So, What Are You Listening To NOW?

[jazzbo]

Gary Burton “Something’s Coming!” Sony/RCA cd Japan

 

Gary Burton on vibes, Jim Hall on guitar, Larry Bunker on drums, and Chuck Israels on bass

[jlhoots]

Gary Burton: Genuine Tong Funeral - Lon made me think of this one.

[John Tapscott]

[Peter Friedman]

[HutchFan]

43 minutes ago, John Tapscott said:

  Tremendous.

 

[mjazzg]

 

 

[optatio]

1 hour ago, jlhoots said:

Gary Burton: Genuine Tong Funeral - Lon made me think of this one.

👍

[Rabshakeh]

David S. Ware String Ensemble – Threads

I'm very much a Ware agnostic which means I sometimes forget how much I love this one. 

[mjazzg]

Madison McFerrin - I Hope You Can Forgive Me

20 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

David S. Ware String Ensemble – Threads

I'm very much a Ware agnostic which means I sometimes forget how much I love this one. 

That's one of the few Wares I don't have, not sure why as I hoovered up the Blue Series in real time

[Rabshakeh]

Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton - Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play The Blues: Live From Jazz At Lincoln Center

An idle stream, since this appears to have been posted to YT. I assumed it would be sad BB King tweakings, but it certainly is not that. 

53 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

That's one of the few Wares I don't have, not sure why as I hoovered up the Blue Series in real time

For some reason I missed it at the time but picked it up since (and have since disposed of the hard copy CD sadly). I don't know why it wasn't as high profile as the rest of that excellent series. 

It is streamable and heartily recommended.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, mjazzg said:

 

 

Ok, what genre is being used to pigeonhole stuff like this. My Pandora wants to know...

I know what it used to be called but that was a while back...

 

[JSngry]

Still?

[JSngry]

What about when it's non-African- Americans doing it?

Just now, rostasi said:

yeah, the style hasn't changed much in 30 years except for new technologies.

Retro-Neo?!?!?!

[jazzbo]

Horace Silver Quintet and Trio “Blowin’ the Blue Away” Blue Note Japan SHM-SACD

[Rabshakeh]

16 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Example?

25 Neo-Soul Artists Reshaping Contemporary Soul in 2025

My problem with neo-soul is that, despite it being a distillation of numerous influences, it never really moved beyond the sound of the original greats like Erykah Badu and D'Angelo. Since then it has just basically been the same thing. 

[jazzbo]

John Coltrane/Archie Shepp “New Thing at Newport” Impulse Japan cd

 

[mjazzg]

4 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Well, those folks sit in the middle.
You had acid jazz influence, then someone like Meshell Ndegeocello,
then Badu and Jill Scott, then you had it connect more with hiphop,
then it connected (Frank Ocean, for instance) with alternative R&B, 

then...

...you have Sault

[Rabshakeh]

28 minutes ago, rostasi said:

then it connected (Frank Ocean, for instance) with alternative R&B, 

then...

Do you see Frank Ocean as neo soul though? A quirky variation of mainstream R&B, surely. I like his first records a lot but never saw them as neo-soul. Perhaps my view of the genre is unnecessarily constricted. 

[JSngry]

46 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Example?

I still look at Monday as the high bar for this whole direction. Not that she invented it, just that she showed.....a LOT of possibilities.

They called her "Acid Jazz" then, but....really?

I'm also thinking about other people, such as United Future Organization, Kyoto Jazz Massive (at times), 4Hero (at times), JazzaNova, etc, And some of the people who did their remixes. None of them really broke through in America, but the did (sometimes) feature quite good African-American female(often) vocalists. Drummers have (thankfully) evolved to the point where they can do it live with or without additional technology.

So (once again) we've gotten a marketing term that creates a limited picture of what has really happened. And, dare I say, a little bit of racial pigeonholing that maybe works at cross-purposes to what might benefit the artists involved.

 

[John Tapscott]

[Rabshakeh]

2 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Yeah, sure.
Folks like him and Solange, Anderson .Paak, Hiatus Kaiyote, SZA,
and so on have varying doses of neo-soul in what they do.
Highly constricted genres are a rare thing anymore.

You're naming a bunch of artists that I like but don't really see mentioned as neo-soul. But then, why not? Neo soul is really just a sub style of R&B so it is probably not helpful to be too definitive. 

[Rabshakeh]

In London there is a venue in Camden called the Jazz Cafe which was in my youth notorious for booking everything except for jazz bands. Instead it was always jazz-adjacent music: music that fairly clearly wasn't jazz but the musicians thought jazz was classy and wanted some of that image. Neo soul or jazz rap were the classic Jazz Cafe genres, and I still to this day hear neo-soul (as distinct from mainstream R&B) as 'Jazz Cafe music'. 

Edited April 28 by Rabshakeh

[jazzbo]

Calvin Keys “Shawn Neeq” Black Jazz/Real Gone cd

Arranged By – Calvin Keys
Bass – Lawrence Evans
Drums – Bob Braye
Electric Piano – Larry Nash
Flute – Owen Marshall
Guitar – Calvin Keys

[JSngry]

18 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Highly constricted genres are a rare thing anymore.

Increasingly meaningless labels, oth, seem to be exponentially thriving!

[JSngry]

I mean, when did "Acid Jazz" become "Neo-Soul". like....just like that, boom. That is totally illogical on the face of the evidence. It seems like a pretty clear case of a logical, linear multicultural evolution.

But the word "Soul" brings it out of the global realm and into a very specific American frame of reference. Them Damn Dumb Americans at it again.

Now we can has marketing and now we can has things to be ok that weren't so much before.

There was a Monday interview online long ago (and long ago lost) where she said that when she was trying to get Verve to handle her releases in America that a BIG obstacle was that she considered her music Soul and Verve told her point blank no, you can't have Soul, Yellow don't have Soul. Call it something else. 

And that's as close to an exact quote as I can muster these days.

So you know, everybody all yeahyeahyeah one world coming together and all that shit, but the obstacles are deeply entrenched and incentivized to dumb down EVERY fucking thing.

And so they do.