Cyber jazz

Cyber Jazz is a genre of jazz that appeared in the 1980s, in a postpunk context. The sound of this apocalyptic (or apocalypso) futurist jazz can be described as a mix of Cybernetic drone sounds and some technique from jazz improvisation.
Science fiction movies influence
Influenced by the cyber punk culture, a kind of art and social movement that was spread by the cult around movies like Blade Runner (1982), adapted from the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), or Crash, a 1973 novel by J. G. Ballard, adapted to film in 1996 by the director David Cronenberg, the cyber jazz expresses a will of freedom in a post-industrial world that want to be primitive again. But a different kind of primitivist, with values like nihilism, individualism and spiritual connection with the universe, through the use and consequently destruction of technological tools, like self adapted musical instruments.
Japanese influence
The accelerated growth of the Japanese technological society (since the 1980s until now) and their Sadomasochist and futuristic fantasy art, expressed in Anime and Manga comic books like Akira or in movies like Tetsuo: The Iron Man is the mote to the cyberpunk culture, that influenced Europe and the world with bands likeFushitsusha, Acid Mothers Temple, Hijokaidan, Hanatarash, Ruins, Boredoms and musician like Keiji Haino, Yamantaka Eye or merzbow that became the big figures of the present japanoise movement. This bands did their influence in Occident improvised music and helped too contribute to new genres like Glish jazz, Jazztronic or Cyber jazz
Cyber jazz bands and musicians
Although jazz and electronics have been mixed since the end of the 1960s, the term cyber jazz came to be used near the end of the 20th century, especially in the European avant-garde jazz scene. The Portuguese duo Telectu, which was active since 1982, was one of the bands that collaborated with cyber jazz musicians in Europe, they started to create minimalistic music in the 1980s, and in big part of their concerts they invited another avant-garde jazz musicians to play live with them, like Eddie Prévost, Elliot Sharp, Chris Cutler, Sunny Murray or the French trumpet player Jac Berrocal, that lastly have been collaborating with the Japanese electronic musician Aki Onda. In the new century Cyber jazz is too much more about electronic music, but not just music, video art too, improvisation with cross arts. DJ Olive or the luso-French duo La Main Traumatique are another example of contemporary Cyber jazz. Although the term is losing his meaning and nowadays another term is getting more in use, the free improvisation.
Jazz-Off
Jorge Lima Barreto, the keyboardist, pianist and musicologue from the Portuguese duo Telectu wrote a book called jazz-off, a book about the jazz history, but this term "jazz off" invented by him, started to be used in the circuit around Telectu to refer sometimes the genre Cyber Jazz.
Cyber Jazz and net Art nowadays
With the developing of internet, all that world of scientific fiction explored by artists since the 1950s became true. Reality nowadays is a complicated term, the World Wide Web makes part of our life, and is not fiction, is another way of being in connection with the reality, and through internet we share files and we make art. This new genre of art normally called net art is explored in music too, Cyber Jazz nowadays can be made with musicians playing (improvising) with microphones connected to the internet(in conference) with another musicians from different part of the world playing and listening to each other in real time. This can be called cyber conference art and can be seen as a development of the e-mail art

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu