The earliest tracing in the Oxford English Dictionary finds that "jasm" comes from Josiah Gilbert Holland’s 1860 novel, Miss Gilbert's Career: “‘She's just like her mother... Oh! she’s just as full of jasm!’.. ‘Now tell me what jasm is.’.. ‘If you'll take thunder and lightening [sic], and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix 'em up, and put 'em into a woman, that's jasm.’”
Gushee, Lawrence (Spring 1994). "The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz". Black Music Research Journal. Selected Papers from the 1993 National Conference on Black Music Research. 14 (1): 1–24. doi:10.2307/779456. JSTOR779456.
jstor.org
Gushee, Lawrence (Spring 1994). "The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz". Black Music Research Journal. Selected Papers from the 1993 National Conference on Black Music Research. 14 (1): 1–24. doi:10.2307/779456. JSTOR779456.
