Musical subculture of the late 1980s and 90s. Acid jazz is largely a fusion of black American musical styles such as funk, soul and hip-hop combined with a visual aesthetic which borrows extensively from both British popular culture of the 1960s and black American street style of the 70s. Fundamentally a form of street style, it combined music, fashion and recreational drug use to create an ‘attitude’ that owed much to the beatniks of the 1960s (hence ‘jazz’) and a nostalgia for the 1960s and 70s, regarded as a time when musicianship was vital to good dance music as opposed to the more contemporary technological emphasis. The term covers a wide range of musical styles, from the electronic disco styling of bands such as Jamiroquai and Brand New Heavies to the Santana-inspired funk rock of Mother Earth and the Mendez Report. The common denominator is usually the influence of funk, drawing on syncopated rhythmic interplay between the instruments and the use of chromatic chord sequences used widely in post-bop jazz but rarely in mainstream pop or dance music.
As many of the first acid jazz groups took their inspiration from funk and jazz artists of 20 years previously, they tended to eschew the modern techniques of sequencing and sampling in order to replicate the sound of their predecessors as faithfully as possible. This ‘retro’ approach can be heard in recordings such as Dad Man Cat by Corduroy and Mission Impossible by the James Taylor Quartet, both on the Acid Jazz label. They also highlight the influence of film composers such as John Barry and Lalo Schifrin. Later bands such as Freak Power and Goldbug made use of digital technology in sampling extracts from vintage soul and funk records to create a more contemporary sound from old material. This ‘cut-and-paste’ approach to composition owed much to the techniques of the hip hop artists such as the Sugar Hill Gang and Digital Underground, and is also prominent in several acid jazz bands, such as Galliano and Urban Species.