Neil: Satchmo, the nickname of Louis Armstrong, a pioneer and for many of today’s teens the only jazz artist they could name (let alone enjoy), screams the age in which his music thrived. Its dated sound thrusts you into America almost 100 years ago, and for good reason- Armstrong and his peers cut their first records during the twenties against a backdrop of prohibition and America’s elevation to economic superpower-dom. For decades, from its birth in Harlem’s dimly-light nightclubs onwards, Jazz reigned supreme as arguably the nation’s most important artistic export ever. Jazz is also essential in the tradition of American music for being the vehicle by which the black musician first found himself in the mainstream, making way for an explosion of other genres pioneered by African American artists long silenced.
Jazz was the American genre for decades. It filled record collections, the air of nightlife and ears of listeners of every color and creed across the nation. Over time, though, its popularity waned. By no means a death, but certainly a recession as newly widespread radios began to play newer genres arguably birthed from jazz. Early rock into Rock ‘n’ roll into pop music into hip-hop, and somewhere along the way those radios evolved into streaming platforms. However, after decades of being appreciated on at least a subculture level, the surge of “Lo-fi” and modern alternative music has awoken a sleeping beast in Jazz music- it is, if nothing else, a beautifully versatile set of ideas that make for music that both relaxes and excites.
Artists like Daniel Caesar, Rex Orange County, boy pablo, Clairo and Mac DeMarco (to name a few that come to mind) capitalize on these ideas and are prime examples of this renaissance. They pick at, repurpose and pay homage to countless tropes of jazz music that any listener party to both genres will recognize immediately. Strange chord changes that leave you feeling a sense of lingering, soft melodies on pianos and guitars and the highs and lows of it all sit right in the middle of this timeless venn-diagram. Each track's quest to capture a serene feeling often on love or the lack and loss of it tugs with it remnants of a genre all but dead.
A clear-cut example of this is Caesar’s hit “Best Part.” Using chords that are staples of jazz, it creates this smooth and sun-soaked vibe that the older genre was founded upon decades ago. Caesar’s music is so rooted in jazz, in fact, that he’s drawn attention from musicians like Jacob Collier, a young up-and-coming maestro, and has been invited to play at a number of celebrated Jazz festivals around the world. His music, like his peers’, lies is a complex, soothing and romantic bubble in a industry otherwise full of (at times) overwhelmingly energetic popular music. Sometimes, as the millions of listeners to these genres have found, good music makes you want to kick back and close your eyes to its lulling soundscape- those pioneers in Harlem knew it a hundred years ago, and the young-blood of today know it now.
Image: Melkweg/Lilli Marvin
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