West Coast jazz refers to various styles of
jazz music that developed around
Los Angeles and
San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a subgenre of
cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than
bebop or
hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily
arranged, and more often composition-based. While this style was prominent for a while, it was by no means the only style of jazz played on the West Coast, which exhibited more variety than could be conveyed by a simple name.