Genres
An energetic, groove-centered variant of jazz for a generation of club-oriented youth, acid jazz as a style originated in London during the mid-1980s, fostered by rare-groove DJs who spun their favorite records.
Trip-hop was coined by the English music press in an attempt to characterize a new style of downtempo, jazz-, funk-, and soul-inflected experimental breakbeat music that began to emerge around 1993.
Easy listening is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, and popular non-rock vocals.
Lounge refers to a strain of easy listening music from the '50s and '60s that was based on the lush styles of latter-day swing and big band music.
Unlike many popular genres at the time, funk put more emphasis on the rhythm and groove resulting from the interplay between bass and drums than on the melody, chord progressions, or arrangements often found in genres reliant on guitar, piano, and vocals.
During the first part of the '60s, soul music remained close to its R&B roots. However, musicians pushed the music in different directions; usually, different regions of America produced different kinds of soul.
Jazz-Rap was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter.
Nu jazz grew out of the combined influences of Jon Hassell's Kiranic trumpet playing and "fourth world" rhythms, Miles Davis' soft tone and use of ambience on In a Silent Way, and the early 90s intersection of jazz and electronica, particularly trip-hop, dub, and downtempo.