acid jazz
A genre blending jazz, funk, soul, and electronic dance music that emerged in London in the late 1980s.
In Depth
Acid jazz combined the improvisation and instrumentation of jazz with the rhythms of house music and the grooves of 1970s funk. Bands like Jamiroquai, Brand New Heavies, and the James Taylor Quartet mixed live instruments with sampled beats and club-friendly tempos. DJs like Gilles Peterson championed the genre by mixing jazz records in club settings. Acid jazz briefly bridged the gap between jazz purism and dance culture before fragmenting into nu-jazz and other offshoots.
The name acid jazz was coined as a tongue-in-cheek response to acid house; it had nothing to do with psychedelic drugs but everything to do with London club culture's ironic wit.