Egon continues his Funk Archeology series at RBMA, with a look at modal jazz this month.
Over at RBMA, they’ve been running a series called Funk Archaeology where former Stones Throw label manager Egon has been digging through the expansive world of music, from Russian funk to obscure vinyl in New York. This time around, Egon discusses modal jazz and how it’s becoming increasingly popular amongst record collectors at the moment.
It wasn’t so long ago that, outside of select circles in San Francisco and London, the discussion of modal jazz was either relegated to the perfunctory music course at your local liberal arts college or nestled within the quaint circle of the white-bearded record collecting crowd. Modal refers to the mode, or scale, that the musicians improvise within – as opposed to “traditional” jazz where the improvisation occurs over a prescribed set of chord changes. (Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme are prime examples.) – Egon
Modal jazz might be a hard musical pill for some listeners to swallow but once you get your ears around the unusual chords, it’s a wonderful subsection of jazz.