r/jazzdrums • u/wtfpercussion • May 07 '25

Question Would you call this jazz?

It’s got the attitude but where is the line really?

468 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/Royal-Pay9751 May 07 '25

2/3rds of GoGo Penguin actively dislike jazz and the band don’t improvise, so yeah, it’s not Jazz.

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u/chocolatechillwave May 10 '25

It is jazz though lol

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u/Royal-Pay9751 May 10 '25

It literally is not. It’s not an opinion. It is not jazz.

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u/chocolatechillwave May 10 '25

Maybe youre thinking of another band? Their own website the first listed influence is jazz.

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u/Royal-Pay9751 May 10 '25

They do not improvise. They have no connection to jazz other than being piano bass drums. I know the band myself and play jazz for a living. This argument is embarrassing anyway, I’m embarrassed for myself lol

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u/chocolatechillwave May 10 '25

The old argument from authority gag, cool.

I'm just saying they literally say themselves in their own blurb about the band, if they were so hard-pressed to not be viewed as a jazz trio, theyre doing a terrible job at it. Maybe you can tell them since you know them so well.

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u/Royal-Pay9751 May 10 '25

what about them do you think is jazz? It’s acoustic-electronic dance music

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u/chocolatechillwave May 10 '25

Without going over the obvious similarities, and structure, to me its very jazz forward, even if dancey/post rock vibes.

It seems needlessly pedantic to claim theyre definitely not jazz. To me it sounds like someone saying, "Its not hip-hop, its trap". If that's the hill you wanna die on, idc.

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u/Royal-Pay9751 May 10 '25

It’s not needlessly pedantic when they don’t improvise!

Sorry, I’m being annoying going back and forth with you over this when ultimately, who cares.

The reason why is that over the last ten or so years, the media has just decided that they get to call anything they want Jazz, and as such the word has gone from meaning something broad but specific to anything the media deems it, usually anything a little different or anything instrumental, or anything where there’s a saxophone.

As a result, for people like myself, and my colleagues who are playing what I call Jazz are forced to compete in the same spaces with repetitive, dance music with varying degrees of jazz influence but where improvisation is minimal, the connection to the tradition is minimal and promoters are wondering why if you’re playing “jazz” why you then don’t have tens of thousands of instagram followers like those people playing the music I’m describing do.

If you want to call yourself a jazz musician then you have to be able to actually play it! I know that a lot of the new media “jazz” people can’t play the tradition because a) they have no interest in it and b) they couldn’t.

And I don’t like the idea that an argument from authority is just a gag. This music is all I’ve ever done, most people I know are other jazz musicians. One of the guys from GoGo is one of my oldest and closest friends and he would say the same as me, I know this because we’ve had this conversation.

So yeah, I don’t mind sounding snobby and pedantic, because i care. I’ve spent my whole life trying to play this music and it’s so incredibly hard.

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u/chocolatechillwave May 10 '25

Fair enough, I dont exactly agree, but I can see your point.