Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented style crossover jazz music. Although often described as a “genre,” it remains a debated and sometimes controversial topic among jazz musicians and critics. As a radio format, however, smooth jazz radio became the successor to easy listening music on radio station programming from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s.
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👉 Smooth jazz in the context of Clannad
Clannad (Irish pronunciation: [ˈklˠan̪ˠəd̪ˠ]) were an Irish band formed in 1970 in Gweedore, County Donegal, by siblings Ciarán, Pól and Máire (Moya) Uí Bhraonáin (in English, Brennan) and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Ó Dúgáin (Duggan). They have adopted various musical styles throughout their history. Beginning as an acoustic folk group mainly performing rearranged traditional Irish songs in Irish, they expanded their sound with original songs in English, vocal harmonies, electronic keyboards, and elements of rock, Celtic, new age, smooth jazz, and Gregorian chant.
Initially known as Clann as Dobhar ('Family from Dore'), they shortened their name to Clannad in 1973. By 1979 they had released three albums and toured Europe and the US. From 1980 to 1982 they operated as a six-piece with their sister and niece Eithne (Enya). In 1982, they gained international attention with their single "Theme from Harry's Game". They experimented with new age and pop-influenced sounds in the 1980s and 1990s and their music came to be defined as almost purely Celtic, making them innovators of that genre. In 1997, after 15 albums, they took a break and pursued solo projects. The band regrouped in 2007 as a four-piece with Moya (who adopted that spelling instead of Máire in 2002), Ciarán, Noel, and Pádraig and completed a world tour in 2008. In 2013, Pól rejoined and they released their first studio album in fifteen years. Pádraig Duggan died in 2016. The remaining group embarked on their farewell tour in 2020 as a quartet.
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Smooth jazz in the context of Vaporwave
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, an Internet aesthetic and meme that emerged in the late 2000s-early 2010s and became well known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator music, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s, similar to synthwave. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates 1990s Web design and imagery, glitch art, anime, stylized Ancient Greek or Roman sculptures, Memphis Design geometric shapes, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.
Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of chillwave, evolving from hypnagogic pop as well as similar retro-revivalist and post-Internet motifs that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the era, such as Tumblr's seapunk. The style was pioneered by producers such as James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Ramona Langley, who each used various pseudonyms. In 2010, Lopatin would release the influential cassette tape Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, which was later followed by Ferraro's Far Side Virtual. After Langley's album Floral Shoppe (2011) established a blueprint for the genre, the movement built an audience on sites such as Last.fm, Reddit and 4chan while a flood of new acts, also operating under online pseudonyms, turned to Bandcamp for distribution.