# Robert Glasper on jazz and hip-hop: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/01/07/robert-glasper-on-jazz-and-hip-hop-video-photos/
- Published: 2023-01-07T00:02:11+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**I recently stumbled across a video of pianist Robert Glasper declaring “why jazz
is the mother of hip hop” in a 2019 Jazz Night in America video. Robert Glasper 
on jazz and hip-hop.**

As far as I’m concerned, I don’t need this explanation at all. If you listen to 
the samples from DJs like Africa Bambaataa from the early hip-hop era, it’s clear
to me that jazz DNA runs in hip-hop’s veins. And it doesn’t take a look across the
pond or into the past to find the connection between hip-hop and jazz. All you have
to do is listen to young jazz drummers like Silvan Strauss. Album “Facing” by Silvan
Strauss

For a long time I’ve found it difficult to regard jazz or any other form of music
as a closed genre. The attribution of different music to fixed genres is an artificial(
not artistic) construct.

![Robert Glasper | Spotify](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab6761610000e5ebeac91c1b242fe7aff48894f5)

The limitation and attempts to legitimize jazz in contrast to popular music regularly
make me suspicious and the sniffling when it comes to hip-hop music raises a few
questions for me. Isn’t it easier to relate jazz and hip-hop, be it historically
or musically, than to distinguish them? And wouldn’t it be wiser in the constant
debate about the high average age of jazz fans to refrain from thinking in a reactionary
way?

Because if you take a realistic and contemporary look at the whole thing, you realize
that young people have jazz standards in their ears because of the hip-hop samples
and are not even aware of it. What they are aware of, however, is that MCs and DJs
are playing music for the future, constantly exaggerating themselves and mutually
increasing, thus fueling innovation in the scene and giving young people an orientation
towards the future. Rappers battle each other with virtuosity during the cypher;
Freestyle means improvisation, means innovation. And we know that from somewhere.

All of this can be acknowledged, the spirit that wafts through this music can be
bundled and the potential that lies in the innovative capacity of jazz and hip-hop
can be used to shape a beneficial future for the big picture.

![The Robert Glasper Experiment, 'Day To Day' (Live) : NPR](https://i0.wp.com/media.
npr.org/assets/img/2016/12/29/31539157132_5db27a82d1_o_wide-a7984b7aa7f2a9e302528767eb1139debe416984.
jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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