ABSTRACT
By the end of the 1990s, almost unnoticed and largely unreported, the sound of jazz at the margins of the mainstream had begun to change. Initially, what began as a trickle had become, if not a flood, then a small but noticeable flow of ensembles that included a musician handling 'electronics' in their lineup. Albums began appearing with credits for mysterious tasks such as 'sequencing', 'programming', 'sampling', 'DJ', or 'electronics'. But, as a technologically adept generation of jazz musicians, raised on home computers and video games, began to explore the new music software programs and the latest DJ equipment, they realized these tools had the potential to mold and shape sound, and recontextualize jazz within the jumpy, nervous, scary twenty-first century. The impact of science and technology on our existence is no longer a whimsical excursion into science fiction.
