Joining the Dots #1: Nu Jazz
This is part one in a series of articles & podcasts by London journalist, radio DJ and presenter Nat Illumine, exploring subgenres which have developed in British electronic music. More info & links on the series here.
“Hip Hop, House and ALL THAT JAZZ!”
The rate that modern music genres evolve is quite astonishing, particularly in the UK, where hybridisation of musical genres is more than an occasional anomaly – it’s a national pastime. Much like in the spectrum of colours, it would appear that by mixing various genres across the spectrum of new music, new genres emerge. Like a painter with his palette – mix a few and create something new. In today’s world of global cultural fusion, new genres spring up year after year, far quicker than music journalists can name them. It goes a little something like this: if red and blue make purple, it should be no surprise that Hip Hop and Dance made Jungle. Jungle and R&B made Garage. Garage and Hip Hop made Grime, And Garage and Dub made Dubstep.
This is just one trajectory of music-mixing to create new genres, and one I find fascinating. So having been asked to write a monthly column for this illustrious website, and claiming myself an ethnomusicolgist of sorts, my intention is to write about different music, its sub-genres, and the sub-genres of that. And I could go on infinitesimally. It’s kinda like if I was writing for a paint magazine – this column might be about lilac, but actually I’m going to begin this insane, undulating effort to map out contemporary music genres with ‘Nu Jazz’, for three reasons: a) because I know little about it thus requiring some seriouuuus research on my part, b) because it’s currently in favour and accessible, and c) because this month there’s a funky little festival celebrating all this Nu Jazzery, and it looks like a lot of fun to me.
Right, lets get academic.
Jazz is one of the oldest contemporary American music genres, now vying for space with classical music as the most studied discipline in music schools and universities. With a long lineage beginning in the late part of the 19th century, Jazz has become, alongside Rock and Reggae (and later Hip Hop), one of the most popular genres of music of the last century. It is considered by many to be the only ‘true’ American art form, and American Jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Count Basie have ensured their place in the annals of American cultural history.
Fast forward to the 21st century and over here in Europe traditional Jazz has been bastardised with all kinds of dance music to create something quintessentially ‘other’, as we’re prone to do. That ‘other’ has been termed ‘Nu Jazz’ – an umbrella term coined in the late ‘90s to incorporate various fusions of music – Jazz amalgamated with electronic sounds and ambient effects – combining traditional instrumentation with the digital beats of house and other forms of dance music. Thus the umbrella ‘Nu Jazz’ incorporates sub-genres such as ‘Broken Beat’ and ‘Jazz-House’, and perhaps even what I like to call ‘Jazz-Hop’, the proponents of which often utilise broken rhythms, atonal harmonies, and improvised melody.
Ultimately ‘Nu Jazz’ is another progression of Jazz – a genre which has evolved with every decade since its inception – and as such, its origins can be traced back to the innovation of virtuosos like Miles Davis, whose ‘Bitches Brew’ album incorporated rock’s emphasis on the backbeat in its fusion of free Jazz improvisation. Miles had been experimenting with electric instruments since his 1968 album ‘Miles In The Sky’ and subsequent LPs ‘Filles de Kilimanjaro’, and ‘In A Silent way’, ostensibly Davis’s first fully-grown fusion album. However it was ‘Bitches Brew’, released in 1970, that proved a turning point for the music, heralding in a new era in which traditional instruments would be augmented by new innovations in technology, namely electric instruments, samplers and drum machines.
With the creation of the MIDI protocol, enabling the use of digital sound and interaction between electronic machinery, (thus negating the need for instruments entirely), a revolution occurred in music-making, and electronica and dance music as we know it today was born. Jazz artists with a futuristic vision (such as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and John McLaughlin, all musicians whom played at some point with Miles) continued to innovate Jazz styles using electric instrumentation. This period of musical innovation garnered the name ‘Jazz Fusion’, and was equally exemplified by bands like Weather Report, who fused Jazz with Funk and African-inspired beats and cross rhythms.
What kept Jazz evolving was its embrace of new technological tools, from synthesisers to electronic keyboards to the digital beats of ‘dance’ music. In Europe producers of dance music continuously hearkened back to the sounds of Jazz musicians and, as traditional Jazz married dance music, the amalgamation came to be known as Nu Jazz. French producer St. Germain is probably the most well-known, combining real instruments with House beats and selling over a million albums in the process, who along with Germany’s Jazzanova crew exemplify a more downtempo, ambient form of the genre, whilst futuristic Nu Jazz Norwegians like the pianist Bugge Wesseltoft and trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær are traditional players pushing a improvised funk-led style. In the UK, labels like Ninja Tune continuously push artists like The Cinematic Orchestra and Up, Bustle and Out. The number of British artists and bands who delve into Jazz and Electronica is far too numerable to mention, but equally, genres across the spectrum of dance music, from Dubstep to Techno to Jungle, have all been inflected with Jazz at some point or another.
Within Hip Hop there’s a huge trend towards Jazz in the form of sampling and general appreciation of the genre. Gang Starr are renowned for their love of Jazz, DJ Premier’s beats have their basis in Jazz and Guru went so far as to release the Jazzmatazz series, featuring collaborations between renowned Jazz and Hip hop artists. The Roots are a Hip Hop band notorious for their on-stage improvisation and A Tribe Called Quest made no secret of their love for the genre, with track titles like Jazz (We’ve Got), not to mention Madlib’s excursions into Jazz territory as Yesterday’s New Quintet. There also exists bands, such as New Orleans’ The Hot 8 Brass Band, who cover hip Hop songs.
But nowhere has the concepts of Nu Jazz been more pivotal than the music known as ‘Broken Beat’. Initiated by producers such as IG Culture and 4Hero in west London, Broken Beat is a sub-genre of Nu Jazz signified by staggered rhythms, accentuating the off-beat, hence the title. Heavily influenced by the Jazz Fusion and Funk of the ‘70s, the purveyors of Broken Beat also tend to come from similar schools of production such as Drum & Bass, House and Hip Hop, and the genre borrows as much from these as it does from Jazz. 4Hero’s Reinforced label helped pioneer the scene, as did producers like Kaidi Tatham and Mark de Clive-Low and the band Bugz In The Attic, who were also influenced by the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti.
As mentioned earlier, celebrating the popularity and diversity of Nu Jazz is the second Portobello Nu Jazz festival, to be held on the weekend of the 15th, 16th and 17th of August, in the trendy area of west London. Spread over three days, the festival aims to promote Nu Jazz with its line-up of Leroy Burgess, Kaidi Tatham, Sataya Projects, Xan Blacq, Lyric L, Heidi Vogel and Brazenbunch, and DJs IG Culture, Adam Rock and Daz-I-Kue suggests a very broad musical spectrum.
The fact that Leroy Burgess is headlining the festival is testament to the spirit of freedom within the Nu Jazz movement. In America the terms hold no weight, and Leroy is considered a pioneer of the ‘boogie’ sound, “a slightly slower tempo-ed type of dance music (as opposed to Disco, House or Garage),” Burgess tells me from the States. “I am also known largely for my R&B contributions (with my group, Black Ivory) and for electronic dance music (such as my work with Aleem).” It is exactly this diverging of genres in Leroy’s output that makes him relevant to the Nu Jazz scene in London. “As I am a jazz trained musician, I regularly incorporate those elements into all of my work. To me, elements such as those make the music more interesting, colourful and certainly more fun to play.”
“Jazz is the element I use most often, because of its ability to twist the ‘rules’ governing musical creativity,” Burgess explains. DJ and producer Adam Rock agrees with Burgess in this all-encompassing attitude to the genre. “With Nu Jazz being the umbrella that covers the new wave of jazz thinking… my music has elements of jazz, soul, hip-hop, reggae, anything funky and everything black…” It seems to be the level of experimentation available to artists in this area that make the genre so interesting and appealing. “I infuse sophisticated chord changes and melodic movements into what is basically a simple rhythmic structure, to give it more life and colour,” continues Burgess. “I consciously look for ways to break the rules when composing and arranging… which I hope keeps the music fresh and innovative.”
Nu Jazz has captured the imagination of post modernistic music culture, fusing jazz, house, hip hop and broken beat sensibilities. This blending of Jazz with other genres has been pushing the medium forward into the 21st century since 1968. Music critic Tony Brewer put it succinctly by comparing the genre to other nascent derivatives: “Nu Jazz is to (traditional) Jazz what Punk or Grunge was to Rock… Nu Jazz instrumentation ranges from the traditional to the experimental, the melodies are fresh, and the rhythms new and alive. It makes Jazz fun again.”
Tags: articles, joining the dots, Music, nat illumine, nu jazzThis is part one in a series of articles & podcasts by London journalist, radio DJ and presenter Nat Illumine, exploring subgenres which have developed in British electronic music. More info & links on the series here.
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[...] let you hear some of the music that is being talked about. This episode follows Nat’s first article on Nu Jazz and features music from defining artists in the genre, such as Jazzanova and Kyoto Jazz Massive. [...]
[...] The various evolutions into what we now know as Breakbeat came in various stages throughout the 90s. These include, but no doubt aren’t limited to, Hardcore Breaks, Acid Breaks, Breakcore, Big Beat, Nu Skool Breaks and Progressive Breaks. And if you wanna get all pernickety then Broken Beat could also be considered a form of Breakbeat, but really that’s on its own tip, and was covered in the first instalment on Nu Jazz. [...]