Jazz Is Dead

The cratedigger-as-curator has been a vital presence in both jazz and hip-hop for multiple generations now. And reps from two of those generations — ‘90s-rooted golden era DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and slightly-younger 2010s-breakout arranger/beatmaker Adrian Younge — pooled their exhaustive ‘70s-baby knowledge and resources to establish one of the last decade’s most successful preservationist/revivalist projects. Naturally, they called it Jazz Is Dead — a pre-emptive sarcastic riposte to the old sentiment that was proving to be increasingly misguided throughout a decade marked by a niche-yet-rich resurgence in the form. With Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and Jeff Parker at the forefront of a revival, it only made sense for their contemporaries to reach out to their predecessors.

As captured in the first release, the proof-of-concept comp Jazz Is Dead 001, it started as a sort of all-star jam session — a series of gigs with veteran players and composers of jazz and MPB, recorded at Younge’s Los Angeles’s studio Linear Labs. If it had only been a one-off, it would still be a remarkable document: Younge and Muhammad’s band The Midnight Hour concocted a series of brief yet expressive pieces for soul-jazz greats like Roy Ayers, Brian Jackson, Gary Bartz, and Doug Carn to add their signatures to — as well as a wild, not-so-brief rave-up with Brazilian samba-jazz-funk outfit Azymuth. Soon, the Jazz Is Dead series would release album-length sessions from these collaborations — as well as MPB artists Marcos Valle and João Donato — with the dual purpose of both giving veteran artists their due, and maintaining their connection to the contemporary jazz scene as it found a renewed young spirit. 

But these releases, while true to the roots of peak ‘60s-‘80s soul, jazz, funk, fusion, and MPB, wouldn’t just stop there. There are 26 entries in the series so far — Jazz Is Dead 027, featuring lifer samba musicians/songwriters Joyce and Tutty Moreno, drops in August ‘26 — and they all fit a strict release pattern that could be compared to a season of programming: one best-of preview, seven sessions with a single artist or group, a compilation of instrumentals from the sessions, and with every tenth release, a collection of remixes by instrumentalists and beatmakers with their own contemporary hip-hop and soul-jazz ties. Cassette-only mixtapes, compiled by Beat Junkies member J. Rocc for Series 1 and Japanese “King of Digging” DJ Muro for Series 2, have also been released in limited runs.

If that all sounds a bit boutique, maybe it is; we’re talking about a smartly-branded and consistently-working indie label project, and it’s calibrated to appeal to the kinds of people who romanticize the international pursuit of rare and underheard vinyl. But the craft is the point, and Jazz Is Dead is dedicated above everything else to making sure the names Younge and Muhammad remembered from their own formative record store-raiding years are done justice by more than just a long itinerary of sample credits. The name inspires the no it’s not retort; the releases prove it.

Nate Patrin