Pop/Rap is the New Jazz

When jazz first started to make a name for itself during the swing era , it was seen primarily as entertainment music-- people danced to jazz, they didn't go listen to it, and they surely didn't go home and analyze the chord structures.

Now jazz is widely respected as one of the most sophisticated forms of music, and is taught in universities around the world. What once was music on the dance floor, or spurts of improvisation, is now transcribed, studied, and analyzed.

A common thread:

So jazz, during its beginnings primarily as dance and entertainment music, right?

Well what kinds of music do we use for entertainment/dance floor purposes now?: Rap, Pop, Techno, Electronica.

I strongly believe the path that jazz took will be taken with popular music from today. I think that one day, this music will be taught in schools (and it already is in some) around the world. I believe it will be analyzed, and we will see the sophistication within it.

Many fail to see the substance within popular music from today, recklessly typecasting it as "garbage", assuming there is nothing useful involved. But popular music today uses innovative production techniques, and more than that, music and technology continue to merge in truly creative ways. The world has never seen music in this shape or form before, and while the technological aspect is being used to create catchy rap tunes, it is also being explored by many well-respected software aficionados (an interesting, yet far out example here).

Jazz similarly developed to change the world of music, and created something unique in harmonic and rhythmic structure. Jazz was (and is) about creating something new, something the world has never seen before, and that is exactly what musicians today are doing, whether it is respected (or noticed) by the general population or not.

As jazz progressed, it wasn't always taken in with open arms:

"When it began in the 1940s, bebop was such a startling development that it seemed like a revolution against everything that jazz had ever been and a real threat to the music's existence." -James McCalla (from Jazz: A Listener's Guide)

I hear people say the same things about current music all the time: "What happened to music?! What they play on the radio is pure crap."

When bop started developing, the great Louis Armstrong even shot it down with remarks like "Weird chords. No melody. No beat." Yet jazz continued to flourish past this stage, and we now study the great bebop musicians of that time with great awe and respect.

Next time you listen to the radio and cast something off as garbage-- listen again, because one day your kids might be learning about it in a college class. I believe that if the great jazz musicians were born decades later, they would be in on the new direction music is taking instead of jazz, because that is the true spirit of innovation. It's not just loving one kind of music, it's loving music itself as it progresses through time.

You can't fight the direction music is moving in, so you might as well learn to understand it, roll with it. Every new genre of music faces adversity, but if millions of people will lend their ears to a song, how completely terrible could it be?


Feedback? Questions? Email me: Nehal@Musicians-Make-It.com