Today’s music scene is deeply rooted in electronic production, however, one may clearly see jazz being a predominant influence in this type of production. Despite the fact that this style is deeply rooted in the underground scene (another instance of jazz always emerging from the underground), there are excellent examples of jazz influences found in the mainstream scene. Gramatik’s “Late Night Jazz” starts off with a ambient hip-hop infused beat, but ends up introducing a saxophone exploding with jazz chords throughout the whole song. Masego & Medasin’ PinkPoloEP also combines “trap” music with loads of bass and synths, but the jazziness comes from Masego’s sax playing. In “Sego Hotline”, Masego even takes a crack at scat singing.

It’s not just the sax that you can find in these electronically produced songs, numerous producers blend jazz with anything they can find. In “Crush” by Maxo, the Brooklyn-based producer successfully blends free jazz sounds with the type of music one would expect to hear coming out of a Super Nintendo game. Brasstracks layers dance music with brass instruments and live drums. GEOTHEORY injects jazz chords along with sampling the video game, Gran Turismo, in “Gran Tursimo (Prologue)”.

Probably the best example of the influence jazz has in electronic music, is the emerging popularity of the California-based record label SOULECTION. The label constantly puts forth music that takes influences from jazz, RnB, disco, house & hip-hop that they whisk together into an omelet that they call, “The Sound of Tomorrow”. One of their most recent releases, Love is King, is a compilation album all based around samples from smooth jazz & RnB singer Sade.