Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Smooth jazz revival?

Several years ago there were many articles written about the "death" of smooth jazz, like this one and this one in 2010 that talked about Chicago's WLFM trying to fill the void left by the former smooth jazz station WNUA. Well, WLFM switched to alternative rock in 2012 too, according to this site. FYI, these folks has created
a Chicago-based, Chicago-targeted, Chicago-driven Smooth Jazz-formatted digital station available through the internet.
I listened via this link. It's alive and kicking. The playlist was similar to the "old school smooth jazz radio station", i.e, a mix of vocal and instrumentals. As I mentioned before, I am not a big fan of smooth jazz vocal. And I found a few interesting fact about it here:
The goal of every radio station, says WQCD operations manager John Mullen is to be heard. "The bulk of music is smooth jazz - so out of 10 or 12 songs, the majority will have an instrumental, jazzy texture. So if we throw in a vocal, maybe to add a little spice or to bring in a few people who are not jazz fans to our radio station, it's our way of getting people who have never tried us to try us."

Oddly enough, instrumentalists often find their songs have a tougher time at jazz/AC radio if they have vocals on them. "I had a song called 'Body Language' with vocals by Shai that got to No.6 on the adult R&B chart, but it didn't get as high on the jazz/AC chart because of the vocals," says James.

He adds that another single, "All Night Long," featured a background vocal hook, while an all-instrumental version of the song was featured on the Japanese release of the album. "When Warner Bros. in the U.S. sent out the CD promo, they included both the instrumental and the vocal version, and the instrumental version was the most popular one here. The stations are playing vocals, vocals, vocals from other people, but when an instrumentalist comes along with one, they won't play it."
Actually, my indicator of its revival is the live performances here in the SF bay area. Looks like it's part of the "new direction" of Yoshi's, which traditionally booked mainly "traditional" jazz musicians but I have been to quite a few smooth jazz performances in the past year, including Peter White, Michael Lington, Jessy J...... I know Najee has played recently. Mindi Abair and Brian Culbertson are coming up in Sept and Oct. I hope this change helps Yoshi's business (Yeah, I still count on them booking those traditional jazz cats) 

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