The O’Zone | National Poetry Month & Jazz Appreciation Month: Part 3

Apr 21, 2026

Andy O’ is a musician (his band Coyote Poets has 6 albums out) and an award-winning poet who came on board at KUVO JAZZ on Labor Day 1989.Since then he has worked nearly every air shift and from 1997 to 2003 he was the Music Director at KUVO

The Transition into the 21st Century

In the 1950s, the Beat Generation–led by figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg– found their rhythm in the frenetic energy of Bebop. Borrowing from the breath of pioneers like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, they transformed poetry into a spontaneous, jazz-informed performance art. This was the era of

jazz-poetry where the syncopated rhythms of Langston Hughes bridged the gap between formal verse and the pulse of the street.

By the mid-1960s, the cool introspection of the Beats gave way to the radical urgency of the Black Arts Movement (or BAM).

Amiri Baraka became the architect of a new aesthetic that used the word as a weapon. Alongside collectives like The Last Poets and the revolutionary spirit of Gil Scott-Heron, poetry became rhythmic, confrontational, and explicitly political. They weren’t just reading poems; they were laying the blueprints for hip-hop.

As hip-hop matured, it circled back to its jazz roots through the sampling era, featuring artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, Digable Planets, and Guru’s Jazzmatazz.

Diggin’ in the Crates

The needle drops on a dusty blue note,

static crackling like wood in a fireplace.

A trick in time and Bob James Nautilus

rises from the deep,

pulled by the ghost of Ghostface into the Staten island rain,

while Eric B. watches the gold chains swing to the bells of

Take Me to the Mardi Gras.

It’s the art of the heist:

Grant Green’s Down Here on the Ground

stripped of its slow burn jazz

to become the backbone of Tribe’s Vibes and Stuff,

cool guitar licks traded in to a heart beat.

They dig in the crates for Donald Byrd,

Stepping Into Tomorrow

feeding it to the Main Source,

Or letting The Pharcyde run wild

through the dreamscape of Think Twice.

Then it’s Ahmad Jamal,

the space between his keys

becoming the oxygen for Nas–

The World Is Yours because a loop of

I Love Music said it was so.

Lou Donaldson blows soulful

It’s Your Thing turns into a brand-new thing,

reborn where the bebop of the fathers becomes the anthem of the sons.

Linked Through Sample Culture

In case you didn’t know, I am a bassist, playing since 1968.

I started off, like players do, copying licks on records. I knew James Jamerson’s lines before I knew his name. I still have my first bass, a 1967 Fender Jazz Bass (it’s not for sale…ever) so anyway, the reason I bring that up is to let you know why this music reaches me in a particular way. NO TREBLE! I will name drop my teachers another time, but it took a village to make me a bassist.

As I joined KUVO in 1989, I was a working bass player and as mentioned before, I had a fondness for four string culture.

In the mid 1980s, London DJs were mixing rare Blue Note catalog tracks with hip-hop beats, birthing “acid jazz”; but it took a little while for that to get to Denver. The big coincidence is that I started at KUVO at just about the same time this music was arriving in Colorado. Shout out to Mark Farina’s Mushroom Jazz!!!

My first encounter with what would become hip-hop was at a party where a guy was spinning soul records but he was mixing and blending them in a way I had never heard before. No rapping, just records, and I remembered being fascinated by his concept while my friend Kevin complained, “Why doesn’t he just let the song play all the way through?”

A couple years later, something caught my eye and ears on Channel 12: a show called FM-TV which predated MTV by a year or so. Anyway, it’s 1983 and a favorite of mine, Herbie Hancock, has a very interesting video called “Rockit” and I thought “WTF???” Herbie moving into the future again!

So we have rolled up past The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and here is Herbie walking through that door like he lives there. Grandmixer DST worked the turntables and brought that into America’s living rooms. I was aware of what was coming, but had no idea at the time of the scope.

A year after I began at KUVO, the soundtrack for Mo’ Better Blues arrived in our record stacks, naturally, the cut with all the airplay was the title track. Next in spins was Cynda Williams’ poignant vocal “Harlem Blues”, but my favorite cut was Branford Marsalis’ joint with Gang Starr: the walking-out-of-the-theater music called “A Jazz Thing”. It’s full of samples and spoken word, just for starters.