The United States ' regional cuisines are characterized by its extreme diversity and style with each region having its own distinctive cuisine.

As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles: New Orleans jazz dating from the early 1910s, big band swing, Kansas City jazz and Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s and on down through West Coast jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz in various forms, soul jazz, jazz fusion and jazz rock, smooth jazz, jazz-funk, punk jazz, acid jazz, ethno jazz, jazz rap, cyber jazz, Indo jazz, M-Base, nu jazz, urban jazz and other ways of playing the music.

The prosperity enjoyed during the first two centuries ( 1540 – 1740 ) while contributing to colonial growth ; the placing of extensive regional judicial authority ( Real Audiencia ) as part of its jurisdiction ; and the pivotal role it played at the height of the Spanish Empire-the first modern global empire-helped define a distinctive sense of autonomy and of regional or national identity within Panama well before the rest of the colonies.

The distinctive Red Samian ware of the Early Roman Empire was copied by regional potters throughout the Empire.

The accents of Northern England are also distinctive including a range of variations: Northumberland, County Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, Cumbria, Lancashire with regional variants in Bolton, Burnley, Blackburn, Manchester, Preston, Blackpool, Merseyside and Wigan, Yorkshire is also distinctive, having variations between the North Riding of Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.

As it was made mostly from corn ( maize ), it had a distinctive flavor, and the name bourbon came to be used to distinguish it from other regional whiskey styles, such as Monongahela, a product of western Pennsylvania, which may have generally been a rye whiskey.

Analysis of the size of mottes has shown some distinctive regional variation ; East Anglia, for example, saw much larger mottes being built than the Midlands or London.

Until recently, two different dialects of Judeo-Spanish were spoken in the Mediterranean region: Eastern Judeo-Spanish ( in various distinctive regional variations ) and Western or North African Judeo-Spanish ( also known as

In the United States, distinctive regional or ethnic breads have sometimes been preferred.

The area remained, until the end of World War II, a distinctive regional folk culture reflecting hundreds of years of local customs.

In Istria and Kvarner, native instruments like sopila, curla and diple make a distinctive regional sound.

Hawaii has its own regional music industry, with several distinctive styles of recorded popular music.

The Jeddah City area has a distinctive regional speech pattern called the Hejazi dialect, alternatively known as Meccan or Makkawi.

Bolivia's regional folk music is distinctive and varied.

Paper wasps are also sometimes called umbrella wasps, due to the distinctive design of their nests or other regional variants such as Trinidad & Tobago's use of Jack Spaniard.

The Portuguese spoken across the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo, as well neighboring towns in Minas Gerais and in the city of Florianópolis, has similar features, little distinctive from each other, so that cities as Paraty, Resende, Juiz de Fora, Campos dos Goytacazes, Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Vila Velha and Linhares may be said to sport the same dialect together with Rio de Janeiro, as they will hardly be perceived as strong regional variants by people from other parts of Brazil.

Owing to their widespread distribution and distinctive regional variation, they have become iconic examples of speciation by isolation and genetic drift.

* Biome — a major regional group of distinctive plant and animal communities.

In a recent dissertation on American regional architecture in California and Hawaii, Goodhue is credited with creating a distinctive interpretation of Spanish Colonial architecture into the Spanish Colonial Revival Style as a dominant Californian regional vernacular.

Although the Southern states had been, as much as anywhere, the birthplace of rock and roll, after the decline of rockabilly in the late 1950s, despite some successful bands from the region, a major contribution to the evolution of soul music in the Stax-Volt records company and the existence of the Muscle Shoals and FAME Studios, it was not until the early 1970s that a distinctive regional style of rock music emerged.

The instrumental rock and roll pioneered by performers such as Duane Eddy, Link Wray, and The Ventures was developed by Dick Dale who added distinctive " wet " reverb, rapid alternate picking, as well as Middle Eastern and Mexican influences, producing the regional hit " Let's Go Trippin '" in 1961 and launching the surf music craze.

The Gloranthan world is characterised by its complex use of mythology, heavily influenced by the universalist approaches of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, its Howardian ethos, its long and distinctive history as a setting for role-playing games, its community development and expansion, and ( unusual among early American fantasy role-playing games ) its relative lack of Tolkienesque influence.

A distinctive " Scottish social ethos " informed the activities of prominent Scots in the years of Empire, when they had invested heavily in the concept of Britishness, though he felt that the Scots had meddled much more overweeningly with the English sense of identity than the English ever did with the Scots '.

Unusually among the leading public schools, however, Westminster did not adopt most of the broader changes associated with the Victorian ethos of Thomas Arnold, such as the emphasis on team over individual spirit, and the school retained much of its distinctive character.

At that time, the Haçienda nightclub was a major catalyst for the distinctive musical ethos in the city that was called the Second Summer of Love.

As boarding schools are fully responsible for their pupils throughout term-time, pastoral care is an essential part of independent education, and many independent schools teach their own distinctive ethos, including social aspirations, manners and accents, associated with their own school traditions.

• a distinctive educational tradition ; or one with particular characteristics not offered at local state schools ( such as a stage school, religious instruction, boarding education, classical studies, a more competitive ethos, or a particular theory of education )

According to Craig Etcheson, an authority on Democratic Kampuchea, members of the revolutionary army lived in self-contained colonies, and they had a " distinctive warrior-caste ethos.

Coupled with the subversive nature of many of the comic strips, the magazine had a distinctive counterculture ethos and post-punk sensibility.

" Belper School has a distinctive ethos which stresses positive relationships between students, staff and parents as the key basis for learning and personal development.

In those years it developed its own distinctive ethos and liturgical practices.

They also use the same distinctive Wyvern crest and abide by the same Methodist ethos.

A distinctive West Arabic variant of the symbols begins to emerge around the 10th century in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus, called ghubar (" sand-table " or " dust-table ") numerals, which are the direct ancestor of the modern Western Arabic numerals used throughout the world.

An example is to be found on the uninhabited island of Vementry on the north side of the West Mainland, where it appears that the cairn may have originally been circular and its distinctive heel shape added as a secondary development, a process repeated elsewhere in Shetland.

Prior to the 19th century distinctive May day celebrations were widespread throughout West Cornwall, and are being revived in St. Ives and Penzance.

With the exploration of the West, mining camps were established and " expressed a distinctive spirit, an enduring legacy to the new nation ;" Gold Rushers would experience the same problems as the Land Rushers of the transient West that preceded them.

With the distinctive red and white colours of Marlboro replaced by the silver and black colours of West, the team returned to their winning ways.

Noted for his distinctive voice and delivery, Scofield received an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for his performance as Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, a reprise of the role he played in the stage version at the West End and on Broadway for which he received a Tony Award.

His stage work, for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and in London, at the Old Vic and in the West End demonstrated his wide range and distinctive, rich voice.

A distinctive West Coast rap scene spawned the early 1990s G-funk sound, which paired gangsta rap lyrics with a thick and hazy sound, often from 1970s funk samples ; the best-known proponents were the rappers 2Pac, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg.

Local film and digital media agency Screen West Midlands referred to the event as “ Personal, Instinctual & Organic Video Poetry of everyday life .” The event was a way of embracing the Black Country's distinctive cultural characteristics in the medium of film.

It signaled the emergence of a distinctive West Side Sound.

Beyond the West coast of Britannia was the Irish Sea, with many easy crossings, and many distinctive mountain landmarks to ease navigation.

He describes it as an " ugly and distinctive Sixties skyscraper " and goes on to remark that " the view from the top was without compare, and, furthermore, the top of Centre Point was one of the few places in the West End of London where you did not have to look at Centre Point itself ".

The album was released in the summer of 1988 and spawned the single single, " Wild, Wild West ", which climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart while the song's distinctive video received a lot of MTV airplay.

Fingerposts erected in the West Riding until the mid 1960s had a distinctive style.

Theosis as a doctrine developed in a distinctive direction among Methodists, and elsewhere in the pietist movement which reawakened Protestant interest in the asceticism of the early Catholic Church, and some of the mystical traditions of the West.

Kreuzberg, colloquially also known as X-Berg, is often described as consisting of two distinctive parts: the SO 36, home to many immigrants ; and SW 61, roughly coterminous with the old postal codes for the two areas in West Berlin.

The start-up routine was symbolic because of its distinctive and unchanging music and the announcement stating: " This is Border Television serving Cumbria, South Scotland, the Isle of Man and North and West Northumberland, from the Caldbeck, Selkirk and associated transmitters of the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

Seth Lakeman on stage in 2008Outside Devon and Cornwall Celtic influence on music in the West Country is much less obvious, but folk music still retains many distinctive local characteristics.

In West Sacramento, on the opposite shore of the Sacramento River from Old Sacramento, near the entrance to the headquarters of the California Department of General Services in the distinctive Ziggurat building, is another seal.

His distinctive capability was that he was able to bowl medium fast seam as well as wrist spin, having originally entered the West Indies team as a finger spinner.