The origin of the word “jazz” has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to “jasm”, a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning “pep, energy”. The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a “jazz ball” “because it wobbles and you simply can’t do anything with it”.

We have immersed ourselves in this new adventure at Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival, where we had the opportunity to meet some of the best jazz artists from Los Angeles and New York, who told us their stories and secrets in our last After Movie.

Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival:

LA MODA CHANNEL team film the best music vacation ever!

Warren Hill performance at Los Cabos Jazz Festival

The legendary Warren Hill is an entrepreneur and the creator of Warren Hill’s Smooth Jazz Cruise in 2004 – the first of it’s kind. Paving the way for the music cruise industry. After selling his cruise business in 2007, he began branding his own hotel destination events with Jammin’ in Jamaica in 2009, Warren Hill’s Saxophone Summit in 2011 in Los Angeles, and most recently; the sold-out Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival. Besides being known as one of the world’s premier travel companies, Hill’s company Music Getaways is known for their “hospitality from the heart” mentality, which stems from the humble man himself, Warren Hill. If all of that isn’t enough, Warren Hill is a recording artist as well. With a prominent and impressive career thus far, including thirteen CD’s, touring with his dynamic live show to over 25 countries and selling well over a million records worldwide.

Some of the Jazz Artists we had the pleasure to meet in Los Cabos Jazz Festival was Jonathan Butler, Rick Braun, Jefrey Osborne, Marc Antonie, Jessie J, Weast Coast Jam, Sax to the Max, Lalah Hathaway, Damien Escobar, Boney James, and of course Warren Hill, put on a fantastic show at Nobu Hotel!

The full video was directed and edited by Gianmarco Boccaccio, filmmaker of LaModaChannel :

 ” Were days of many madness, 4 days, in the desert of Los Cabos. Filming under the Mexican hot sun. Nobu Hotel and the Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival team, were incredible, we worked with synergy and every day the music of the festival, it was excellent. I really think Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival is the best music getaways ever. ” – Gianmarco Boccaccio

Gianmarco Boccaccio is a Film Director & Founder of LaModaChannel. Finished his first studies, devotes part of his life producing music and Djing, experimenting techniques of editing with programs like Ableton and Logic Studio. He studied film post-production at CECC film academy in Barcelona, where he definitely has the opportunity to work in the production and post production of films and direct his first short movie “Just a Life”. In 2009 he founded LaModaChannel digital media and production company, aims to fill the communication void to take back control over the creative process focus on fashion and street cultures, with projects for brands, companies and magazines worldwide.

From LaModaChannel, it was an honor to work in Los Cabos in this incredible Video Production for Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival, we will be waiting for the next one!!

Warren Hill’s Los Cabos Jazz Festival 2020 will be moved next door in the new Hard Rock Hotel.  Don’t miss it!

About the Archive

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

What Jazz Is – and Isn’t

By Wynton Marsalis

My generation finds itself wedged between two opposing traditions. One is the tradition we know in such wonderful detail from the enormous recorded legacy that tells anyone who will listen that jazz broke the rules of European conventions and created rules of its own that were so specific, so thorough and so demanding that a great art resulted. This art has had such universal appeal and application to the expression of modern life that it has changed the conventions of American music as well as those of the world at large.

The other tradition, which was born early and stubbornly refuses to die, despite all the evidence to the contrary, regards jazz merely as a product of noble savages – music produced by untutored, unbuttoned semiliterates for whom jazz history does not exist. This myth was invented by early jazz writers who, in attempting to escape their American prejudices, turned out a whole world of new cliches based on the myth of the innate ability of early jazz musicians. Because of these writers’ lack of understanding of the mechanics of music, they thought there weren’t any mechanics. It was the ”they all can sing, they all have rhythm” syndrome. If that was the case, why was there only one Louis Armstrong?

That myth is being perpetuated to this day by those who profess an openness to everything – an openness that in effect just shows contempt for the basic values of the music and of our society. If everything is good, why should anyone subject himself to the pain of study? Their disdain for the specific knowledge that goes into jazz creation is their justification for saying that everything has its place. But their job should be to define that place – is it the toilet or the table?

To many people, any kind of popular music now can be lumped with jazz. As a result, audiences too often come to jazz with generalized misconceptions about what it is and what it is supposed to be. Too often, what is represented as jazz isn’t jazz at all. Despite attempts by writers and record companies and promoters and educators and even musicians to blur the lines for commercial purposes, rock isn’t jazz and new age isn’t jazz, and neither are pop or third stream. There may be much that is good in all of them, but they aren’t jazz.

and you, what do you think?

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Video |  JAZZ Documentary