Hip-hop, which celebrates fifty years of its launch these days, can be seen as a natural extension of jazz, which itself is an extension of the blues. And this is not only because of the ethnic identity shared by these styles, but the matter goes further than that, and is at the heart of the musical philosophy promoted by jazz and adopted by hip-hop. Jazz music, when it appeared, and unlike the musical styles that were in vogue until that time, gave contemporary musicians the opportunity to improvise, experiment, and transcend boundaries and conventions… which is what hip-hop succeeded in achieving, not only musically, but as a general culture that was exported to all parts of the world.
The parallel between jazz and hip-hop begins with their starting point, the social and political conditions that led to their birth. Jazz and hip-hop share a history full of conflict and persecution, whether in New Orleans – the birthplace of jazz – where blacks have long suffered from oppression and discrimination, or in the Bronx (New York), which is the origin of hip-hop, which came as a response to the economic marginalization that the people of the region were complaining about. They are also of African descent.
This was at the height of the popularity of disco music, which was mainly devoted to dancing, until the name of the dance club was changed to “disco”. In the 1970s, this music became a subculture centered around nightlife, dance, and fashion. People would go in all their style to some disco; The males in tuxedos, the females in satin dresses, everyone in fairy hair, and everything glitters. This glamorous culture did not find its echoes in the most marginalized neighborhoods such as the Bronx, which set out to create music that resembled it and told its story, using disco as a platform to borrow rhythms and mold them into a completely different musical style.
In reaction to disco, the early hip-hop makers took a step back, that is, towards funk music, which belongs to the same family tree descended from the blues. Funk was evoked by the rhythms of the breaks, or the breaks, hence the name “break dance” for the dance accompanying hip hop since its beginnings. In the mid-seventies, DJ “Kool Herc”, who would later be known as the spiritual father of hip-hop, emerged, and was the first to use these intervals sequentially, using musical samples from jazz-funk records, especially the work of James Brown.
This was done live in tight parties and underground, with its DJ heroes, before turning to production and the studio, and the birth of rap.
Elsewhere in the world, in London’s dance clubs, DJs were practicing a different but similar kind of experimentation, by mixing rare jazz songs with psychedelic music and repetitive rhythms, what became known as “acid jazz”. During the 1980s, DJs mixed this music again, adding elements of hip-hop with an emphasis on the percussive component, to create a kind of danceable jazz.
This was during the seventies and eighties, but the actual fusion between hip-hop and jazz did not actually happen until the nineties, the same period when the development of hip-hop music reached the point that can be described as a mainstream. This fusion evolved into a distinctive style when rappers began sampling jazz rhythms from the recordings of musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Ayers, and others. We mention, for example, the song “Talkin’ All That Jazz”, which borrows its rhythms from jazz pieces such as “Expansions” by its owner Lonnie Liston Smith. As for its lyrics, it talks about the rejection that hip-hop music faced in its infancy from listeners of traditional music such as jazz and others. The song replies to them, “This is the music of a hip-hop group.. Jazz, well you can call it that.. It’s jazz in a new way.”
On the other hand, jazz musicians began to cooperate with rap groups, the first of which was the saxophonist Greg Osby, who produced a hybrid piece of music entitled “Street Jazz”… This influence extended to the current millennium, when it is possible to talk about many jazz artists who inspired hip-hop music, Perhaps the most recurring name is Nina Simone, or what musician and writer Josh Jones calls “hip-hop’s secret weapon.” Nina Simone’s work has inspired many singers and producers, from Lauryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West, who have found the musical and protest power in her voice to fit their songs and movements.
But this influence did not follow a unilateral path, but rather went in both directions, if jazz musicians began to be influenced by hip-hop, the most famous of whom was Miles Davis, who released his last album, Doo-Bop (1992), in cooperation with hip-hop producer “Mo B”, who belongs to the “jazz” style. Rap” and interspersed with clips of funk songs. Also, the rapper Guru organized a recording session (1993) with a number of jazz musicians at the time, which resulted in the Jazzmatazz album. Guru’s goal was to move to the next level of collaboration between the pioneers of the two genres, that is, by turning the equation around and “bringing the people whose music we were borrowing into the studio to play this music on hip-hop beats. I knew we were going to make music for history.” As Gouraud says in an interview.
What started as a flirtation between two voices, turned into a long list of styles and styles. Contrary to the story of the rapper “Nas”, who “discovered his father’s music”, today there is a generation of jazz musicians who have grown up listening to hip-hop and rap, as the saxophonist says, as Walker Washington says. And unlike earlier periods, when the hip-hop artist borrowed a musical phrase from jazz, or vice versa, Washington peers such as Robert Glasper and Kendrick Lamar freely fused the two genres.
Some see jazz and hip-hop as a “paternal bond”, while others describe it as a “love affair”. But why are hip-hop producers so drawn to jazz, and why are they so fond of picking up long-forgotten rarities? Musician Alex Aref answers, enumerating the reasons for the frequent return to jazz, describing it as a search for “the mood and the wealth of melodic content, and it is also a restoration of a common history of struggle, celebration, and the desire to change music with each new release.”
