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There is at least one band that is doing a kind of GJ/pop blend, the Black Market Trust. They are a really good band but I don't think they are exactly hitting the Billboard charts. And their name sounds like a punk band. The last real jazz tunes I can think of that made the popular music charts were "Sidewinder" by Lee Morgan 1964 and "The In Crowd" by the Ramsey Lewis Trio in 1965, or maybe Chuck Mangione, George Benson and Kenny G.
Historically, when niche styles of music (music mostly of interest to those who play it) become "popularized", like American folk music (Kingston trio, Peter Paul and Mary) or Irish music (Clancy Brothers, Riverdance), or blues, all the nuance and tradition goes out the window and you wind up with Joe Bonamassa. Plus, hard as it is to believe, jazz manouche just doesn't resonate for most people, even other guitarists.
I think this qualifies!
Phil - Great example of a deliberate chimeric hybrid of a quality GJ track and RAP vocal? What a worthless recording!
My $.02. I live on Maui and we have a GJ band that consists of me, a Brazilian guitarist, clarinet and bass. The problem anywhere in Hawaii is finding gigs where the venues are primarily looking for "Hawaiiana", or music that makes tourists feel like they are on vacation in Hawaii - Steel guitar, ukulele, slack key, heavy on the vocals. But there is a good jazz presence here with different groups playing different styles of jazz - straight up, fusion, standards, bossa and us representing GJ, with some bossa tunes to round it out. We don't play resorts, just venues that cater to locals and some tourist traffic. I find that when people hear us they stick around because they like the music - it's uplifting, melodic, accessible, whatever. And we are seeing people coming back to hear us. I have never encountered anyone who says they don't like GJ music. The problem is getting them to hear it.
This may sound like heresy, but I had to hear GJ played by modern players before I could enjoy the original recordings. That could be said of a lot of early recorded jazz as well, I think.
Secondly, this music had its heyday and was the popular music of its day in some parts of the world. Whatever the combination of technology and marketing that developed over time, there is more access to music from everywhere now than there was 10, 30, 70, 100 years ago. That's not an inherently bad thing, it's just that you need education and exposure to find things that are not commercially popular.
The music of any given period is "of its time"--even avant-garde stuff that provoked outrage among parts of its original audiences. The enormous virtue of recording means that we all now have access to what some music sounded like in "its time"--and in the classical field, the original-instruments/performance practice movement has allowed glimpses of what, say, Bach or Haydn might have sounded like to their contemporary audiences. Then there are the musical traditions where conservative or preservationist attitudes slow the acceptance of change--say, the insistence of Auntie Alice Namakelua on playing slack key the way she learned it at the turn of the 20th century, so that younger players could hear the music's roots.
Those factors have drawn me to all manner of music and allowed me to time-travel a bit--something I've been doing for 60-odd years now. (Some of them very odd indeed.) But then, I was also studying poems and plays and forms of English from circa 700 to 1800, so I've always had that Tramalfadorian view of things. Here's Django playing with the Quintette in 1938; here he is playing banjo with a slide-whistle-led combo; here he is after hearing bebop; here is young Birelli tearing it up; here is Pearl Django; here is 3 Leg Torso. Boundaries are temporary and porous.
Popular things are popular. I am not going to wait around for jazz to be popular or spend a lot of time worrying about it. It's quite possible it could die out in my lifetime or be reborn or any number of things could happen. Most people aren't listening to music for some sort of intellectual titillation, it's background music for other stuff. I dated a woman who I liked a lot (she was also insane but that's another story), she couldn't name a single musician other than Sade. Oddly enough when I took her to hear jazz or whatever else, she enjoyed it, kind of like a child in a good way. It was odd.
Anyway she mostly listens to the radio, terrible bland stuff. Like, probably most people. It is the way it is.
There's a thriving Tiktok GJ subculture if you know where to find it. All the young Wintersteins, Weisses, Loriers and so on are doing it. The minute you post a couple of your own recordings with a #gypsyjazz hashtag, the algo will have you figured out and give you what you want accordingly.
(You could do worse than start here: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebrombergers ;) )
Anything you/we post is not going to pose a threat to Taylor's numbers, of course, but I do think there will soon be a reaction to the enshittification of music which didn't start with AI but has been hugely accelerated by it. GJ is well set to capitalise on that, as it's resource-light compared to travelling with a full rig, and you can get by with two instrumentalists if you're smart about your arrangements and don't stick to head-solo-solo-tradefours-head again-end all night. Thing is, you won't see that reflected in streaming stats, but live in venues.
On that last point, don't take my word for it: the Guardian ran an article last week about the resurgence of jazz in London's night life, and the Coq got a mention for its sterling service in keeping the older forms going.
‘Young audiences are less scared of it’: why London jazz clubs are expanding and thriving against the odds | Jazz | The Guardian
Listen to the background music in a number of ads.
You'll be surprised how much Gypsy Jazz sort of material is being used.
This seems always to be the case. At one point, some 15 years ago, I thought every day I'd hear something Gypsy jazz-ish on the TV every day. These days it's in the video games a lot. Noa Kageyama uses Gypsy jazz jingle in his podcasts even though he always interviews classical musicians.