark Izu – Official Website, www.firstvoice.org/asian-american-jazz-festival/

A note on this source:

I intend to use this source as a jumping off point in research in terms of individual musicians, as well as being able to delve deeper into the eras mentioned in the article. This article was meant as a brief history to give context to the San Francisco Asian-American Jazz Festival, but also lends plenty of ideas to build upon for my final project.