BADBADNOTGOOD and the Future of Jazz

I haven't talked about jazz very much on this blog. Eexcept for this review of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew I haven't really felt like dedicating much time to writing about the genre, and that's honestly because there hasn't been much new happening in the genre, at least that I care about.

There are many exceptions, however. Check out bizzarro guitarist Mary Halvorson's oddball technique or the technical virtuosos in the Japanese dual-keyboard fusion band Mouse on the Keys. The group Fundamental's debut album Development also impressed me last year, but a lot of new jazz I've been hearing on the radio, while not bad at all, has failed to get me excited about what's new in the style or drag me away from listening to the classics from the '60s and '70s that I love so much (see Bitches Brew, Third.) But recently I came across a group of kids who are even younger than I am who are making music that not only diverges away from traditionalist jazz, but practically sprints away from it. The group is amusingly called BADBADNOTGOOD.

As you can tell from Tyler the Creator collaboration video above,  the group is heavily influenced by hip-hop making them sort of like an acid jazz band, however, their studio albums don't actually feature any rapping, which I'd honestly like. Many of their compositions are jazz renditions of hip-hop songs ranging from covers of Nas to Odd Future, and the results put a little grin on my face and get my head bobbing. Why play the twenty millionth rendition of "Take the A Train" or "My Favorite Things" when you can make a new song into a jazz standard? In short, jazz musicians should start playing, y'know, NEW SONGS, just a thought. I couldn't have come across this band at a better time. Over the last year I've been listening to a large amount of hip-hop and have been delving deeper into jazz at the same time, and now I have found a group who combines the two to satisfying effect and it's got me thinking about what the future holds for this century-old style.

So what is the future of jazz? I'm leaning towards the idea that fusion bands like BADBADNOTGOOD and Mouse on the Keys will keep moving the genre forward in this new millennium while traditionalism will (or already has?) become irrelavent. Traditionalism in jazz is on it's way out, and if it survives, its fanbase will most likely be a small one and won't garner nearly the level of hype generated by bands BBNG in particular. I can imagine that jazz purists are going to-or already are-hating music like this. In fact, BBNG's music teachers described their jazz medley of Odd Future songs as having "no musical value." Can someone smack these crabby, out of touch jerks in their collective faces? It's amazing how a group can just add a boom-bap beat into a jazz context and move an entire genre forward, and while they may not be reinventing it, but they're definitely on to something that's fresh and maybe even genre defining.

I will admit that they're not the tightest band or the most technically accomplished musicians out there, they're just kids after all, but I can clearly see that they're going to get to that level one day and I'm excited to see what this band has in store for us in the future. I don't think jazz needs to be resurrected at all, it's really been around all this time and hasn't gone away. I just think we need reformation, and BBNG is spearheading it.