Abstract
In 1917, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded and released "Livery Stable Blues," the first commercially accessible jazz recording. Since the ensemble's hit recording, "jazz"—the sounds we associate with it, the people who make it, the audiences that listen to it, the places musicians perform it, and the modes of mediating it —has changed innumerably. In 2017, a century later, the Japanese video game company Nintendo released a new title for their cornerstone series featuring a short (but dynamic), mustached Italian plumber: Super Mario Odyssey. Along with conferring several new ludic powers to Mario, Nintendo positioned jazz at the center of the game's soundscape. This historical coincidence of these two examples being one hundred years apart speaks to the ongoing significance and influence of jazz in twenty-first century culture. It also perfectly encapsulates the crux of this thesis's discussion: What is the relationship between jazz and video game music? This dissertation explores the intersection of jazz and video game music, focusing on the significant role jazz plays in a Nintendian approach to ludic scoring practices and highlights the multifaceted nature of jazz, advocating for a pluralistic understanding of the idiom. Within the field of ludomusicology, the influences and functions of jazz in video games have been largely overlooked. This large-scale study addresses this gap by examining how Nintendo integrates jazz into its scoring for various game titles, including Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World. Furthermore, this work investigates the influence of Nintendo's jazz scoring on contemporary jazz performance practices. I discuss the growing number of contemporary musicians whose output comprises jazz-informed renditions of video game music and situate these musicians' artistic production within broader historical practices in jazz where musicians draw from popular media for performance repertoires. Finally, this study emphasizes the pedagogical potential of analyzing jazz solos within Nintendo games to develop jazz improvisation skills. Within Nintendo's scores, jazz participates in a musical conversation involving many idioms. This, perhaps more than anything else, speaks to the eclectic approach to game design that Nintendo has developed and embraced, creating a thread between the soundscapes of their many games. Jazz is central to the hybridized sonic tapestry that contributes to Nintendo's acclaimed conception of sound, music, and play.