Others want it to be an African-American word, so they look for that.
Some would like the word to come from Africa, so they firmly believe the stories that support that. Others want it to be an African-American word, so they look for that. The word “jazz” probably derives from the slang word “jasm,”which originally meant energy, vitality, spirit, pep. The Oxford English Dictionary, the most reliable and complete record of the English language, traces “jasm” back to at least 1860: