page_title: Jam band
section_title: Ambiguity
hierarchical_section_title: Jam band / History / Modern use and definition / Ambiguity
caption_attribution_description: English: Cream performing on the Dutch television program Fanclub in 1968
context_page_description: A jam band is a musical group whose live albums and concerts relate to a fan culture that began in the 1960s with the Grateful Dead, who held lengthy improvisational "jams" during their concerts. These include extended musical improvisation over rhythmic grooves and chord patterns, and long sets of music which often cross genre boundaries.
  The jam band musical style spawned from the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s. The Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band became notable for their live improvisational jams and regular touring schedules, which continued into the 1990s. This influenced a new wave of jam bands in the late 1980s and early 1990s, who toured the United States with jam band-style concerts, such as Phish, Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, The String Cheese Incident, and Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. The jam band movement gained mainstream exposure in the United States in the early 1990s following the rise of Phish and the Dave Matthews Band as major touring acts and the dissolution of the Grateful Dead following Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.
  Jam band artists often perform a wide variety of genres.
context_section_description: By the late 1990s use of the term jam band became used retroactively in jam band circles for bands such as Cream who for decades were categorized as a "power-trio" and "psychedelic rock" and who when active were largely unrelated to the Grateful Dead---but whose live concerts usually featured several extended collective improvisations. In his October 2000 column on the subject for jambands.com, Dan Greenhaus attempted to explain the evolution of a jam band as such: 
  "At this point, what you sing about, what instruments you play, how often you tour and how old you are has become virtually irrelevant. At this point, one thing is left and, ironically, after all these years, it’s the single most important place one should focus on; the approach to the music. And the jamband or improvisational umbrella, essentially nothing more than a broad label for a diverse array of bands, is open wide enough to shelter several different types of bands, whether you are The Dave Matthews Band or RAQ."
   
  The Jammy Awards have had members of non-jamming bands which were founded in the 1970s and were unrelated to the Grateful Dead perform at their show such as new wave band The B-52's. The Jammys have also awarded musicians from prior decades such as Frank Zappa.
caption: Cream performing in 1968
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