Jazz fusion

Jazz fusion is a musical genre that originated in the late 1960s. It features traditional jazz concepts, such as extended improvisations and a focus on strings and horns. However, fusion blends these concepts with prominent parts of other genres, including rock, funk, and classical music. Fusion was also the first jazz genre in which musicians primarily switched from acoustic to electric instruments.

Many famous jazz musicians, such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea, played fusion. Despite this, the genre was scorned by jazz traditionalists. They argued that fusion incorporated too much compositional style from other genres, and that it could not be considered true jazz.

Background

Jazz, an influential musical genre, first developed from the blues. Blues was a musical genre first played in the late 1800s. Blues was inspired by African American field songs and hymns. It was characterized by emotional vocals, heavy use of the pentatonic scale on the guitar, and the use of an entire drum kit.

Like blues, jazz developed in New Orleans. The first style of jazz, called Second Line, established many of the consistent characteristics of jazz genres. This includes improvisational breaks, in which musicians compose portions of a song as they play. It also introduced key interactions between the rhythm section, utilizing an entire drum kit, and the horn section.

By the 1930s, Second Line had developed into swing jazz. Swing was played by a big band, incorporating many instruments. Unlike the blues, swing was generally upbeat; it was composed for popularity in dance halls and on radio stations.

Over the next decade, jazz musicians developed bebop. Like swing, bebop was fast paced. The music was played by fewer musicians and featured more improvisation. Where swing was written for widespread appeal, bebop was written for musicians and intellectuals. It featured complex harmonies, innovative combinations of instruments, and non-traditional rhythms.

Some jazz musicians resisted bebop, believing it reduced jazz's appeal to mainstream audiences. They blended jazz with Latin rhythm sections, creating Afro-Cuban jazz. Latin-styled drums and bass gave a new foundation for jazz's string and horn players, producing new styles of melodies. Afro-Cuban jazz was popular with African Americans, Latin immigrants, and dance enthusiasts.

While popular, a portion of the jazz community believed that Afro-Cuban jazz lacked the artistry of older jazz styles. Musicians sought to create a purer form of artistic expression, free from commercial restraints. Jazz players began to experiment with music, playing with no fixed composition or time structure. Over time, this developed into free jazz.

Free jazz lacked any kind of organized composition, harmony, or shared time structure. The genre was entirely built around improvisation. For this reason, it proved unpopular with many audiences. However, popularity was not a concern to most free jazz musicians. They cared about artistic self-expression, not selling music.

Overview

Just as free jazz began to hit its stride, another branch of jazz musicians began to develop their own flavor of the genre. They looked to Afro-Cuban jazz as inspiration, praising its progressive incorporation of other musical styles. These musicians began to look for other styles of music to blend with jazz.

This style, called jazz fusion, featured many of the prominent characteristics of previous jazz genres. Musicians were encouraged to improvise, engaging in spontaneously composed solos during recordings and live performances. They commonly worked along chromatic and pentatonic scales, crafting melodies reminiscent of past styles of jazz music. The music featured a heavy focus on stringed instruments, utilizing guitars and basses, while still commonly incorporating horns.

Despite these similarities, the innovative musicians associated with fusion introduced a number of distinct changes to jazz. The most striking change was the switch to electric instruments. Prior to fusion, most jazz musicians preferred traditional, acoustic instruments. Electric instruments could be plugged into large, specialized speakers called amplifiers. This allowed musicians to perform for larger audiences more easily. It also allowed for greater customization of an instrument's sound, significantly altering the tone of the instrument.

Fusion musicians also began incorporating influences from multiple genres into their work. While this upset some jazz purists, prompting them to declare that fusion was not truly jazz, it helped many musicians develop and strengthen new improvisational techniques. Jazz fusion musicians took sounds from rock, Latin, funk, pop, and classical music. They used new lineups of backing instruments, technological effects, and musical arrangements to push the entire jazz genre forward.

Many music critics argue that fusion is incredibly difficult to master. To perform fusion skillfully, musicians must be extremely proficient in more traditional forms of jazz. However, they must also be proficient in rock, funk, and rhythm and blues (R&B) to blend the genres together effectively.

As artists continued to blend jazz with other genres, several recurring combinations began to develop. One of the most popular combinations, jazz-rock, was rock music that was heavily influenced by jazz instrumentals. Traditional rock music prizes simplicity, rejecting overly complicated compositions. However, jazz-rock retains the edge and emotion of rock music while adding the instrumentation and improvisation of jazz.

Jazz-rock first began to develop in the 1960s, within the bounds of regular fusion. However, when musicians like Santana and Frank Zappa began to explore jazz-styled instrumental pieces with traditional rock arrangements, the genre took on a life of its own. It steadily grew in popularity and began to include more mainstream musical acts, including Steely Dan and Chicago.

A number of famous jazz musicians adopted fusion later in their careers. Miles Davis, a legendary trumpet player who spent many of his earlier years playing bebop and cool jazz, played fusion on his album In a Silent Way (1969). The album featured a heavy rock influence, using tempo and new arrangements to create a new sound.

A year after releasing In a Silent Way, Davis released Bitches Brew (1970). Considered by many music critics to be one of the most important albums of the fusion genre, it was heavily experimental. The landmark album featured two drummers and two bassists on every track, creating a heavier, more rhythmic feel than Davis's previous works.

Herbie Hancock, a keyboardist who often associated with Davis, released the album Head Hunters in 1973. Head Huntersmade heavy use of electronic instruments, including synthesizers. Additionally, the album was more heavily influenced by funk and R&B music of the time rather than rock and roll. Head Hunters also featured significantly more improvisation than other jazz fusion works at the time.

Throughout the late twentieth century, jazz fusion continued to evolve into sub-genres like metal jazz and punk jazz. Yet the main two fusions were rock and pop. Artists like Kenny G, an American saxophonist, popularized smooth jazz with his albums Duotones (1986) and Breathless (1992). Though critics took offense to Kenny G's mainstream popularity and claimed his music was neither fusion nor traditional jazz, Kenny G was an influential figure in the evolution and commercial success of jazz-related genres. Hip hop artists also began incorporating jazz into their music, which marked a return to fusion roots. In 1993, hip hop artist Guru released a solo album titled Jazzmatazz, Volume 1: An Experimental Fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz. The album made it to number 94 on the Billboard Top 200 and number 15 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums in the United States. More importantly, it pushed boundaries in both the jazz and hip hop worlds.

In the twenty-first century, the fusion trend continued to become mainstream. The Roots, a hip hop band that began in 1987, became the band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon from 2009 to 2014 and then followed Fallon to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, both of which popularized their band and sound. Though the members of the band have changed over time, the two founders of the group, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter, who met while attending the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, have remained with the band. The group is known for their eclectic mix of instruments, such as the sousaphone, electric bass, and various percussion instruments, and their ability to spontaneously improvise, often called improv.

Despite consistent criticism from jazz purists, fusion has demonstrated an unyielding ability to adapt and change with new and popular genres of music.

Bibliography

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