Jazz House

United States · 1990s

Dancing Chill Happy Romantic Sentimental

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Description

Jazz house is a strand of house music that blends the genre’s four-on-the-floor pulse with the harmony, instrumentation, and improvisational ethos of jazz. Typical tracks feature swung hi‑hats, syncopated percussion, and a steady 4/4 kick at moderate club tempos, while layering lush extended chords (7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths), walking or syncopated bass lines, and motifs inspired by bebop, soul jazz, and jazz‑funk.

Producers often sample classic jazz recordings or record live parts—Rhodes and acoustic piano, upright or electric bass, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, vibraphone, and Hammond organ—then arrange them in house song forms with breakdowns, solos, and call‑and‑response figures. The result is music that can be both dancer‑friendly and musically rich, sitting at the intersection of deep house, acid jazz, and soulful club music.

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Influenced by

House

House is a dance music genre that emerged in Chicago in the early 1980s, defined by a steady four-on-the-floor kick drum, off-beat hi-hats, soulful or hypnotic vocals, and groove-centric basslines. Typical tempos range from 118–130 BPM, and tracks are structured in DJ-friendly 16–32 bar phrases designed for seamless mixing. Drawing on disco’s celebratory spirit, electro-funk’s drum-machine rigor, and Italo/Hi-NRG’s synth-led sheen, house prioritizes repetition, tension-and-release, and communal energy on the dancefloor. Its sound palette often includes 808/909 drums, sampled or replayed disco/funk elements, filtered loops, piano/organ stabs, and warm, jazzy chords. Over time, house diversified into many substyles—deep house, acid house, French house, tech house, progressive house, and more—yet it remains a global foundation of club culture, known for emphasizing groove, inclusivity, and euphoria.

Deep House

Deep house is a subgenre of house music characterized by warm, soulful textures, jazz-influenced harmony, and understated, hypnotic grooves. It typically runs around 115–124 BPM, favoring subtle swing, syncopated percussion, and rounded, mellow basslines over aggressive peaks. Sonically, deep house draws on extended chords (7ths, 9ths, 11ths), Rhodes and M1 organ timbres, airy pads, and tasteful use of reverb and delay to create a spacious, emotive atmosphere. Vocals, when present, often reference soul and gospel traditions, delivering intimate, reflective themes rather than big-room hooks. The style emerged in the mid-to-late 1980s as producers fused Chicago house rhythms with jazz-funk, soul, and garage house sensibilities, resulting in a smoother, deeper take on the house blueprint.

Jazz

Jazz is an improvisation-centered music tradition that emerged from African American communities in the early 20th century. It blends blues feeling, ragtime syncopation, European harmonic practice, and brass band instrumentation into a flexible, conversational art. Defining features include swing rhythm (a triplet-based pulse), call-and-response phrasing, blue notes, and extended harmonies built on 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. Jazz is as much a way of making music—spontaneous interaction, variation, and personal sound—as it is a set of forms and tunes. Across its history, jazz has continually hybridized, from New Orleans ensembles and big-band swing to bebop, cool and hard bop, modal and free jazz, fusion, and contemporary cross-genre experiments. Its influence permeates global popular and art music.

Acid Jazz

Acid jazz is a groove-focused fusion that blends the rhythmic drive of 1970s funk and soul with jazz harmony, improvisation, and DJ culture. Emerging from the UK club scene in the late 1980s, it revived crate-dug "rare groove" aesthetics and reintroduced live instrumentation—Hammond organ, Rhodes, horns, and tight rhythm sections—into contemporary dance music. Stylistically, acid jazz favors mid-tempo, syncopated rhythms, vamp-based structures, extended chords, and concise solos, often paired with warm, analog-leaning production. It sits between dancefloor energy and lounge sophistication, bridging DJs, bands, and studio producers while maintaining a polished, urban, and feel-good mood.

Disco

Disco is a dance-focused style of popular music that emerged in early-1970s urban nightlife, especially in New York City and Philadelphia. It is defined by a steady four-on-the-floor kick drum, syncopated hi-hats and handclaps, octave-jumping basslines, lush string and horn arrangements, and a glamorous, celebratory sensibility. Built for DJs and clubs, disco favored extended 12-inch mixes with breakdowns and build-ups that kept dancefloors moving. The sound drew from soul, funk, and Latin music, embraced orchestral textures, and became a cultural movement associated with Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities before crossing over to mainstream pop by the late 1970s.

Soul

Soul is a genre of popular music that blends the spiritual fervor and vocal techniques of African‑American gospel with the grooves and song forms of rhythm & blues and the harmonic palette of jazz and blues. It is defined by impassioned, melismatic lead vocals; call‑and‑response with backing singers; handclaps and a strong backbeat; syncopated bass lines; and memorable horn or string riffs. Typical instrumentation includes drum kit, electric bass, electric guitar, piano or Hammond organ, horns (trumpet, saxophone, trombone), and sometimes orchestral strings. Lyrically, soul ranges from love and heartbreak to pride, social commentary, and spiritual yearning. Regionally distinct scenes—such as Detroit’s Motown, Memphis/Stax, Muscle Shoals, Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia—shaped different flavors of soul, while the style’s emotional directness and rhythmic drive made it a cornerstone of later funk, disco, contemporary R&B, and hip hop.

Funk

Funk is a rhythm-forward African American popular music style that centers on groove, syncopation, and interlocking parts. Rather than emphasizing complex chord progressions, funk builds tight, repetitive vamps that highlight the rhythm section and create an irresistible dance feel. The genre is marked by syncopated drum patterns, melodic yet percussive bass lines, choppy guitar "chanks," punchy horn stabs, call‑and‑response vocals, and a strong backbeat. Funk’s stripped-down harmony, prominent use of the one (accenting the downbeat), and polyrhythmic layering draw deeply from soul, rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel, and African rhythmic traditions. From James Brown’s late-1960s innovations through the expansive P-Funk universe and the slicker sounds of the 1970s and 1980s, funk has continually evolved while seeding countless other genres, from disco and hip hop to house and modern R&B.

Chicago House

Chicago house is the foundational style of house music that emerged from Chicago’s Black and Latino club scene in the early-to-mid 1980s. Rooted in disco’s four-on-the-floor pulse but stripped-down and made more hypnotic, it emphasizes drum-machine grooves, looping basslines, piano/organ stabs, and soulful or gospel-inflected vocals. Characterized by jacking rhythms, raw drum programming (often TR-808/TR-909), and DJ-centric arrangements with long intros and outros, Chicago house balances machine precision with human feel. Compared to New York garage, it tends to be more minimal, tougher, and more repetitive, with an emphasis on dancefloor functionality and ecstatic release.

Garage House

Garage house (often called US garage or New York/New Jersey garage) is a soulful, vocal-driven strain of house music that coalesced around the Paradise Garage in New York and the Zanzibar in Newark in the mid-to-late 1980s. It blends the four-on-the-floor pulse of early house with the lush orchestration and harmonies of disco, boogie, Philly soul, gospel, and contemporary R&B. Typical tracks feature warm chords (piano, Rhodes, or the Korg M1 organ), call-and-response vocals, syncopated basslines, shuffling hi-hats, and rich, uplifting arrangements designed for extended club mixes. Where Chicago house often emphasized minimal drum-machine jack tracks, garage house foregrounded songcraft—hooks, bridges, key changes, and church-influenced vocal performances—giving the genre a deeply emotive, dancefloor-focused character.

Jazz-Funk

Jazz-funk is a groove-forward hybrid of jazz improvisation and harmony with the rhythmic drive and backbeat of funk. It features syncopated basslines, crisp drum patterns, and tight horn or keyboard riffs, often organized around vamping two- or four-bar progressions rather than complex chord changes. The sound is defined by electric instruments—Fender Rhodes, Clavinet, analog and early digital synthesizers, electric bass, and wah-inflected guitar—alongside punchy horn sections and extended solos. Compared to traditional jazz, the harmonic language is leaner but still rich, emphasizing 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, and modal centers (especially Dorian). The music aims for deep, danceable pocket, slick production, and a soulful, urban feel.

Has influenced

Nu Jazz

Nu jazz is a late-1990s movement that blends contemporary electronic production with the improvisational language and harmony of jazz. It keeps jazz’s extended chords, modal colors, and live soloing, but places them over programmed beats, sampled textures, and synth-driven arrangements. Typical tracks feature warm Rhodes or piano voicings, roomy horns, and deep bass sitting alongside house, broken beat, or downtempo grooves. The result is music that feels both club-ready and listening-focused, bridging intimate jazz sensibilities with modern electronic sound design.

Lounge

Lounge is a mid-20th-century style of easy listening that blends jazz harmony, light orchestral arranging, and Latin/exotica rhythms into suave, unobtrusive music designed for relaxation and sophisticated ambience. Typically associated with cocktail lounges, tiki bars, and the hi‑fi/stereo boom, it emphasizes lush strings, vibraphone and marimba timbres, brushed drums, gentle horns, and occasional wordless vocals or whistling. Melodies are memorable yet restrained, arrangements are polished, and production often highlights spacious reverbs and playful stereo effects. A 1990s revival reframed lounge as retro‑chic, intersecting with downtempo, chillout, and nu‑jazz while preserving its trademark mood: warm, cosmopolitan, and stylishly relaxed.

Funky House

Funky house is an upbeat, feel‑good strain of house music that blends the four‑on‑the‑floor pulse with the grooves, instrumentation, and harmony of 1970s/80s disco, funk, and soul. It typically features syncopated basslines (often live or sampled), bright piano or Rhodes stabs, wah‑wah or Nile Rodgers‑style guitar comping, horn and string hits, and soulful, song‑centric vocals. The production emphasizes a steady 120–128 BPM rhythm, swung hi‑hats, and crisp claps on beats 2 and 4, with tasteful filtering and sidechain compression to make basslines and chords pump against the kick. Stylistically, it sits between disco house and soulful/vocal house, aiming squarely at dancefloors while retaining pop‑friendly musicality.

Electro Swing

Electro swing fuses the timbres and rhythms of 1920s–1940s swing and big band jazz with modern electronic dance production. Producers sample or recreate vintage horn sections, clarinets, crooner vocals, and walking bass lines, then place them over four‑on‑the‑floor house grooves, syncopated breakbeats, and punchy electronic bass. Typical tempos sit around 110–128 BPM, with swung/shuffle hi‑hats, call‑and‑response horn riffs, and jazz harmony (ii–V–I cadences, extended 7ths/9ths/13ths). Vocals range from retro scat and cabaret‑style singing to contemporary rap or chopped vocal hooks. The result is a playful, dance‑forward sound that feels both nostalgic and fresh: gramophone grit and brass flair meeting club‑ready drums, sidechain swells, and modern sound design.

Organic House

Organic house is a warm, earthy branch of house music that blends the steady pulse of club rhythms with acoustic timbres, hand-played percussion, and natural ambience. Instead of hard-edged synths and aggressive drops, it favors wood, skin, breath, and strings—think bongos, kalimba, nylon‑string guitar, ney and bansuri flutes, hang drum, and gentle field recordings. Typically cruising between 110–122 BPM, it keeps a 4/4 foundation while using lightly swung grooves, intricate shaker patterns, and softly saturated textures. Melodies often draw on modal and folk traditions (Dorian, Phrygian, pentatonic), creating a contemplative, nomadic feel. The result is dance music that is intimate, human, and cinematic—equally at home on a sunlit dance floor or a deep-listening session.

French House

French house, often called the "French touch," is a sample-centric substyle of house music known for filtering and looping fragments of 1970s–1980s disco, boogie, and funk. It features a steady four-on-the-floor kick, syncopated and swung hi-hats, punchy sampled basslines, and a distinctive "pumping" feel created by heavy sidechain compression. Production commonly emphasizes warm, saturated textures and filter sweeps—automated low‑pass and high‑pass filters that open and close across loops—to create tension and release on the dancefloor. Vocoder or talkbox-tinted vocals, brief earworm hooks, and concise, groove-first arrangements are typical, with tempos usually between 120–128 BPM. The sound is closely associated with Parisian labels and crews from the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s, and it helped re-popularize disco aesthetics within contemporary dance music.

Broken Beat

Broken beat (often shortened to "bruk") is a rhythm-forward, jazz- and funk-inflected style of club music that emerged from West London. Its defining feature is a heavily syncopated, off‑kilter drum feel that fractures straight 4/4 time without abandoning dance‑floor energy. Producers combine swung, jittery percussion with warm, soulful chords, boogie/funk basslines, and frequent live instrumentation. The harmony language often borrows from jazz (extended chords, rich voicings), while the groove draws from house, drum & bass, UK garage, hip hop, and boogie. Typical tempos sit around 118–130 BPM, with pronounced swing and micro‑timing that create a lurching, propulsive pulse.

Vocal House

Vocal house is a soulful, song‑forward branch of house music built around prominent lead vocals, memorable hooks, and uplifting messages. It retains the four‑on‑the‑floor pulse of classic house while foregrounding singers in a way that invites sing‑along choruses and radio crossover. The style blends Chicago/NYC house drum programming with disco’s feel‑good ethos, R&B and gospel‑influenced harmonies, and piano/organ chords. Typical productions feature steady 4/4 kicks, syncopated hi‑hats, bouncing basslines, Korg M1 pianos or organs, lush pads, and expansive reverb and delay on the vocals. Lyrical themes often center on love, resilience, community, and dancefloor catharsis.

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