What do you wanna know?
Jazz can have any feel. Traditional stuff is swung, more recent flavors incorporate funk or well…anything.
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Tell me about Jazz
- Thread starter Drop1
- Start date
What do you wanna know?
Jazz can have any feel. Traditional stuff is swung, more recent flavors incorporate funk or well…anything.
Glad you are enjoying your discovery!
Typically called fusion, “soul jazz”, “acid jazz” or “smooth jazz” depending on how smooth, rocking or spaced out it gets
Go enter those terms into the search of your favorite streaming platform and see what pops up. To many people it’s not jazz, to others (like me) if I like it I could care less about whether it’s jazz or not.Those genres descended more or less from the popular organ combos of the 1960s which focused heavily on blues heads and covers of soul tunes mixed with some standards. There was also commercial pressure from record labels in the 60s that led to weird stuff like Ella Fitzgerald covering Cream.
Well, the music form called "jazz" extends from some years before the first recordings in 1917, to now, and includes many styles of performance. Just a brief listing of most of the most important:
Early jazz (Joe OIiver, ODJB, etc,)
New Orleans styles (note plural styles)
Chicago/Austin High style
Swing styles (note plural)
Bebop
Hard bop/funk
Free styles/avant garde/"the new thing" (note plural styles)
Fusion styles (note plural)
And of course many many blends of these styles exist.
There are people currently working, playing, performing, and enjoying all of these styles of "jazz" music, as well as the related forms of African-American improvised music that are either directly derived from, or heavily influenced by, the form we call "jazz".
Far too many people have a grossly mistaken idea that jazz is limited to a very abstract, austere music with little melodic appeal to the lay person. This is NOT TRUE. Yes, the most avant-garde styles can be quite difficult for the new listener. But Jazz is not just Coltrane's "OM" and Cecil Taylor. It's also Fats Waller, Ben Webster, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Betty Carter singing "Baby it's Cold Outside" with Ray Charles.
Early jazz (Joe OIiver, ODJB, etc,)
New Orleans styles (note plural styles)
Chicago/Austin High style
Swing styles (note plural)
Bebop
Hard bop/funk
Free styles/avant garde/"the new thing" (note plural styles)
Fusion styles (note plural)
And of course many many blends of these styles exist.
There are people currently working, playing, performing, and enjoying all of these styles of "jazz" music, as well as the related forms of African-American improvised music that are either directly derived from, or heavily influenced by, the form we call "jazz".
Far too many people have a grossly mistaken idea that jazz is limited to a very abstract, austere music with little melodic appeal to the lay person. This is NOT TRUE. Yes, the most avant-garde styles can be quite difficult for the new listener. But Jazz is not just Coltrane's "OM" and Cecil Taylor. It's also Fats Waller, Ben Webster, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Betty Carter singing "Baby it's Cold Outside" with Ray Charles.
Jazz is a very broad term these days. There are many styles of jazz and the distinctions get more blurred as time passes. Trying to categorise music is only useful if you have a specific point of reference or your listener knows you well enough to understand where you're coming from. Whatever it is, naming it is not so important. If you know the artist's names you can access the music and learn how to play it.
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When someone says "Jazz, but funky" Headhunters is the first thing that comes to my mind.
By inoffensive I mean tepid and nondescript. You can't offend anyone if you don't take chances; jazz is the blandest music I know of.
The video of Cecil Taylor improvising on piano in a sweat suit may change your mind!
I'm guessing there is a lot of jazz you're unaware of.
Might be. But I've listened to many hours of jazz and it all seemed quite similar.
Well, I know most folks find free jazz intolerable and I certainly wouldn't accuse it of being inoffensive ( I happen to love it ), but hey, I could see a Merzbow or grindcore fan seeing it that way, maybe.
Tickles me in a way that John Coltrane and Kenny G can somehow technically find themselves classified in the same genre.
Yes....or the.. Crusaders...especially their early albums. Wilton Felder filled both the sax and bass chairs on a lot of these early albums.
