Jews in jazz

Jews have played a significant role in jazz, a music genre created and developed by African Americans. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Tunes by Jewish composers such as George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin and many others predominate among the 'Great American Songbook' compositions that have become jazz standards. Jazz musicians, besides playing renditions of the melodies, often deployed the chord changes of many of these songs to construct their own compositions.