TheJazzAge

Quora Answer : In a few hundred years from now, would music have hard distinctions? Distinctions in past music is secular and sacred. Would our music just be labeled "Pre-Modern" like other eras (Baroque) or would they keep the distinctions (hip hop, rock etc)?

Jun 11, 2019

In 200 years, this will be known as the "jazz age".

And "jazz" will, rightly, be seen as a shift in music driven by and characterized by three interrelated things :

• recording technology (and effects, amplification, computer manipulation etc.)
• "feel" : recording captures the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the performer and performance, leading to a new musical emphasis on
  • the virtues of improvisation
  • "swing" and "groove" (ie. hard to notate rhythmic feel), and
  • personal style (particular qualities of a singer's voice or a rapper's flow. Or the exact tone that a rock guitar god gets from the fingering style plus the strings and body of the guitar plus the effects.)
• a focus on music as a vehicle for personalities and characters. Music actually becomes a kind of pantomime or theatre where your personality (musical but also extra-musical) becomes part of the reason for people to listen to and enjoy your music.

Other modern genres : rock, soul, funk, punk, disco, hip-hop, rnb, house, techno, jungle, drum'n'bass, garage, metal, dubstep, trance, EDM, trap etc. etc. will ALL be seen as simply offshoots and subcategories of jazz. All being examples of music that is driven by the same logic : recording technologies; "feel" (which is captured and manipulated by that technology) becoming as important as the "musical" (ie. tonal / harmonic etc.) structure; and personalities.

Possibly, for musicologists this "jazz" music will be subdivided into categories according to instrument. Eg. you'll have "guitar jazz" (everyone from Django Reinhardt to Jimmy Hendrix to My Bloody Valentine). And "computer jazz" (from Herbie Hancock's early synth experiments to basically all modern EDM and hip-hop / trap production) and "wind jazz" (from early big bands to modern ... er ... big bands, taking in horn driven soul and funk). And "vocal jazz" (pop music)

The future may also note that the emphasis on social dancing and music as youth culture, while not actually new (music has been used for dancing and "getting off" for thousands of years), did become extremely important and prominent in the age of jazz.

Quora Answer : Which two music genres are completely different but have a similar origin?

Jul 12, 2020

Well technically, these three pieces all have their roots in the same music, about 80 to 100 years ago.

Chet Baker: Almost Blue

Rusko : Cockney Thug

Xasthur : Xasthur Within

And you can hear that they basically have the same structure. Some kind of repeating sequence of chords, with a strong rhythmic pulse, over which there's some kind of semi-improvised, free floating lead. The rhythm may change occasionally, but the pulse / mood stays fairly constant throughout.

They differ in what their rhythm is, what particular modes / scales they use. And especially in the instrumentation, tonality and "sound world".

But their structure and even purpose is similar.

These are all, effectively, miniature musical "landscapes". They paint a picture of an emotional place and invite you to explore within it. They don't particularly tell a musical "narrative". Or try to contain and show a transition between contrasting emotions. They aren't about contrast and change. They are about capturing their mood as absolutely as possible.

Surprisingly, they are all pieces of music designed to be heard within a larger context which consists of other pieces of music of similar style. So that you can fully immerse yourself within that feeling and allow it to interact with your emotional state, to face your demons, and perhaps find some kind of catharsis to internal woes.

These are all pieces of music that owe their existence to recording technology. They are as much products of recording engineering as they are of traditional music composition. They are made to be distributed on records, and listened to on records. Perhaps alone. Or in a group of aficionados.

Perhaps more surprisingly, although none of them may sound particularly easy to dance to, their common ancestry is dance music. Music intended to provide the soundtrack for parties / social gathering. Hence the prominent use of percussion and drums in all of them.

Let's trace each one back a bit ... towards their common ancestor.

Let's take the metal track back about 40 years :

Black Sabbath : Paranoid

And we'll take the ancestry of the dubstep back to about the same time

Sly and the Family Stone : Africa Talks to You

Not quite the same genre of music. But they are noticeably much more similar. And the dance aspect of both is strong.

Now go back another 15 years, and we can find a common ancestor of both metal and the funk / disco family tree which leads to dubstep :

Muddy Waters, 1955, Manish Boy :

Chet Baker was actually around, recording at that time, and he sounded like this :

To find the common origin of Baker and Muddy Waters you'll have to go further back into jazz / blues history. But they will definitely converge at some point.

You can easily imagine both Baker and Waters knowing and rating Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, for example :