Compliments of KTNT, Oklahoma City's Smooth Jazz Authority


When i say Smooth Jazz you think Kenny G. Sure, but what actually is Smooth Jazz? Well, historically speaking it's the soft, polished, mass-market Muzak form of Jazz Fusion that rose to prominence in the 80s and 90s. It's Adult Contemporary Jazz, so meticulously designed to be inoffensively non-confrontational that it was simply called "smooth radio" in the 70s. Which of course means that by the 90s it was so aurally offensive as to be a joke. 

For our purposes, let's say it's the melding of Jazz, Light Funk, R&B, and Pop into the audio equivalent of shea butter based moisturizing skin cream. Shea butter is totally edible, so we're going to suspend any trepidations and proceed without any cultural assumptions at all. Well, maybe a couple. It will be groove based, rather than impovisation driven. It will be sappy, but we're going to think of it in terms of Marty Friedman's crossover into New Age. Last, we will accept that sounding like the mainstream, acceptable version of sensual is the goal. We're not traveling in blind, though. We're going to take the trail marked on your father's map, and even if we emerge sixpence none the richer, at least we should still have all our appendages. So join me in a little adventure i'm calling Compliments of KTNT, Oklahoma City's Smooth Jazz Authority.

Part 1

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