Jazz Genre • Page 29

Finally listening the new Kassa Overall album. Real good shit.

 

Really looking forward to the Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes album next week. The singles I've heard have been great.

 

while i don't think i was lacking in my enjoyment of jazz, it seems like lately i've been able to appreciate jazz more than i previously did because i have more of a vocabulary (rhythmically, harmonically) to identify what im hearing and why i like it vs just "this sounds cool and new". i don't think there's anything wrong with the latter as a form of enjoyment, it just makes realizing why some things stick over others a little more mysterious. but anyway, there are records that i've heard for years that i feel like im listening to in a new way lately, im more attentive to what im hearing bc it means more when i can piece it together into a larger whole. (wow groundbreaking, active listening helps like that's not the first post in here lol)

anyway, i know this is what might be considered "entry level" and enjoyable by all, but that's kind of what i mean, im just finding new things in it that i hadn't heard before because they didn't mean anything to me without language to attach to it, if that makes sense:

weirdly, i feel like listening to a lot of post-punk type stuff has really helped me to appreciate what im hearing more, i feel like a lot of those bands are trying to achieve similar things as what's happening in jazz, albeit more angular less swing. it's dumb that it takes me hearing things in a rock band set up to really wrap my mind around some things but oh well

 

I don’t think it’s dumb you got into it that way or how you got your head round it. Jazz has always been a daunting mountain to scale and I’m still trying to do it myself. I know I’ve only dipped my toe in the waters and there is still so much to learn and hear.

I always dug a few jazz acts, but never really explored it until a couple of years ago. My way of getting my head round it was through hip hop and finding samples used by various rap groups like Tribe and De La.

 

New Jamael Dean out today

 

daunting for sure, but it's great how it rewards the time you spend with it. it's nice/ personally refreshing for music to have more to offer the closer you look at it instead of less

samples in hip hop also definitely helped me too, hearing something decontextualized and repurposed on a loop is super helpful. im realizing a lot of stuff sort of coalesced into greater understanding, though im sure my understanding hasn't entirely grown as much as i think. i know there's probably a bunch of wild stuff that'll take even more time to wrap my head around

 

what's considered "entry level" jazz is pretty warped imo. Like to actually completely understand "My Favorite Things" you kind of have to know a decent amount about the history of the genre, specifically what it meant in the context of Coltrane's career and how it was innovative. Not to say you can't enjoy it otherwise but I don't think its pretentious to say there's a difference between enjoyment and understanding. Jazz can be extremely self-referential and you can miss a lot if you don't understand the references

 

I agree, I put entry level in quotes bc I feel like it's kind of meaningless in this context aside from denoting relative accessibility and cultural standing, doesn't really describe the music in any meaningful way. but I wasn't sure how to qualify that at the time, I guess I was trying to make the quotes do a lot of work haha

I do think me personally spending a lot of time w Coltrane and McCoy Tyner helped too, maybe not necessarily for specific references when including the latter, but certainly for contextualizing that record within the arc of their respective artistic progressions

 

This was one of the hard things to grapple with at first. How can you appreciate the groundbreaking genius of, say, Bitches Brew or A Love Supreme if you don't realize the conventions they were obliterating?

Not that you can't appreciate it. But telling people they should start with revolutionary, paradigm-shifting work always seemed kinda ass-backwards in a way.

 

Back in the day, I definitely jumped straight into the like of Love Supreme and Bitches Brew, but I don’t think it was because I thought they were good starting points. It was because jazz was always listed as an influence on Dillinger Escape Plan. Calculating Infinity had fully gripped me and the little jazz interludes here and there sounded amazing. I wanted more of that dissonance, but any jazz I looked up was “too soft” for me (FYI I definitely wasn’t paying attention to what I was checking out back then. My attitude was “if it’s not got weird time signatures, I’m not interested”, which it definitely isn’t now) and those two records were the only jazz records I’d listen to occasionally that scratched that itch.

Fast forward 20 years and I definitely appreciate and understand what went before those records, but I still prefer the more difficult sounding records.

 

Misch/Dayes album rules

 

It really is.

Also, someone made a thread for it...

Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes - What Kinda Music (April 24, 2020) • forum.chorus.fm

 

Picked this entirely at random because it came up as suggested when I listened to a Laurindo Almeida album and the cover was appealing but it's pretty wonderful:

 

This came up in my algorithm a few months back and I also liked the cover so I sampled it.

 

I can't really tell the two guitarists apart, but it was a great, chill rainy day listen.

 

Lol I tweeted about that the other day, found it through the algorithm as well

 

Whatever Herb Ellis’ estate paid them, it was worth it.

 

So I'm trying to broaden my horizons a bit, can anybody recommend me some good African and Asian jazz?

 

Here are a couple I enjoy.

 

Thank you, I'll give these a go!

 

oh yeah thanks for bumping this i wouldn't have remembered. dunno if you can really consider afrobeat jazz but I've been listening to some Fela since Tony Allen died. Anything Mulatu Astatke ever made.

This is one of my favorite random gems I've stumbled across, don't think it's on streaming but if you dig I can upload it:

cool story behind it too:

really liked this from this year as well

an absolute classic, maybe one of my fav albums of all time:

another cool thing I randomly stumbled on last year:

i guess you could argue whether some of these are jazz but I think of them as such and honestly who really cares yknow

 

feel like I've posted about him in here before (and I don't listen to a ton of jazz) but Mulatu Astatke is awesome. this comp is a great place to start and readily available on streaming

 

Appreciate the responses y'all.

@jdr2187 Leo Takami was a nice listen earlier, liked how gentle it was. I'm sure I'll be going back to it.

 

New Angel Bat Dawid.

 

So, I've been listening to more latin jazz/salsa recently (Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto). Al really good stuff. But can anyone recommend some more experimental, free jazz influenced stuff? No idea where to start!