What place in jazz will Fusion hold?

[Hardbopjazz]

To me Fusion will not be remembered as well as other styles of jazz. Not too many jazz artists still playing this style. Would it probably be just a footnote to the other periods of jazz? Would you agree with this?

Edited June 4, 2004 by Hardbopjazz

[Alexander]

Not really, no. Not only are albums like "Return to Forever," "Head Hunters," and "Bitches Brew" still regarded as classics (and still highly influential), but numerous younger artists such as Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, Stefon Harris, Roy Hargrove, Wallace Roney, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Chris Potter, Dave Douglas, and Matthew Shipp are making fusion albums (many of them damn good too). Plus the *kind* of fusion is growing and changing. Douglas and Shipp have both made albums that fuse jazz and electronica. Others, like the Bad Plus, are fusing jazz with rock without using electric instruments.

Let us not forget that Herbie Hancock is still at it ("Future 2 Future" only came out a few years back) as is John Scofield ("Uberjam" and "Up All Night" are great fusion albums). Not only is fusion still kicking, but I see no reason for it to let up any time soon. Fusion will be remembered as a much maligned form, but it will be more than a "footnote."

[7/4]

Define "Fusion". Like "Jazz", it's a pretty broad term.

[Chrome]

I'm with Alexander on this ... I think people are leery of using the actual term "fusion" nowadays because of its past connotations, but there are plenty still playing it, as he (Alexander) mentioned.

At least if you take "fusion" to mean music that mixes electric rock/jazz influences.

[Alexander]

Define "Fusion". Like "Jazz", it's a pretty broad term.

I would argue that ALL Jazz IS Fusion, when you come right down to it. There is no such thing as "pure" jazz. All jazz fuses multiple musical elements and styles. The first jazz was a fusion of marching band music, ragtime, blues, spirituals, European classical music...and even opera (both Bechet and Armstrong were opera fans, and Bechet was known to include quotations from arias in his solos)! The term "jazz purist" is a contradiction in terms. Jazz has always used contemporary popular music as a reference point. Why shouldn't that include rock, funk, hip-hop, and electronica?

To come right to the question, what do YOU have against Fusion, Hardbopjazz?

Edited June 3, 2004 by Alexander

[take5]

The mixing and blending of styles is very chic these days. No matter what music you play, it seems like proclaiming one's love of disparate styles is a badge of artistry. It's cool to mix.

Mixing or not mixing does not good or bad music make, it's all about how you do it. The reason why fusion became so awful shortly after it was created was because they were mixing it superficially (as opposed to the originators who dug deep in the music and created something original).

I think today's players are learning from the past and can get over the hump, creating original music that may be a blend of styles but doesn't call attention to that. In that sense, yes, the spirit of fusion survives.

[Hardbopjazz]

To come right to the question, what do YOU have against Fusion, Hardbopjazz?

Nothing, but when you hear jazz played on the radio, it's rarely fusion being played.

[BruceH]

Isn't it ALREADY viewed as a passing abberation?

[Noj]

There are gems to be found in fusion, it is just as valid to me. There is simply more great music found in other, more prolific styles.

[A Lark Ascending]

Like almost every style of jazz it had its wonderful moments; and its routine duds. Sadly, the latter seem to have clouded the general perception of the music.

It's interesting to hear a revival of interest in the era, not just in the States with things like the Roney, Douglas or Hargrove discs but over here in Britain. I've seen some thrilling concerts by various UK bands having fun with the fender rhodes and the spacier moments of the music.

I've always felt fusion got trapped into a funk groove which in turn seemed to require a direction closer and closer to mainstream pop/rock music and a consequent watering down.

In the UK and Europe there was a contemporary but rather different take on fusion that owed more to In a Silent Way than Jack Johnson. The Soft Machine, Eberhard Weber's Colours seemed to typify this. Sadly the dreaded 'funk' took over here too (Weber excepted) and jazz-rock became more concerned with 'getting down' that exploring the intriguing sonic possibilities of electric jazz.

If improvising musicians could just get past the funk there's still plenty more there to explore.

Nothing wrong with funk. But once you're in the groove its hard to go anywhere else!

[JSngry]

But once you're deep enough in the groove it's unnecessary to go anywhere else! That's kinda the point. Funk is its own reward.

OTOH, there ARE other places to go, and there's other roads to go there on. Options are good,

But thenagin, electric Miles of the 73-74 vintage pretty much went anywhere & everywhere it wanted to, and was deeper in the pocket than last week's lint, so perhaps the options are as limited as the imaginations and souls of the players. The number of people who can TRULY get on the one is a lot smaller than is comfortable to admit - EVERYBODY, it seems, thinks they're funky, and it just ain't so. Everybody's "funky", sure, but not everybody's FUNKY. If they were, Zig Modisette would be just another guy, and that just ain't the case!

I dunno, the only thing about fusion that ever bothered me was when it got to be "product" and/ot masturbatory, which seemed to be most of the time as the 70s wore on.

But as to whether or not it's still alive and/or has relevance, hey zeus Crisco, how you gonna live in a world that's nearly fully electric and fully digital and NOT reflect that in your music w/o coming across as some hopelessly naive idealogue or an old guy from another time. Not that fusion is the ONLY way to reflect that world, but the notion that "jazz" must not include certain tools, and/or MUST conform to certain stylistic traits/fetishes is going to kill the music deaddog dead, if it hasn't already (protestations to the contrary, I say the jury's still out on that one, and the doctors are still working overtime to save the patient).

Trying to pretend that something didn't happen (or shouldn't have happened) is not the same as going back in time and actually preventing it from happening. Blanket attempts to discredit fusion's legitimacy as an input to the jazz melting pot are about as realistic as insisting that color movies were a bad idea, and only half as wise. Or less.

Let the music be what it wants to be, whatever that is. Let the music be what it NEEDS to be, whatever that is. Otherwise, stuff it, mount it, charge admission, hire a tour guide, and sell souviners on the way out.

Sound familiar?

Edited June 3, 2004 by JSngry

[John L]

Jazz is fusion.

What happened in the 70s made sense. All of the new electronic possibilities were a novelty, funk took over the dance floor, and a lot of jazz artists dived in head first.

The reaction in the 80s made sense too. Acoustic instruments still sound damn good compared to a lot of the experimental electronic mess that people were churning out.

But we have only just begun. I am convinced that electronic instruments will dominate the future of jazz. It is not long before they will be able to do everything that acoustic instruments do and a whole lot more. Moreover, the instruments will be much more user friendly, requiring much less time to master, and allowing a more direct and precise communication of musical ideas.

Funk and its hybrids are also here to stay. One of the primary emotional releases from music is dance. That will remain in jazz and other music.

Just my opinions, folks.

Edited June 4, 2004 by John L

[7/4]

What's all this about funk? There was more to post early '70's fusion then funk.

Bill Bruford Group and later the 1st Earthworks (some funk, but too advanced in the meter dept. to be "just" funk)

Allan Holdsworth and all the guitarists who were influenced by him.

Jon Hassell (Is he even Jazz?)

Shatki?

There's a few for starters, I don't have a lot of time for lists this evening.

[Brad]

I never really cared for fusion but I would be stupid to deny that it has a place in jazz and that it is a style that will be remembered. If you ask is it a predominant style historically, I would say no, in that swing, bop, hardbop and avant garde are the principal jass movements.

[A Lark Ascending]

No intention to decry funk...even though personally I like it in very small doses.

It's just that by the late 70s it became the overpowering flavour of most fusion/jazz-rock/electric jazz.

I always felt there were 1001 other options. But very few of the musicians seemed interested in exploring them, prefering to stay safely in that groove. Fair enough. It's fun. But surely just a few people could have tried electric jazz without the funk? (a few did - Weber's Colours discs mentioned above; Ralph Towner's 'Solstice'; some of the later UK Canterbury bands like National Health could be said to fit in there. Maybe I'm just an ECM child at heart!)

Miles certainly did some interesting and unique things within the genre in the 80s, well away from the commercial side of things. But was there anywhere else to go after Pangaea/Agharta without letting slip of the moorings of funk?

His 80s discs, however enjoyable many may be, suggest to me that there was no-where else to go but round and round that funky groove. Fun some of those discs were but a development into something new from the mid 70s maelstrom? Hardly.

I like chilli in my food occasionally. I don't like it on my cornflakes, in my tea, on my salads or in my beer.

Flavours work best when used sparingly.

By the late 70s the funk element in fusion was smothering most of the other options.

As a student in the mid-70s I recall being constantly irritated by bands playing the university gig who promised the latest jazz-rock either bludgeoning us to death with power chords and million mile an hour solos (with free orgasmic facial expressions from the soloist) or exhorting is to...ahem...'get down.'

[danasgoodstuff]

Let me see if I can do the Readers Digest thing to this thread thus far: 'Fusion' may well be a particularly problematic episode in the evolution of jazz but it's way more than just a "footnote" and even footnotes can be interesting, sometimes way more than just 'interesting'...n'est ce pas?

[Jazzmoose]

I'll have to pass on this discussion. I have enough trouble with the "is it jazz?" question on music; "is it fusion?" leaves me totally clueless. For the life of me, I can't understand why a lot of free jazz isn't considered fusion, as it seems to be an extension of a lot of rock work (in the Syd Barret sense, not the Jimi Hendrix sense). The more I get into this music, the less sense the labels seem to make. Which is just fine with me!

[JSngry]

Yeah, ultimately it's all about expanding the palate. A new "style" comes along, fresh at first, and then gets standardized and finally played out. People scoff at it for a while, eventually wake up to the good points that made it interesting in the first place, and finally come to incorporate those points into their listening/playing palate.

Why anybody under 50 (an arbitrary age to be sure) these days should have a problem in principal with electronic/electric instruments and/or rock/funk rhythms as part of the overall pallate of jazz is beyond me. Those things are all part of the fabric of our lives, and if you can't use them without setting off a firestorm of an ideological contoversy just because you used them, well, that's just fucked up.

The same is going to hold true of hip-hop. Get used to it, becasue if it was going to be just a novelty, ti would have disappeared a long time ago. It hasn't, it's here. Make your peace with that, becasue as long as young folks continue to produce new jazz that's not entirely re-creative, there's going to be some of that sensibility present. GOTS to be.

Life - use it or lose it!

[Brandon Burke]

Everybody's "funky", sure, but not everybody's FUNKY. If they were, Zig Modisette would be just another guy, and that just ain't the case!

Too true. B)

[Green Dolphin]

Not one for labels...it's all a fusion!But if what the questioner means is that particular path(rut?)typified by GRP etc. then watch out...Chick Corea's reformed The Electrik Band.

[A Lark Ascending]

You could argue that jazz is all swing. But that doesn't negate the use of the label 'Swing' to denote one of the phases jazz went through in the 30s and 40s.

In the same way, all jazz is fusion but 'Fusion' is a label that denotes a particular phase it passed through in the late 60s and 70s. The term was not greatly used in the UK except later in the day to describe the American version of what we called jazz-rock.

Where the boundaries were? Who cares. Swing, Fusion, all grist to the mill. Had its good bits, had its bad. Had its bits that one lot of jazz fans loved whilst others didn't care for.

All part of the great jazz salad.

Worth revisiting?

I'd say yes. I think it got chased off the stage before it had even begun to realise its possibilities. So when I hear Douglas or Roney or Gerard Presencer or Martin France embarking on 'fusion' projects I'm intrigued.

[chris olivarez]

Really it will vary,does vary from disc to disc.

[7/4]

Is Jazz just swing?

Jazz is also improvisation. But all improvisation is not Jazz (Indian Classical music, the Euro Funny Rat crowd...not that there's anything wrong about it. )

I think Jazz has melodies, tunes and improvisation. The swing just makes it groove.

Is phrasing and swing the same thing?

[A Lark Ascending]

Is Jazz just swing?

Jazz is also improvisation. But all improvisation is not Jazz (Indian Classical music, the Euro Funny Rat crowd...not that there's anything wrong about it. )

I think Jazz has melodies, tunes and improvisation. The swing just makes it groove.

Is phrasing and swing the same thing?

Aaahhhh!!!!

Note "You could argue that jazz is all swing."

I've no wish to box jazz into 'swing' but there are plenty of jazz fans who'll tell you that it don't mean a thing...

My point was merely that 'Fusion', 'Swing', 'Bebop' etc are useful, general labels to denote a significant trend in jazz at a specific point in time.

[Brad]

The same is going to hold true of hip-hop. Get used to it, becasue if it was going to be just a novelty, ti would have disappeared a long time ago. It hasn't, it's here. Make your peace with that, becasue as long as young folks continue to produce new jazz that's not entirely re-creative, there's going to be some of that sensibility present. GOTS to be.

Jim,

I've generally agreed with everything you've said in this thread so far, except your statement about getting used to hip hop or rap and accepting it. Why? Why should I get used to a form of music (and I'm not even sure it's that musical, frankly) that generally is demeaning to women and that promotes a lifestyle that I would have nothing to do with. I hear nothing of beauty or desirable in this music that would make me listen to it as I do jazz, which is beauty, which is art.

Now, I'm sure that when I started listening to the Beatles when I was a kid in 1960, people whose age I am now felt the same way so maybe if you want to call me an old fuddy duddy, so be it. But even adults got into the Beatles, the Stones, etc. because their songs were also beautiful, well written and with great tunes. Heck, a lot of the early Stones were based on the blues and to some of us that might have been an introduction to Howlin Wolf and the blues.

I see nothing of this in rap. Just to prove that I didn't reject your statement from the start, after work yesterday as I was driving to a local cd shop I listened to a rap station for about half an hour until I got to where I was going. I heard something that was almost tolerable because it had some latin rhythms going on but other than that forget it.

Now you also say, accept it. I'm not dumb to deny that it's not there and that a lot of people like it. I admit it's existence but to accept it, that would mean I'm embracing it. No, thanks.