Jazz For Your Soul

About

Jazz For Your Soul is an image macro series based on on a double exposure image showing a person passionately playing an instrument (or an object like it’s an instrument) with a digital composite of the subject’s head superimposed on the front, in a similar style as the PTSD Clarinet Boy and Karate Kyle. Although the images already managed to gain attention in the South-Korean blogosphere as early as 2007, it wasn’t until 2010 before it started gaining momentum on the English web.

Origin

The first instance of the image dates back to September 13th, 2004, in a blog post on the South-Korean website Oeker.net,^[1] showing a picture of a man using a fire extinguisher like he’s playing a saxophone alongside the caption “Jazz for your Soul.”

Spread

On February 21, 2007, the image was posted on the Japanese Yahoo.^[2] On April 29th of the same year, the image got posted on a blog on the Korean website Egloos^[3] alongside two derivatives showing two men playing guitars as if they were violins with the texts “Falling in your soul…” (shown below, left) and “Classic for your soul” (shown below, right). After that all three images were shared numerous times on South-Korean blogs from 2007 to 2010, mainly on the blogging platforms Egloos and Tistory, where more variations were created and spread over time.^[4][5]

In November 2010, the original image was posted on the Cheezburger website Pictureisunrelated. Although the post has since been lost, it was shared on the Gentleartofmeme Blogspot^[6] and FunnyJunk^[7] that same month. On September 24th, 2012, Youtuber James Russel posted a video^[8] on Youtube showing the original image with smooth jazz playing in the background, which has gathered over 4,000 views as of January 2014.

On August 1st, 2011, Tumblr user Hazyville posted the original image to his blog.^[10] On September 22nd, 2012, Tumblr user Factsaboutmycat posted a derivative of the original on her blog showing a little kid using a toy like a saxophone (shown below, left).^[11] On August 23rd, 2013, Tumblr user te--love posted a photo showing a kid playing saxophone on a longboard (shown below, right).^[12] As of January 2014, the three posts have gained respectively over 24,000; 39,000 and 178,000 notes.

Notable Examples

Additional examples can also be found on Tumblr through the tag #jazz-for-your-soul.^[9]

Search Interest

External References