![]() ![]() James transferred to UCLA and graduated with a degree in history. That's when I really decided to be a musician." And I just sort of decided right then and there that, wow, this may be the direction I need to be going in, because I felt passionate about it, which I hadn't felt about anything really up to that point. and lights and an audience, and it was just the most fun I ever had in my life. ![]() It was at the Improvisation, where they used to have music-now it's just comedy-and there was a P.A. He decided to pursue a musical career in his late teens, he told Lucy Tauss in e.Bop, when Line One performed "a real show on a real stage. While a college student at Berkeley, he joined a Los Angeles-based fusion band called Line One, which opened for artists such as Airto Moreira and the Yellowjackets. As a teenager, he began to play keyboards after discovering such R&B/jazz fusion artists as Grover Washington Jr., Ronnie Laws, and the Crusaders. James was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and grew up in New Rochelle, New York, where he began playing clarinet at age eight before switching to saxophone at age ten. Once that music becomes instrumental, all of a sudden it's 'contemporary jazz.' I think the line between the two is much thinner than a lot of people might think." James contends in the Boney James Web Site: "My music is firmly based in the R&B tradition." Despite the genre labels, James objects to the categorization of artists as R&B, funk, rock, etc., many of whom "have tremendous elements of jazz in their music-in their harmonies and in the way their songs are structured. Boney has definitely made his mark on Contemporary Jazz history." James characterizes himself more as an instrumental R&B player than a contemporary jazz artist, citing among his own musical influences such artists as Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, and Earth, Wind & Fire. According to the anonymous critic of Morrice's Jazz Review, "Since 1992 Boney James has hit the jazz music scene with hit after astonishing hit. He is one of the most successful instrumental artists of our time, with sales totaling over 3 million records.īoney James has risen in a few short years from a talented session player adaptable to a wide variety of musical styles, to a prominent "contemporary jazz" artist. Boney James, is a saxophonist, songwriter and producer who popularized urban jazz (an updated version of contemporary jazz that contains elements of R&B and hip-hop). ![]()
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