Acid Jazz

Acid jazz (also known as groove jazz in the U.S.) is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop, particularly looped beats. It developed in the U.K. over the 1980s and 1990s, and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance/pop music. Acid jazz has also experienced minor influences from soul music, house music and disco.

While acid jazz often contains various types of electronic composition (sometimes including sampling or live DJ cutting and scratching), it is just as likely to be played live by musicians, who often showcase jazz interpretation as part of their performance. The compositions of groups such as Jamiroquai, The Brand New Heavies and Incognito often feature chord structures usually associated with jazz music. The Heavies, in particular, were known in their early years for beginning their songs as catchy pop and rapidly steering them into jazz territory before "resolving" the composition, thus not losing any pop listeners but successfully "exposing" them to jazz elements in "baby steps".

The acid jazz movement is also seen as a revival of jazz-funk or jazz fusion or soul jazz by leading DJs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge, also known as "rare groove crate diggers" or "Cataroos".

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Acid jazz".