Is Laufey jazz?
Added 2023-09-26 18:26:10 +0000 UTCThis is a video essay that has been bubbling up in the back of my mind for a long time. In case you haven't heard of hear, Laufey is a singer that is absolutely DOMINATING the jazz charts right now, very much like Norah Jones 20 years ago with Come Away With Me.
I think she's very new and very exciting with her approach, which is radically different from basically everybody in the jazz world - she's authentically blending mid century pop music with 21st century pop in a way that feels very fresh and very "now." It's genuinely something new, and it's no wonder why she is so popular.
I love her rendition of I Wish You Love, it's a personal favorite, and it's really wild to hear young people getting AMPED to a Charles Trenet ballad. Like, damn, what a time.
However, I'm a little hesitant to call her music "jazz," for a variety of reasons, which (of course) I discuss at great length in this video. I wanted to raise concerns about the "savior" narrative in a way that is fair to everybody, while looking at the historical context around discussions of "real jazz."
Hope you guys enjoy!
Adam
Comments
I don’t have a go at her, but unless you’re over 30 you haven’t had enough life experience to comment she’s clearly blagging it. She’s clearly interested in theatre and because of her background thinks she does jazz. I have spent years, studying music, history and theory and everything it takes ages to find your real voice, and your opinions are constantly evolving and changing so I don’t think it’s particularly helpful she’s very talented no doubt and her diverse background means she’s talented in so many ways with loads of different inferences. She’s a very talented young lady, but a warning for all musicians and engineers don’t trust musician. They are fundamentally stupid when they’re at age, arrogant, ignorant, egotistical example, was at university a guy recorded a song for person he likedand then he expected me to mix it on the spot for free entitled watch. Lovely guy he was American Ecuadorian but jazz the girl did not like it at all because she wasn’t into him in that way.
Sam Kalbag
2024-01-28 15:14:16 +0000 UTCfuzzy boundaries are fascinating. they seem to be where lots of massively influential things get created. sadly (or not?) the word "jazz" has been getting the crap beat out of it for the past several decades -- arguably as long it existed in the first place. it's sort of become a convenience word, a receptacle where otherwise difficult-to-define music gets dumped; no longer particularly useful in the real world, at least not without additional qualifications. these days there's this tendency to call anything that is jazz-informed "jazz", which is pretty silly... unfortunately "jazz-informed" sounds pretentious as hell and "jazzy" just sounds derogatory, so no solution there. i wonder if the problem isn't akin to the difficulties of trying to categorize other organically evolving systems. e.g., if we all descended from fish, why are we not still "fish"? at least with taxonomy, you can draw the line of speciation where interbreeding stops, but even that can have its outliers. are all the descendants of jazz "jazz", or have the myriad branches gotten so far out (man!) from the archetype that they can no longer interbreed? i can't say since i wasn't there (or rather, then), but i get the sense that a significant driver of the evolution of jazz (and much other music) since early on has been the pushback against or deliberate departure from the conventions of the elders or the status quo, but always while retaining a deep, fundamental reverence for the broader history/lineage and origins. in the similar sense that "punk rock" is still rock & roll and embraces 98% of those genes, even if the purists don't include it, and of course it is pretty hard to imagine, say, jello biafra collaborating with little richard. the ever-presence of that dualism is, to me, one of the most fascinating parts of the vitality and attitude of the music that gets called "jazz" from any decade you could name. we don't necessarily detect it in mid-20th-century jazz because we are generations removed from that zeitgeist, but i would wager that at the time it was there. sorry for all the rambling, but a super thought-provoking vid!
coach k
2023-09-26 19:56:16 +0000 UTC
