I don't shy away from telling people that my favorite genre of music is jazz, then comes my spotify wrapped and I don’t even see jazz in the top 5, nor anywhere in the list of my most listened to music, actually. Well, I don’t listen to pop music - not usually at least - I dislike the sound of electronic music for a majority part and I don’t spend most of my time listening to classical music even though I greatly appreciate it. So where does my interest come from? Am I really lying? Has jazz died?!
All of these are valid questions, and to be honest, being a jazz listener feels like a serious label to carry, it feels like I have to be listening to some extremely experimental music with space sounds in it or that it requires me to be a saxophone player to be able to say that I am someone who understand the current jazz scene as an avid listener. And to be completely honest, I truly cannot say that I am a true jazz listener, it scares me to call myself that and so I just tell people my favorite genre is jazz and pray they don’t bat an eye. And now, I am left with a current working hypothesis as simply someone who listens to music. Most of jazz is simply fusion with other types of music and so you cannot even search them under the title of jazz. I will tell you something, most pop musicians we enjoy today are greatly talented musicians who create music that at least in some part takes away something from jazz or simply participates in it. Not all musicians and the music industry in itself works to push popular current music to be as catchy and tiktok-able as possible to be able to create mass consumption, as always with capitalism.
Some artists I have recently discovered to be doing jazz are people who you might not even associate with jazz at all when I first mention it. The most convincing name I have for now is Will Wood, right out of his emo phase, he makes music that his fans have classified as “evil jazz” which I absolutely adore. He loves using stereotypical jazz motifs in his music to create a fun satirical universe where he can take certain personal and social problems into inspection - as with his album “The normal album” where he chooses to do a blues groove to introduce a villain character and talk about egoism, or his most musical theatre-ish piece yet “Marsha, thankk you for the dialectics but I really need you to leave” where he criticizes the subjectivity of psychological diagnosis. He seems to be affected not only by blues, but also his culture, the fun and liveliness of his music resembles klezmer music also, which becomes extremely apparent with the saxophone lines. Another artist which I came to appreciate and very later on realize is very jazz influenced - and highly intelligent in music - is Stromae, despite being one of my least liked artists in the past, I am one of his biggest fans currently. He is still a very well known artist today and his album “Multitude” is an artistic masterpiece from choreography to music arrangement. Not only he is incredibly talented but so is his band, their a capella rendition of “Tous les memes” is a true display of the members ability to be multi-instrumentalists. Similar to Stromae’s popularity, a pop artist very well known today is “Bad Bunny” His music is in spanish - (also and is very much representing the soul of latino music. His songs use a lot of pop music elements as well as electronic but in the end they return to the soul of latino with lively solo performances by talented musicians. You can tell that he works with brilliant musicians in his recordings from their solos. And is that not the soul of jazz, and the soul of latino music? The names I have counted fall out of the umbrella of well known 21st century jazz artists. Here’s someone who is known for being a jazz artist though; “Laufey”. Adam Neely, the jazz lick guy, describes Laufey as a both pop and jazz artist, she is inspired by jazz however she does not actively partake in the jazz scene. She uses classical and jazz inspirations throughout her music. Although she does not come from the tradition, I’d have to argue with Adam Neely - and I am merely nothing to him but - but she does do jazz, even if we like it or not. What we hear in her tracks is jazz, that makes it jazz, as much as it makes pop because the defining feature of pop is to be popular and catchy. I absolutely agree on the point with Neely on this one, no she has not saved the jazz genre, but she has introduced quite a lot of young people to bossa nova and classical music which seems great. However, we should consider that calling Laufey jazz is not calling Billie Eilish a jazz singer too even though Billie bossa nova is indeed jazz. Billie is one of those artists who are very close to jazz, especially with her brother Finneas, both of them are extremely talented artists.
These artists I’ve just counted are only a few exceptions I have noticed in the music sphere as jazz inspired or jazzy artists who don’t get labelled as such. The question of “what is jazz” is something that gets harder to answer everyday as genres become murkier and murkier. I definitely do not think that jazz is dead. But I do think that what you recieve when you search for jazz on major music streaming platforms is a dead end. The tasteless blend of coffee jazz with impossible to understand, avant garde music has ruined the experience of searching for jazz. If you are looking for jazz, you have to look for it in passionate artists. You have to find swing in Lancer’s theme and big band in Hazbin Hotel soundtracks. I will never receive jazz as my top genre on spotify and I’m okay with it. I know that jazz today is still very much alive in my favorite albums. Jazz is everywhere and it’s inescapable rather than unfindable.