What is Kozmigroov?
Kozmigroov* is a transgressive improvisational music which combines elements of psychedelia, spirituality, jazz, rock, soul, funk, and African, Latin, Brazillian, Indian and Asian influences culminating into an all encompassing cosmic groove. At its most accomplished, Kozmigroov is both expansive and highly rhythmic, and simultaneously finds connections with the mind, soul and body.
Examples span:
- from the intergalactic electronic offerings of Sun Ra (arguably, the Godfather of Kozmigroov)
- to the spacejazz of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi, Crossings, Sextet
- to the transcendental jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders
- to the spiritual Afro-centric soul declarations found on the Impulse!, Strata East, BlackJazz and Tribe labels
- to the dense apocalyptic jazz-rock of the Tony Williams Lifetime, Miles' Dark Magus/Agharta/Pangaea axis, and the Last Exit quartet
- to the cosmic funk of Herbie Hancock, The Headhunters, Lonnie Liston Smith, and Charles Earland
- to the European progressive refractions captured on the MPS and ECM imprints
- to the Asian amalgams of Terumasa Hino, Masabumi Kikuchi and Shunzo Ohno
- to the pan-global fusions explored by Don Cherry, Jon Hassell and Charlie Mariano
- to the jagged free funk of Ornette Coleman's original Prime Time and its harmolodic alumni (Ronald Shannon Jackson, James Blood Ulmer)
- to a host of recent Nu-Jazz revisionary sides including Erik Truffaz, Kirk DeGiorgio, Ashley Beadle, and The Cinematic Orchestra
This site is dedicated to all of the above, in addition to the seemingly endless list of other musicians whose music resides either within or across these nominal categories. Regardless of whether it's realistic to circumscribe such diverse elements, there remains a common aesthetic at work here. Kozmigroov can be said to represent a crossbreed which arises through the breakdown of artistic boundaries and biases, a hybrid which embraces other influences and new technologies, all the while maintaining a sense of connection to the original spirit of the music.
[*respect to Jason Witherspoon for the contraction]