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Jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove is a musician who exhibits the method of fusing jazz with other music

One of the toughest questions to crack in American music history has always been, “What is jazz?” Jazz music has been continuously evolving since its beginnings. The problem is that a moving target is always harder to hit than a sitting one; today especially, the genre has become increasingly difficult to define, with many musicians fusing musical genres and claiming the coveted label of “jazz.” Modern jazz festivals often present artists from more popular genres who are “jazz-influenced,” or fuse jazz with more popular musical forms to increase ticket sales.

The majority of artists performing on the Jazz Day during this weekend’s two-day UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival, a 19-year-old student-run tradition, are usually considered part of the neo-soul and R&B movements. These artists include headliner India.Arie, newcomer Dwele and songstress Sheree Brown. Another group, the Unwrapped All-Stars, performs covers of hip-hop hits with a hint of jazz.

“It’s probably a stretch to really call them jazz,” UCLA Jazz Ensemble professor Charley Harrison said.

Harrison’s ensemble will provide the lone performance of straight-ahead jazz on the intramural field on May 29. Even critically acclaimed jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove will be performing music fused with R&B and hip-hop from his album “Hard Groove,” on which neo-soulers D’Angelo and Erykah Badu and rapper Common contribute.

Other jazz festivals around the world have also featured R&B and neo-soul artists. Arie headlined at the 2003 Newport Jazz Festival above jazz guitar legend George Benson, and the Unwrapped All-Stars played at the St. Lucia Jazz Festival two years ago.

“Jazz, to me, it’s like the grandparent of all music,” said Unwrapped All-Stars guitarist Dennis Nelson. Nelson equates his group’s jazz-tinged hip-hop song covers to how John Coltrane and Charlie Parker turned songs from Oscar-winnng movies and television shows into jazz standards.

Event organizers feel strongly that the performers for Jazz Day keep in tune with the jazz tradition.

“I would say this show is 100 percent jazz, and I say that because each of the artists that we have, they go back to the foundation of jazz,” said UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival director Todd Hawkins. “We had talked about maybe changing the name of Jazz Day, and we didn’t want to do that, because we felt, ‘Why? It still is jazz.’ This is a huge mix of music that is inspired by jazz.”

True, the artists on the bill for Jazz Day have cited jazz greats like Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner as influences, but for some, that doesn’t necessarily qualify the performers as jazz artists.

“Almost every genre that has appeared since jazz has been influenced by jazz,” Harrison said. “So that really doesn’t hold water for me, because rock was influenced by jazz. Do we then look back at Woodstock and call it a jazz festival? No.”

Festival organizers have incentive to headline artists from musical genres more popular than jazz simply because they draw in larger crowds. The challenge for Jazz Day organizers in the past has been attracting a large audience for a musical form that is not highly popular. But more specifically, the challenge has been attracting the college crowd, since most college students don’t listen to jazz avidly. The artists on this year’s bill, the organizers say, can help overcome these challenges.

“The neo-soul sound is creating a whole different genre of music that young adults can actually get into,” Nelson said. “They maybe feel like they don’t like jazz, but they like hip-hop. Neo-soul plays a big part in bringing the demographics together.”

The pressure to increase attendance for the jazz portion of the festival has risen in recent years, with the falling attendance of Jazz Day and the increasing success of Reggae Day, the second part of the festival. Last year, Jazz Day had barely one-fourth of Reggae Day’s 20,000 concertgoers.

But Jazz Day organizers have aimed high this year, calling the highly successful Playboy Jazz Festival their competitor. The goal this year, according to Hawkins, is to raise the attendance level of Jazz Day to that of Reggae Day, a fairly ambitious goal for a festival that started out as a small jazz show exclusively focused on talent from the UCLA jazz studies program.

“This year, we expect the show to sell out,” Hawkins said. “We’re expecting over 20,000 on each day. That’s one of the reasons we booked India.Arie. It was to make sure we would bring in that crowd, because jazz has a very distinct audience. People love jazz, but a lot of people don’t like hardcore jazz. So now it’s fusion jazz that’s really bringing people into jazz more.”

But the festival’s lineup has rattled some people’s cages and once again raised the question of what exactly constitutes jazz.

“It really confused me, because we’ve had this for 19 years and it is called a jazz festival,” graduate student Omid Toloui said. “And although soul and a lot of different types of music have their roots in jazz music, you’d think that the majority of artists at a jazz festival would actually be jazz musicians.

“If they want to make a fundamental change in what that weekend is all about, maybe they should think about changing the name. It hurts the credibility of the whole event when you advertise one thing and people show up and are disappointed because they’re not getting what they thought they would get. It’s like going to the Festival of Books and having it be all about DVDs.”

Perhaps the definition of jazz, like any other controversial topic, really depends on individual interpretation.

“There’s no right answer to that question (of what jazz is),” said third-year ethnomusicology student Matt Carroll. “Anyone can say what they think jazz is and they’re basically right. It’s all just a matter of perception. There’s no authority. Many different people have used the word to describe all these different kinds of music, and I would say that it’s never been clear. It’s not like you can go into a dictionary.”