Talk:Acid jazz

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There are two unsourced sections that list musicians associated with acid jazz. Where did these names come from? There need to be sources. Also, given that it's debatable and subjective who is more "key" to acid jazz, it would be better to merge the two sections to eliminate any conflict. My preference, though, would be to eliminate the sections all together. There are enough lists on Wikipedia and the "key" names should be mentioned in the article. New Grove handles it by naming people who were involved from the beginning: Disc jockey Gilles Peterson and "his collaborators" disc jockeys "Simon Booth, Jez Nelson, and Paul Bradshaw...New musicians, such as the James Taylor Quartet, Snowboy, Galliano, and Booth's Working Week, and several young black musicians pioneering the renaissance of black jazz in Britain, notably Steve Williamson, the flutist Phillip Bent, and the singer Cleveland Watkiss, then began to compose and perform new acid-jazz tracks...Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai achieved considerable fame..."
–Vmavanti (talk) 00:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Added to which, many of the artists listed as being associated with acid jazz aren't considered to be "acid jazz" on their own Wikipedia page. I deleted Funki Porcini from the list as he is trip hop according to his own page.82.45.66.11 (talk) 14:20, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the above and question the inclusion of Buckshot LaFonque and Digable Planets as examples of Acid Jazz bands. Neither's music contains the defining underlying disco-esque grooves needed to qualify for the genre.Bkhouser (talk) 21:11, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

I cannot believe we are going to get into a genre-related dispute here...

This has not been at all in question since the day this article was created a full two decades ago. But alas - it seems that we are. I am not at all sure why @Solidest is claiming that Funk and Jazz are not the contributing parent genres for AJ (which by definition makes AJ a sub). Those are literally the 2 primary core elements of AJ. To not identify AJ as a sub of them is disingenuous because without both of those genre elements - AJ simply would not exist, and it would sound like & be called something completely different. Jazz alone has 14 contributory mentions in the article, and Liquid Soul was nominated for a Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy. How much more Jazzy can it get? Funk adds another 8 contributory mentions in the article. Numerous cites in the article mention both of those and the other roots - and both are correctly listed as stylistic origins. AJ is every bit a sub of them both - amongst others. "A different kind of Jazz" is still Jazz. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 15:56, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Late edit: In fact - I am going to take this a step further and state that the lack of genre changes, discussions and disputes over the last 20.5 years assumes consensus by default. So - if you do indeed want to change the genre classifications, @Solidest - then you are going to have to find the consensus to do so. At the moment - you stand alone. I will be re-reverting the edit post haste, and undoing it further will constitute violating both WP:EW and WP:CONSENSUS. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 16:05, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Picard's_Facepalm and thanks for starting this discussion. This will be a really proper way to clear things up.

Firstly, what you consider their "primary core elements" is WP:OR. The article lists them among a list of 5 items, just like any other influences from any other genres. Regarding jazz, it is expressly stated in the text, "Because it relies heavily on percussion and live performance, it is sometimes associated with jazz, but its emphasis on groove aligns it more with funk, hip hop, and dance music". "Sometimes associated with" is not equal to "primary core element". As well as "emphasis on groove aligns it more with" is not "subgenre/subtype of". What the sources do say is that the genre's affinity with them is only due to the fact that it originated in the circles of those who played and published rare groove and 70s jazz-funk. And is equally inspired by hip-hop or disco and later house and electronic music. None of the current sources tell you that the genre is a subset of jazz or funk. That's a fact.

Second, we have a wikipedia-wide practice of placing in the "Category:Parent_genre genres" categories only those subjects that are explicitly listed by sources as their subgenres or subtypes. We don't add such categories for every genre mentioned in the premise or that is listed in "Stylistic origins" section in Infobox. We analyse sources and distinguish information based on explicit phrases. And this is what is really the consensus across wikipedia and in the music genre taskforce in particular. I assure you of this, as I have been working with articles like this for many years - although just opening an article about any genre would probably be enough to verify that.

Third, addressing the name of the genre is not serious. And this is clear to any contributor who has dealt with genres for a while. Liquid funk is definitely not a funk genre. Britpop is not pop genre, and witch house (genre) is not house. And also please, explain why you think it's a consensus or valid practice to count mentions of words in an article and draw any conclusions about whether it's a subgenre or not based on that? I probably don't need to list examples where the main inspiration for the genre is mentioned many times in the article and when the genre itself is obviously not a subtype of those? Because such examples can be found in every third genre article. There is no such practice on wikipedia and that's too would be WP:OR.

Obviously it would be wrong to ignore the straight text of the sources and make edits based on that.

The quotes like "A different kind of Jazz is still Jazz" are not really valid for wikipedia as well. You may well find quotes calling any kind of music jazz or blues. Such phrases have no factual or scholarship/musicological weight.

Grammy categories are also completely irrelevant to genre categorisation, they diverge in many cases from what wikipedia writes and sometimes appear and disappear. I myself have deleted a few made-up genres or redirects based on grammy category names in the past few years. I can't remember their names now, but back then it was a unanimous decision.

I could also give comparisons of what the original releases of the pioneers in the genre were and try to characterise what the genre has become in the 90s, citing music from like Jamiroquai as an example of who is the most mainstream representative of the genre (and who is definitely not jazz, and also most of their tracks are not funk either). But all of that would be WP:OR, which is not relevant in discussions like this.

So finally, the consensus on wikipedia is to follow reliable sources rather than speculate on them or exalt what no one has paid attention to for years. Please WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE and don't go trying to create new interpretations on the backdrop of what it doesn't explicitly said there. My edit was to remove what is not explicitly stated in the article and not explicitly stated in the sources cited. And I suggest you find direct quotes indicating that a genre is a subspecies of those, explicitly write this with the sources given in the premise and only then base categorisation on that. That is the consensus and is a policy of wikipedia. The returning categories, however, is the return of original research that has not been fixed for years.

I already found one source stating that acid jazz is a "dance style". And based on that, I added Category:Dance music genres a few years ago. The source is Allmusic. To confirm jazz/funk categories you need exactly the same or better explicit wording. And once again I'll point out that "raised on", "closer to", "allied it with" does not mean it to be a subgenre of them, but indicates that the genre was inspired by, has its origins in, or is simply related to them. Thanks for reading this :) Solidest (talk) 17:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, and for looking to hash this out here instead of in edits. I have several rebuttals and will need to re-source cites which I only have in memory at the moment in order to do so, and to make appropriate updates in conjunction with. That is going to require a good investment in time - which I probably will not get to before this coming weekend, but I will address it as soon as I get those blocks of time. Thanks... --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 14:06, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, volume 11, covers acid jazz on pages 15–16. They say that acid jazz is less a music genre and more a "meta-genre" containing several difference styles of music. The main parts are late 1960s post-bop, 1970s utopian psychedelic jazz, and treading a wider path in the 1980s, including singing and rapping over samples along with jazz rap. Then there was a big change introduced around 1987 by DJ Chris Bangs and Gilles Peterson in the London club scene, creating jazzy dance music for a whiter crowd. This later acid jazz pulled from a wide array of musical sources, but its associated scene had a "regulation" fashion sense based on faded Levi's trousers.

We on Wikipedia are saddled with telling the reader about four or so different kinds of acid jazz, some of which will contradict the other in terms of categories. The funk category doesn't always apply, for example. We should not be planting a flag into one of the styles and saying that this is the only true acid jazz. Binksternet (talk) 17:57, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps the early 1960s-1970s style deserves its own article (If we're talking about the same thing). Some sources call it "club jazz". Allmusic mentions this mid-1960s trend, but also writes separately about another Japanese genre, "clubjazz", which appeared in the 1990s and is based on the 1960s trend. I think I've also seen the term "jazzdance" used in this context somewhere, but not so sure. While Allmusic's printed "Electronica guide" also describes acid jazz on pages 647-649. There it is described first as a rare-groove trend referring to obscure soul-jazz / jazz-funk records. And then as a complete transformation into a separate house and hip-hop influenced genre, based on the previous trend.

But anyway, I agree with you - I think WP:CATDEF guides us to focus on the precision rather than the comprehensiveness of the "Parent_genre genres" categories. But of course we're talking about cases where sources don't explicitly call some genre a subgenre of another, but may write about key elements or influences. For example, take contemporary R&B - based on how broad the genre is, we can categorize it into "rhythm and blues genres", "pop genres", "electronic genres", "hip hop genres" and "soul genres" categories, and there will probably be sources that will call all of these genres key elements of contemporary rnb, although they probably won't claim it as a direct subgenre of any of them except the first one. There are many such examples - from my personal experience nu-disco is house music 90% of the time, but the sources don't say so directly and it is more correct to refer it to as just EDM, although the article was in the "house music genres" category for a long time. Such a categorisation may cover individual trends or releases of different periods, but would be misleading in relation to a generalised genre - the concept we describe in the article. Solidest (talk) 19:56, 13 March 2024 (UTC)