Talk:Contemporary jazz

Disambiguation page

Please see archived discussions at WT:JAZZ/Archives/Categories redux and/or WP:CFD/Category:Contemporary jazz musicians, for the reasons why and how we changed this to a disambiguation page. The latter discussion links to actual sources but, to my knowledge, we can't cite sources on a disambig. page. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:44, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Until today I hadn't seen "contemporary jazz" used to describe "jazz music that incorporates elements of contemporary classical music." I just came across recent news that NARAS has eliminated the "Contemporary Jazz" categories. As Stanley Clarke was the most recent winner in that category I believe it attests to the (unfortunately) vague meaning rather than something specific about contemporary classical elements. (New Grammy categories are here.) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:03, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

The page has since been reverted to the "incorporates elements of contemporary classical music" description. If this is indeed the case, then we need a source attesting to this usage. This was the reason I linked to the categorization discussions, where participants had pointed to several sources that demonstrate how "contemporary jazz" is variously used as a synonym for "smooth jazz," or to more generally describe recent music ("contemporary" as in "relevant to the present period" - example at last.fm). We can't cite sources in a disambiguation page, hence my link to the old discussion. At the same time, if "contemporary jazz" means something else, we can't cite that on the disambiguation page, either. I also don't see why including this usage means we should delete the other(s). But again, this is the first time I've seen "contemporary jazz" used to describe jazz that incorporates elements of contemporary classical music. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:54, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Another thought is that if there are sources attesting to this usage, then this ought to be incorporated into the Jazz article, and/or create an article about it. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 23:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Defining contemporary jazz is very tricky. I'm not sure whether my definition falls into the "modern jazz" category more than the one in question. I just find it almost offensive that the first thing that pops up when one looks for contemporary jazz is smooth jazz, which in my opinion is the antidote to jazz to begin with. The "modernization" of jazz can be traced to as early as Duke Ellington or Art Tatum, some would say it started with Bird and Dizzy, and some would say it started after cool and post-bop. The only thing all those have in common is the use of elements that started developing in romantic and post-romantic music, which originated what we call contemporary classical music. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 02:24, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I see your point about smooth jazz: I don't much care for it either, but it doesn't change the fact that, for better or worse, "contemporary jazz" is frequently used as a synonym for smooth jazz. Having said that, there's no reason it has to appear first in the list. Also: I'd suggest the incorporation of the musical elements you describe began with Jelly Roll Morton (to say nothing of ragtime), in which case perhaps it simply falls under "jazz". -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Then how about jazz music that began deviating from its "standard" forms, such as blues or rhythm changes, in the late 1950s—early 1960s? Hearfourmewesique (talk) 15:59, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That looks good, but two questions: 1) where are you getting this definition? and, 2) why does this necessitate deleting "jazz music since the late 20th century," which is both an attested and common usage? -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

1. DAB pages do not require sourcing;
2. "Jazz music since the late 20th century" is not a valid sentence, and the description is too vague.

I will have to think about a more accurate description, since contemporary/modern jazz is any jazz that deviates from its "standard" sound, be it form, harmony, melody, rhythm etc. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 16:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I meant can you point or link to something here, on the talk page (more bluntly, if you are coming up with this definition yourself, I don't see that it's helpful to put it on a DAB page just because we don't use sources on DAB pages). I realize the description is vague; I think "contemporary jazz" is a problematic term and that's why we took those categories to WP:CFD. But, again, it's a common use of the term. What you're describing sounds like the "modern creative" descriptor that allmusic uses. That had its own problems and we ended up merging the info into the jazz and free jazz articles (see archived discussion if you're interested). Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:36, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• I have to say that I'd regard any attempt to state a negative definition of contemporary jazz in terms of deviancy as dangerous. It requires an anchoring in a norm, which is always going to be subjective: the late Brian Rust's norm would not be Stanley Crouch's, would not be mine and unlikely to be yours, for example. And I'd have equal difficulty with a positive definition that specifies a particular supplement such as contemporary classical music: firstly because that has been a two-way influence process, secondly because while it works for say Anthony Braxton, it would be an over-defining exclusion of many other influences on contemporary jazz, whether of African, Asian, Balkan musics, of pibroch even, or of funk, punk, free improv or hiphop. I much prefer the status quo wording on this page as at Nov 2010 AllyD (talk) 20:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem with Nov. 2010's version is as follows: it opens with an overly detailed explanation as for what constitutes smooth jazz, and followed by extremely brief mentions of the dance connotation and only then with a grammatically incorrect fraction of a sentence that tells something about a vague time period in jazz. None of those make sense, not is any of that encyclopedic to begin with. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The smooth jazz wording was the result of this discussion. I'm not saying we have to keep it, that's just the reasoning behind it. I'm not sure what the problem is with the fragment sentence, they're all fragments: that's how DAB listings are supposed to be written as per MOS:DAB. Or am I missing something else in terms of grammar? (e.g. "Jazz music developed since the late 20th century" or "recorded and performed since the late 20th century"). Did I mention before that I feel this particular usage is so vague as to be worthless? But still, it's an attested usage. The dance connotation is in there because other articles, using the term in the dance context, linked to this page, so apparently someone out there would be looking for it. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:55, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I don't know if this helps or not, but here is how allmusic uses the term, basically meaning "not-quite-smooth jazz". And yet, under the list of artists, they've got Ravi Coltrane and Brad Mehldau alongside Bobby Caldwell and Fattburger. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Let's analyze the phrase "contemporary jazz": jazz in contemporary times. If you begin the description with smooth jazz, you imply that in contemporary times, smooth jazz is the main representation of jazz, which is both incorrect and almost blasphemous.
• As for the grammar – you are correct: a verb needs to be inserted between "jazz music" and "since the late 20th century".
• What is "late 20th century" anyway? It could be any time period between the 50s and the 90s. Therefore, it is too vague for an encyclopedic description.
• Are you saying that you feel it is useless to mention that contemporary jazz is jazz that i contemporary, but proper to attest it to smooth jazz as the primary usage?
• The dance connotation is completely legitimate and should be there, I agree.
• My solution, as for now, is as follows:

Contemporary jazz can mean:

• Any type of jazz that evolved from deviation from its "standard" sound (such as classic swing) since mid-20th century
• A contemporary variant of jazz dance
• Smooth jazz

Hearfourmewesique (talk) 04:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a lot better, thanks. Your new wording allows for other influences besides contemporary classical, e.g. encompassing Latin jazz and bossa nova, to name but two. My $0.02 anyway: I had already suggested moving smooth jazz further down the list. I didn't say, nor mean to imply, that it is "proper to attest it to smooth jazz as the primary usage". As for "late 20th century", again, that's how last.fm (for example) specifies it (or doesn't, given its vagueness, as you point out). I think that "since the late 20th century" was better than simply using "jazz that is contemporary" which, while literally true, is probably more uselessly vague (and I don't believe any of us are suggesting using "jazz that is contemporary", anyway). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 08:56, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a consensus then, unless an objection comes along. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 13:45, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

• As I said above, I dislike any wording that is based on the idea of deviation. The proposed wording is very unclear: is it saying "classic swing" was a deviation from this standard? or that "classic swing" was that standard? where is it seeking to place bop? AllyD (talk) 17:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
• And secondly, I feel the follow-on wording for smooth jazz should be maintained, given its apparent doubling as a sub-genre and as a radio-format. AllyD (talk) 17:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Why do you object to the deviation wording? As for the smooth jazz expansion, it does not contain anything beyond what can be found in the linked article and therefore, fails WP:UNDUE. And when exercising common sense, "classic swing" is the example of standard jazz sound, but just for the sake of pleasing the demagogues, here is a clearer wording:

Contemporary jazz can mean:

• Any type of jazz that evolved from deviation from its "standard" sound, such as classic swing, since mid-20th century
• A contemporary variant of jazz dance
• Smooth jazz

Explanation: in order for one to interpret the sentence as "classic swing is an example of the deviation", it has to be rephrased into any type of jazz that evolved from deviation from its "standard" sound since mid-20th century, such as classic swing. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 18:41, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

• What is this "classic swing": is it Goodman, Dorsey, Shaw, Miller? Ellington, Basie? Is there a source through which it can be understood as a term if to be used as a defining shorthand of normalcy/deviance here? AllyD (talk) 18:47, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
• BTW I'm not at all keen at the idea that this is about "pleasing the demagogues"; I was merely seeking clarity. But fine, I'll withdraw at this point. AllyD (talk) 18:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, all of the above examples make sense. It could be interpreted in several ways, the key difference is between "classic jazz" and "contemporary jazz". Really, that's all there is to it. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 22:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

(I made the following comment before I noticed that you'd gone ahead and made the update. Still, here it is for the record.) I had thought/still think that we're close, but that last point you made about "classic jazz" vs. "contemporary jazz" is very subjective, and I wouldn't have given any of this much more thought if you hadn't mentioned that. "Classic" could just as well refer to 1960s Blue Note versus, say, Pat Metheny. If deviation from swing is the demarcation, then we could just as easily equate this with jazz since bebop, e.g. "Generally, jazz music that developed following the advent of bebop" (or some re-wording thereof). But again, I feel like we're coming up with these on-the-fly (which leads to WP:NOR concerns). If we were to specify bebop, I could point to Ron Wynn (All Music Guide to Jazz, 1st ed.) who described bebop as the throwdown marker in jazz, although for members of that generation; he instead suggests fusion as the marker for his generation (I don't think he necessarily means that everything else following that is derived from fusion). And that's from a seventeen-year-old book, describing stylistic developments from 40 years ago. Still, it gives us something we could point to (on this talk page, that is) as the basis for our wording. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:31, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The main point is the deviation from the "classic jazz" sound, which is, in your example, far more present in Pat Metheny's music, but both can be called "contemporary" (depends on which recording you are referring to, of course). The ultimate description, of course, would be "jazz in contemporary times" but it is way too vague and time dependent. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 18:58, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

This is sort of a 'prickly' thing to get your mind around. I see several things here that I can address. The moniker of 'classic jazz' for me is defined as the time of the AF of M battles, the recording ban during WWII, and how be-bop emerges as the 'new jazz' on the other side of that. Before is 'classic' and 'hot' jazz...and after is what we know now as the modern jazz language taught in music schools today. There are sub-catagories which get impossed on this but that line in the sand sits around WWII.

Now, the NARAS thing is a different subject all together. Being a member of the local NARAS board and one who has been voting on the Grammys for years now, the catagories in GRAMMY nominations are messy. I could go on about this but that is a battle of quantity vs quality and the catagories themselves do little to help. Record companies dominate this aspect of recordings and are trying to sell, sell, sell...they have little concern about accurately defining catagories in order to inform people about the aethetics or history of music (go see how many tapes or historically significant music that have been trashed from the vaults of RCA, Columbia, and Capitol). This would be a very unrelibale way of defining jazz/music and how it is labeled, NARAS should probably not be used as a measuring stick on any of this.

Jcooper1 (talk) 15:05, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow! Never heard of those other meanings of contemporary jazz! For me it's a category of its own, definable as post-bebop jazz, and including and at least partially derived from free jazz. And it definitely does not include smooth jazz or "dinner jazz". It seems to me that those usages are incorrect! And the people who make that mistake are probably ignorant about jazz, no doubt like the people who decide the GRAMMY categories. Dhyandeva (talk) 22:20, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I mostly don't care for that type of music, either. However, (as explained above) those are attested usages, regardless of how we might feel about them. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:36, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

allmusic

For what it's worth, allmusic says "promoters and publicists enjoy using the term 'contemporary jazz' to describe these 'fusions' of jazz with elements of pop music, R&B, and world music" (link). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:05, 14 November 2012 (UTC)