Smooth Jazz: Muzak for Boomers?
Is Marilyn Manson as elevator music a natural evolution?
Is Smooth Jazz is nothing more than a natural means of bringing Jazz to the masses?
Riding the elevator enroute to your office cubicle and realizing that you’re humming along with The Beatles’ Hard Days Night is both ironic and scary. Ironic because the theme song for your work life should not greet you before you’ve even officially clocked in, and scary because elevator music by its shear definition should be Mantovani, not The Beatles.
Is it possible that this is simply the natural evolution of popular music colliding with our mainstream culture? If so, then Smooth Jazz is nothing more than the natural genre to bringing Jazz to the masses.
In its heyday, Jazz was the music of the counter-culture. It required its fans to seek it out -- in the wee hours, fighting to be heard in smoke-filled clubs whose entrances took you below the street level or around a corner and down a narrow alley. These artists – Bird and Monk and Coltrane and Davis – created music that reflected the times: utter abandon, desperation, tension, an emotional rollercoaster. Popular music of the time sought to quell the masses with light-hearted toe-tappers; leaving the jazz musicians’ artistry to become “legendary” only after many found recognition and refuge in the cabarets of Paris.
Jazz again made an entrance into the popular music scene in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The rise of Disco created greater interest in complimentary musical genres allowing airtime to be given to R&B, Funk and Jazz. As the works of jazz artists such as Grover Washington, Ronnie Laws and George Benson began their ascent to the top of the Billboard Charts, mainstream music audiences began to discover the masters of America’s “true music form” again. Suddenly the works of Bird and Monk and their peers – long after many had passed from this earth – were being sought after and being given the recognition they were denied by previous generations.
The death of Disco brought the birth of Punk and Alternative Rock, and Jazz relinquished itself once again to a “side B” status appearing in a convoluted style known as “New Age”. Drawing from jazz as much as world music, the New Age genre was strong enough to pull audiences large enough to warrant radio stations dedicated to airing New Age musicians exclusively. However; while a viable radio format, New Age stagnated at an “also ran” status through the 1990’s.
With the entrance of the new millennium, jazz artists who first gained notoriety in the Disco-era began re-appearing on the air waves. The anxiety and tension-filled riffs of early jazz greats that influenced these jazz artists whose music made it to the top of the charts in the 1980’s, were being blended with the syncopation of Funk and R&B. This birth of Smooth Jazz entered the music scene somewhat unnoticed. Rather than bursting onto the music scene, these founding artists of Smooth Jazz – Kenny G, Jeff Lorber, Sade, The Rippingtons – more truly eased their way into the mainstream psyche through the cross-over friendly style of their music. Smooth Jazz artists’ work fit as easily into the play lists of Pop and Easy Listening formats as it does Top 40 and - of course - Smooth Jazz.
Now that we’ve become accustomed to hearing The Beatles on our ride up to the 17th floor, and the artists that have survived Disco and New Age are now defining Smooth Jazz; we really shouldn’t be too jolted when we finally hear Marilyn Manson in the background. It’s just the natural evolution of Muzak for Boomers.
