So, What Are You Listening To NOW?

[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.

 

 

[JSngry]

It's blinding, not enlightening.

Philly, eh?

 

2003, in Germany.

 

[JSngry]

A flashlight will only show you what you point it at.

I mean, give me a fucking break!

https://www.discogs.com/master/1188411-Ursula-Rucker-Ruckus-Soundsysdom

Ursula Rucker – Ruckus Soundsysdom

Genre:	Electronic, Hip Hop
Style:	Jazzy Hip-Hop, Future Jazz, Downtempo, Hip Hop, Leftfield
Year:	2008

[mjazzg]

Cleo Soul is Neo Soul

1 hour ago, rostasi said:

Acid Jazz was party music born in the mid-80s mostly out of London
with a more improv feeling mixing jazz, soul, and hip-hop with a stylish feel.

Neo-soul, OTOH, came out of Philly in the mid-90s and was/is less about
dancefloor moves and a lot about personal, intimate songwriting with 
serious influence from hip-hop's lyrical stylings and rhythm.

Yes, but I'd Acid Jazz wasn't only party music, s lot was but not exclusivly

It was also a record label (Gilles P) which helped define the term in real time. Acid Jazz came from the Rare Groove and older well established Soul scene when that came up against a Jazz Dance scene focussed on Dingwalls where all of a sudden we were dancing to Blakey and others. Younger musicians blended the influences to varying degrees. Acid Jazz then spread out definitely to Japan, see UFO as early adaptors

And the Jazz Cafe evolved from a predominantly Jazz venue to one that presented all of the music we're talking about and as @Rabshakeh says, in his youth, not mine the Jazz acts were a lot less common.

I don't see Acid Jazz morphing into Neo Soul, Acid Jazz largely faded whilst Neo Soul emerged in parallel, we haven't mentioned Maxwell have we?

[mjazzg]

Jazz Dance and Acid Jazz had a crossover but didn't map exactly onto eachother. 

Jazz Dance was about dancing to Jazz, rediscovered BNs etc and some Rare Groove.

Acid Jazz was about music with a hint of Jazz or a hat tip or knowing wink to Jazz, often a hint to add enough hipness. The most Jazz Acid Jazz band was probably James Taylor Quartet.

[mjazzg]

Good live band too but I've not listened to them in decades

[JSngry]

54 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

 

I don't see Acid Jazz morphing into Neo Soul, Acid Jazz largely faded whilst Neo Soul emerged in parallel, we haven't mentioned Maxwell have we?

Is there a difference between morphing and evolving? I do hear elements of the former sticking around and showing up in the latter, to then further evolve.

Some organizational things had changed in some pretty basic ways  and they stuck around.

And I forget where Broken Beat/Drum & Bass (all the labels...) falls into the chronology, but that was some replacement toolbox stuff as well.

Beats, changes, melodies, TEMPOS!, nothing is as it was, and one person, place, or thing didn't do it alone or at once!

IMO, this micro wacko subsubsubsub genre labeling is missing the bigger point that a significant portion of the collective reality-perception/dance mojo (instinctual/ behavioral, not social) has changed. The people have changed. The shapes and colors have changed. Accents have changed 

Life has changed. The resistance is strong, but...you can't stop running water.

[JSngry]

44 minutes ago, rostasi said:

What were you expecting?
"Spoken Word" is what I've seen for her most of the time.

I recall (another) old online interview with her, maybe American, where the gist of it was that she seemed to be mixing rap-type lyrics with "Electronica" and was that going to prevent her acceptance with "R&B" audiences, because that stuff is all "European" not "Urban". Not even a subtle coding there...

[mjazzg]

32 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Is there a difference between morphing and evolving? I do hear elements of the former sticking around and showing up in the latter, to then further evolve.

Some organizational things had changed in some pretty basic ways  and they stuck around.

And I forget where Broken Beat/Drum & Bass (all the labels...) falls into the chronology, but that was some replacement toolbox stuff as well.

Beats, changes, melodies, TEMPOS!, nothing is as it was, and one person, place, or thing didn't do it alone or at once!

IMO, this micro wacko subsubsubsub genre labeling is missing the bigger point that a significant portion of the collective reality-perception/dance mojo (instinctual/ behavioral, not social) has changed. The people have changed. The shapes and colors have changed. Accents have changed 

Life has changed. The resistance is strong, but...you can't stop running water.

Broken Beat, Drum and Bass come later, 90s maybe very late 80s.

Definite morphing/evolving/influencing from the previous scenes, as much about organisation, places and spaces as anything else. Personalities too.

We mustn't forget the massive influence on all of this of the Pirate Radio scene, a running thread 

Loved Ursula back then, good to hear again

[JSngry]

25 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Well, that's some heavy stupid shit there ...
and that kinda crap is de rigueur in lots of areas these days.

But don't blame the "journalist". Blame the overall environment created by "defining" music in terms of "genre", no, MICRO genre, like the old game Name It & Claim It.

I mean, ok. it makes for good casual conversation, but after a while...prisoners of our own device etc.

Just my opinion 

7 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Loved Ursula back then, good to hear again

Best as I know she's still in Philly, focusing on Poetry and occasionally doing cameos on records that are under the commercial radar.

Strong voice