Why the 1980s?

This post is by Dan

Why the 1980s?

This history of jazz is long, and no one has lived through all of it. Focus on the 1980s allows us to share direct experience of a decade in which the music known as jazz diverged from a progression through a sequence of styles to become postmodern by simultaneously drawing from older styles while grounding the art in new sources of inspiration. According to British jazz critic, Stuart Nicholson: “Postmodernism has meant the essentially teleological model of jazz evolution ended in the Eighties, although no one realised it at the time. Today, jazz comprises a myriad of highly individual interpretations drawing on a variety of sources, often beyond the music” (Nicholson, 1999).

The tendency among some critics, including Nicholson (1990), is to treat the 1980s as a “resurgence” of styles that were suspended between the late 1960s and 1980. In the simple narrative, jazz abandoned the rules operative in its peak years (roughly 1950-1965) in order to regain more popularity among music fans who had left jazz for progressive rock, post-Beatles. In the more pernicious narrative, jazz “sold out” by creating jazz-rock “fusion” such as the quartet led by vibist Gary Burton featuring the rock-influenced electric guitar of Larry Coryell.

In response to such departures from the tradition, as the narrative goes, neo-traditionalists led by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis restored jazz’s abandoned legacy. By going back to styles rooted in acoustic instruments playing be-bop and standards, this resurgence returned jazz to its core values and strengths and gained a new level of popularity among listeners. 

Fans like us who lived through these decades can easily spot the flaws in the simple narrative. 

First, jazz in the late 1960s and 1970s did NOT abandon its traditional forms or sacrifice any of its appeal to those who cared to listen. To the contrary, jazz of the late 1960s and 1970s maintained the high level of innovation and artistic quality that has always been its hallmark. Scott Mortensen’s Playing Favorites blog pays due respect to the jazz of the 1970s and serves to debunk the notion that jazz needed a resurgence after that decade. What more likely happened leading up to the 1980s was a change in the business side of jazz, which offered musicians fewer opportunities for recording and performance. But the musicians did not disappear, and they never have during the many economic ups and downs that have always affected access to jazz.

Second, the jazz-rock and fusion experiments did not vanish in the 1980s but rather remained as foundational principle for many leading jazz artists today. Guitarists Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny are prime examples of artists who emerged during the so-called resurgence but who also capitalized on the expanding vocabulary and made it “mainstream” today, 40 years later. If anything, jazz became more diverse in the 1980s. According to British critics Brian Morton and Richard Cook: “Jazz fragmented in the ‘80s, often creatively, sometimes confusingly, but always to someone’s advantage. It became, before the term had been coined, a world music” (2010, p. 463). Our aim is to revisit the 1980s with the purpose of revealing the diverse threads of a rich tapestry of musical styles that contribute to advance jazz’s status as a global creative art form. 

A key development that influenced jazz in the 1980s was the creation of digital music in the form of compact discs (CDs) and downloads from the Internet. This resulted in major consequences, including the issuing of back catalogs of major labels in a convenient format and the wider distribution of music through legal and illegal copying. These technical developments coincided with shifts making jazz more international and eclectic. Jazz absorbed a variety of styles and musicians not based in the United States. In particular, European artists became prominent not just as practitioners of the American art form but also innovators in their own right. Independent jazz labels in Europe became a reliable outlet for American musicians and helped European players to achieve international reputations.

We hope that our blog reflects the diversity of jazz as it was recorded during the 1980s decade. Comments are always welcome!

Cited reference material:

Morton, Brian & Cook, Richard. The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1001 Best Albums, London: Penguin Books, 2010.

Nicholson, Stuart. Jazz: The Modern Resurgence, London: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Nicholson, Stuart “Everyone his own leader in postmodern jazz,” Independent, 1999). https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/everyone-his-own-leader-in-postmodern-jazz-743837.html