music developed esp from ragtime and blues and characterized by syncopated rhythms and improvisation around a basic theme or melody
Although originally developed by African-Americans from musical strands drawn from both African and European-American sources, jazz has grown into a global idiom of expression. It remains based on principles of musical improvisation, within or without a structure, and its inherent freedoms fed into all 20th-cent. music — Richard Cook
informal empty pretentious talk
He got up and spouted a lot of scientific jazz
and all that jazz
informal and other similar things
[origin unknown]