Jazz! It's still, of course, not dead. But more than that, it doesn't even smell funny anymore as Frank Zappa's infamous dictum off "Be-Bop Tango (of the old Jazzmen's Church)" from Roxy and Elsewhere went way back in them seventies. A time of musical currents so utterly perverted Stadium Rock! Disco!! Fusion!!! that they even lent to seducing people into absurd thoughts as the one about Jazz being a dying form, if not dead already.

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Not so, cats, not so! Jazz is alive and kickin'. And as it is, it has become rather hip again for musicians and creatives to trace and hail its influence, elements and spirit in their own product and philosophy wherever they can. Especially in a catalogue such as Piranha Records’. We have always taken pride in our Jazz roots and spices! Being a label built fundamentally on African and American music – among others – it's quite obvious that it would have to be a Jazz label of sorts, too – whatever stylistic wrapping has been applied to it.

Jazz is in the Ethio Stars and Tukul Band's Ethiopian grooves and Eddie Bobé's and Roberto Rodriguez's Afro-Cuban and Latin rhythms. In Maurice El Medioni's easy- going Arab Latin melodies, in Gino Sitsons multi-layered a capella arrangements – and not just when it's pure scat singing in the vein of genre heavies such as Ella Fitzgerald or Al Jarreau.

Jazz power, sensibility and creativity is in Frank London and the Klezmatics’ full throttle rhythm'n'blues take on the klezmer tradition, as it is in Fanfare Ciocarlia's and the Markovic family's metro urban turbo model of their Balkan brass heritage. It's in Boris Kovac's highly complex orchestra arrangements, the Balkan Clarinet Summit and Chango Spasiuk's awesome virtuosity.

Jazz is in Daniele Sepe's Tour de Force through the music history of his Calabrian homebase, shooting it through everything from free jazz to hip-hop and back. It's in everything Brazilian – rhythm? That's from Africa! And whence Jazz. And with the offbeat – that musical element at the core of Jazz – it's also likely to be in anything else worth recording anyway, and thus in anything from the Piranha Records catalogue for sure.

Last but not least – the Jazz spirit! Adventurousness, daring, and zest. And let’s not forget that it is the high art of Cool! When all is said and done, the ability to truly relax – maybe with a little Sonia Brex and her version of the younger generations' lounge electronica. It’s easy like Sunday morning, if not exactly an ‘easy listening’ one.

And not even that model smells funny these days any more. Another essential jazz law: anything goes!

Jazz can never die.