1990-1993Europe / United States

Nu Jazz

Also known as jazztronica, future jazz, electronic jazz, electro-jazz, jazz house, phusion

A concise, evidence-based update that treats nu jazz as a broad, still-loose umbrella for jazz-electronic crossover scenes rather than a single tightly bounded school.

Origins and context

Documented accounts describe nu jazz as emerging in the early 1990s from the overlap of jazz with electronic music and club culture, with especially visible activity in European scenes and parallel developments in several other countries.

EuropeUnited StatesUnited KingdomJapan

The sound

Instrument palette

The voices and tools most associated with this sound.

Jazz instrumentation
Turntables
Samples
Drum programming
Synthesizers
Electric bass
Horns

Characteristics

Fusion of acoustic and electronic approaches
Club-oriented grooves
Room for improvisation
Broken-beat, house, downtempo, or dub influences

History

Nu jazz took shape in the 1990s, when producers and bandleaders started pushing jazz toward electronic dance music rather than treating it as a separate tradition. Encyclopedic sources trace its cultural origins to the early 1990s across the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Norway, Mexico, and Brazil, while acid jazz and jazz fusion form important roots. A lot of the style’s early momentum came from European club culture and artist collectives that were equally comfortable with turntables, samples, and live horns. Jazzanova’s own history shows how the label became a practical working language rather than a fixed school: the Berlin collective formed in 1995, and their early releases and remixes moved through jazz, soul, funk, disco, and Latin touchstones. St Germain’s 1990s and 2000s work likewise helped define the sound for a wider audience by folding deep house and acid jazz into spacious, jazz-inflected grooves.