Jazz in the last 25 years...

[koganbot]

Just checking in so you won't think I've died or cut off my hands. I'm in the midst of another move, from Denver's west side to Denver's east.* Have ideas for posts but I want them to, you know, be good. In the meantime...

Jazz made in the last 25 years barely exists, if you go by the Wikipedia jazz overview — also if you go by my listening, which almost never includes it, or at least only includes music by people who had already made a substantial contribution prior to 1990 (though I did put Matana Roberts in my top 10 a couple years ago).

So, how wrong am I? I barely know what's there, if there's a there.

Watch on YouTube

Sonny Fortune Live at Sweet Rhythm 9-11-09 "In Waves of Dreams"

*Actually, we are inadvertently moving a couple hundred yards into unincorporated Arapahoe County; there's a bit part of Arapahoe that juts east all the way to South Quebec Street. I'd just assumed that the border was Yosemite all the way down.

Comments

[mordy (from livejournal.com)]

serendipitously i was thinking about jazz tonight as well - and specifically brand new jazz. my tastes i guess run to the more avant garde barely jazz stuff you can find on Zorn's Tzadik label and I thought Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt release was excellent: there's so much other stuff in there besides jazz (like surf, latin, etc - stuff that does often fusion great w/ jazz) and v cerebral imo. i hear so much great stuff from Tzadik including the new Mycale album (a vocally super inventive a capella quartet 'supergroup'). bassist joshua abram's new album magnetoception is a lovely work of compositions on the guimbri. um, susan alcorn - soledad. i assume from yr post that you know there was a new matana roberts out this year. is kamasi washington jazz? jonah parzen-johnson - remember when things were better tomorrow. the spanish donkey - raoul is the new jamie saft joint and it's great (incidentally he puts out a lot of stuff on Tzadik). idk i'm sure like none of this is "jazz" traditionally but that's kind of where the genre is for me at the moment at a nexus of a few different musical trends and like i don't really know what "jazz" even means. i almost overlooked it but i've been listening to a lot of "international/world" (i like honest jon's neologism "outernational" better than both of those) and there are often jazz crossovers there. maybe not quite as much in the field of malian desert blues but def ethiopian jazz is all over the place and ester rada has a particularly great album self-titled that came out in the last year. idk i've never really considered myself a "jazz" person, but as i get older i feel like it has crept in.

[koganbot]

Thanks. This is exactly the sort of reply I was looking for. Did you see dubdobdee's Kind Of Bleugh thread on Freaky Trigger several months back? Included rumination on the varying meanings of "jazz" among different constituencies and in different times.

This year's Matana Roberts kinda threw me. She's certainly not repeating herself, though. Haven't had time yet to wrestle with it.

Lists

[koganbot]

Haven't checked any of these yet (and I won't believe it till I hear it that any of them are exciting), but here's Allmusic's 2015 jazz list:

http://www.allmusic.com/year-in-review/2015/favorite-jazz-albums

And here's the Guardian's:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-to-listen-to/best-jazz-albums-of-2015

(Did listen to a promo vid for the Maria Schneider and it seemed potentially not unpleasant, but not galvanizing.)