Jazz For The 21st Century Listener
All music sees changes as time goes by. This is true with orchestral works, rock n’ roll, and yes even jazz. Many jazz puristsĀ wish that jazz as a genre of music would have stopped progressing in the 1960s. They long for the hard swingin’, blues based feel of hard bop. But, you can’t stop something from growing. Anyone who listens to jazz today fully realizes the drastic changes that have taken place in the genre since its inception. Gone are the days where it was five guys passing the hat when it came to their solos and then just ending the tune with the melody again. Jazz has taken a sharp left turn when it come so creativity.
You can now find influences from just about every genre of music leaked into the jazz music of today. This makes sense because today’s jazz musician didn’t grow up listening to just jazz and classical music like many of the musicians in the earlier part of the 20th century. It is easier to access all kinds of music therefore all that music is being melted together. If you are looking for good modern jazz the key is to find an artist like trumpeter Roy Hargrove that plays in modern styles but with a commitment to keeping some of the melodic and harmonic traditions found in the jazz style alive.
