Punk Jazz

Punk jazz is the collision of jazz improvisation and harmony with the speed, volume and abrasion of punk and hardcore. The label circulated after *Jaco Pastorius* titled a *Weather Report* piece "Punk Jazz" in 1978, and critics applied it to New York's no wave and downtown scenes, where *James Chance and the Contortions*, the *Lounge Lizards* and *Defunkt* fused free jazz with funk and punk attack. Its players keep extended harmony and spontaneous invention but strip away polish: short, violent pieces, distorted bass and drumming played like an assault rather than an accompaniment.