Let's Talk Jazz

i love jazz 2 - smooth, cool music that u can just lay down & listen. what fascinates me 'bout jazz is its vocal-less nature - don't need 2 have a voice singing out d lyrics, just instruments & d harmony is absolutely divine.

my favorite jazz artistes; Najee, Pamela Williams, Miles Davids, Gerald Albright, Will Downing, Spirogyra, Charlie Wilson, Kenny G!

fav jazz albums -
Sweet Saxation - Pamela Williams
Just an illusion  - Najee
Breathless  - Kenny G

    Yeah Jazz lovaz on Nairaland ought to keep this thread alive!
 Now i'm going to list a few of my best ever jazz tracks and artistes.
        
      

Yanni-Nightingale,On Sacred ground,Playing by heart,Waltz in 7/8,Written on the wind,In the mirror,One man's dreams,Felitsa,Nostalgia,To the one who knows,Tribute,Rites of passage
Kenny G-Alone,End of the Night,Havana,Songbird,Jasmine flower,One more time,Spanish Nights
Najee-Day by day,Heart like mine,Gina,Love is in need of love today
Dave Koz-Awakenings,Cheng-Fu(conquered),I believe,Thats d way I feel about you,Together again,Careless whisper,Only tommorrow knows
Grover Washington Jnr-Black frost,Can u stop the rain,Come morning,Loran's Dance,Winelight,
Billy Vaughn-An old fashioned love song,Gypsies,thramps & thieves,Margo,Just waiting
Richard Elliott-Over the rainbow,Candlelight,On the fly.
Gerald Albright-In the mood,MY my my,Boss of Nova
 And alot more.
 Most ignoramuses say jazz should be used only as a lullaby,The paradox is that I can't even sleep when I play jazz,It keeps even my spirit awake!!
  
   This is the best thread i've encountered on Nairaland,KEEP IT ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!

 

@ Miller
  Appreciate your effort @ trying to broaden my idea of what jazz should be!Yeah Joshua Redman's okay,as for the old school guys you called,I grew up listening 2 them because those were my dad's favorites,especially John Coltrane,but you didnt call Billy Vaughn nor Herb Albert.Billy Vaughn's my best old timer,particularly his album,"An Old Fashioned Loved Song",I really want to have that album,but I can't even find it on sites like Amazon etc.I need tips on how to get it. It was released in 1972,no.6025 under Paramount Records.I ned you to solve this if you can.I'll try listening to the few of those contemporary jazz artistes you named which I havent heard! Later man.

@MAMAJAMA:
Do you mean Al Jarreau?

Diana Krall….still climbing the ladders? I go fight you o

Please let it be known that Ms Krall captivates me with her music every time unlike the favorites mentioned above (KG, Coltrane, Miles, etc)
When I heard her the first time, I wan mara…, i say who be this?

Tell me of any woman in her league that delivers the same quality of jazz music.
When she sings I envision the beauty in her soul and heart, like it beckons onto me.
Plus, she has also added a feminine warm appeal to various jazz numbers of the notables.

To top it off, she is BEAUTIFUL.
(Lord knows i get tired hearing those brothas.)

Oh, my all time favorite (eventhough tagged Afrobeat) is no other but Baba himself Eba mi da, Fela Anikulapo Kuti simply because he speaks of issues we all can identify with in Nigeria, SUFFER SUFFER, YELLOW FEVER, DEAD BODY, HUMAN RIGHTS,ETC.
(him pickin them dey try but no measure up to their papa) 

speaking of jazz songs, anybody in here who has heard this dope collabo including Zhane, Najee & Will Downing?
the songs titled "piece of me" & its an absolute stunner!

my favourite kind of muziq,

I like the godfather himself,  Louis Armstrong(Satchmo)

Jimmy Dludlu(our own African brother)

Winton Masalis

Wayman Tisdale(the NBA come Jazzist)

Earl Klugh, George Benson, Keiko Matsui,Sadao Watanabe,Rick Braun,Paul Jackson Jr,Our own Jonathan Burtler, Enya,  Bob James  etc
the list is endless

I'm quite surprised going through this thread to see that some people really don't know what jazz is.
A post mentioned ENYA? What has Enya got to do with jazz?
Najee is an instrumentalist, and does instrumentals not jazz.
If you can differentiate that from jazz, its like saying juju and fuji music are the same.
For me, the jazz bands are magical, Fourplay, Spyrogyra and even our own Jazz 38 [I hope they still do the jams at OASIS in Ikoyi on Fridays, I haven't been there since December]

Agree with u on ENYA, but NAJEE --- no way man, get your facts right --- he's Jazz; instrumentals or not!

is there any genre of music called "INSTRUMENTALISM" ?

@donjohano:
Oh, yes, my friend!  You're talking very good stuff!  Keep that coming!

@topic:
And, while we're keeping it coming, let's not be contentious about semantics.  We're jazz lovers, here, so let's play nice!

Yes, there is instrumental jazz and there is vocal jazz, just as there are instrumental and vocal variants of other genres of music.  

Let's agree to respect that there are various types of jazz (and yes, I know that, itself, opens a can of worms, so to speak, but we must not exclude what could, potentially, be beneficial to the art).

Some of the artists you people are calling "Jazz" is actually "easy listening". People like Kenny G - please!

maybe we need to actually look for a source that will tell us what jazz is all about. From my own list i gave in my oldies jazz artistes, i know in most cases the owners of the bands specialised in one instrument, use that as the lead instrument, while other instruments accompanied them and in most cases they stick to this as their symbol, they even snap pictures for their albums holding such instruments. as such:
Bob James 'was or' is a keyboard virtuoso, Grover Washington Jr is a saxophonist so also is Dave Koz et-al, our own Fela; and Tee  Mac is a flutist. Eric Gayle was a great electric guitarist, Ralph Macdonald was the greatest ppercussionistof that era, he appeared in almost all the jazz albums then. as a matter of fact there was a lot of collaboration among the artistes then. pick any album you will see most of these artistes i mentioned featuring. Ralph Macdonald even featured our own great Jimi Solanke in one his albums then . Jimi made some voice introduction in Yoruba. Also at that time Wyton Mersailis (perdon if i can't get the actual spelling of the names its been long tried out our dear talking drum in one in one of his albums.
On a lighter mood. In those good old days when we were just coming into jazz world and actually it was Grover WWashingtonwe first knew, we thought he was deaf because most of his works never had vocals

@ Ruudie
  Thanks for Disagreeing with Makin on Najee not being a jazz artiste!
@ Makin
  I think you should listen to Najee's "Heart Like Mine".When you do,you wont tell me he ain't a jazz artiste.
And do we define music by what the artiste is known for or the musical piece itself?Some songs of Yanni's like "Adagio in C Minor"and "Tribute" can be called Classical,while his "Dance with A Stranger" is undoubtedly Jazz! Some of Billy Vaughn's songs are called Easy Listening e.g "Sail Along Silvry Moon",while a whole lot of his other songs are generally accepted as Jazz.Like Miller said,Jazz is so broad,so much so that you can't really claim to define it accurately, and it just has to be dynamic,like other genres;so I don't want to hear y'all claiming that real Jazz was done only by those aged old timers!Times must, and always do change!Jazz lovers love to hate Kenny G,but I can't deny loving him for his own unique flavor,his Soprano Sax sounds lioke it was constructed for him alone!
No one has mentioned Boney James?
Abeg I no wan vex,so I no wan make another person call Enya name for here,abeg OOOh!