Jazz fusion, also known as "progressive jazz", or just "fusion", is a style of Jazz developed in the late 1960s. Though the term "jazz fusion" has a broader scope nowadays than it did in its inception, it mainly boils down to combining the harmony and improvisation of jazz with Rock, Funk, R&B and pop music. Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity, ranging from groove-based vamps over one or two chords with simple melodies, to complex arrangements with uncommon time signatures, melodies paired with an interweaving countermelody, elaborate chord progressions, and so on. As well, they make more use of electric instruments (electric guitar, electric bass, electric piano), synthesizers, digital drums, electronic effects, and large speaker cabinets. The thread that connects traditional jazz to fusion is that fusion continues to use instrumental improvisation over the Chord Progression.
Guitarist Larry Coryell, often cited as the earliest progenitor of fusion, began the earliest form of fusion in 1966 with his band, the Free Spirits, the first jazz-rock band. Coryell would continue to help bring the worlds of psychedelic rock and jazz together, working on albums with vibraphonist Gary Burton, and was soon joined by Charles Lloyd and Jeremy Steig experimenting with fusion, and saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk even performing with rock guitar innovator Jimi Hendrix. Around the same time, Miles Davis, who was already flirting with electronic sounds, began incorporating the sounds of fusion into his work; first with In a Silent Way in 1969, and then the Hendrix-influenced Bitches Brew the next year. For Bitches Brew, Miles abandoned the swing beat in favor of rock drumming and electric bass grooves, and he even plugged in his trumpet into effect pedals to simulate playing an electric guitar.
Though Miles and others was railed by traditional jazz purists for their experiments with rock, it proved fruitful enough for Miles to continue experimenting with fusion until his death, and allowed many of his sidemen, including Herbie Hancock and George Benson, to strike off on their own and achieve solo success with their own fusion albums.
Over time, fusion would greatly influence the genres it took inspiration from, giving way to offshoots like smooth jazz, acid jazz, nu-jazz, quiet storm, and other fusion genres. 1970's funk bands like Earth, Wind & Fire and Kool & the Gang would incorporate fusion-styled sounds in their music, while the Parliament-Funkadellic collective would run wild with it, until it completely morphed into their own "P-Funk" sound. American jazz fusion bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Weather Report were popular album and touring bands in the '70s, and acted as a sort of Transatlantic Equivalent of the mostly British Progressive Rock movement of the same decade. (Of course, several bands qualified as both, particularly Canterbury Scene bands.)
Miles Davis' experiments, particularly his 1972 album On the Corner, are regularly cited as a major influence on the development of Hip-Hop; which eventually led to the creation of Jazz Rap in the late 1980's, and saw New Jack Swing and Neo Soul producers like Teddy Riley flirt with jazz elements in their work. Miles would would eventually bring it full circle with his posthumous 1992 jazz rap album, Doo-Bop.
It's also known for being really, REALLY popular in Japan. In the 70s, a huge chunk of contemporary music that wasn't straight pop fell into the Jazz Fusion niche, and its most famous artist, four-man group CASIOPEA was one of the most popular artists in the country. It had a huge influence on City Pop, the defining music genre of Japan in the 80s, and its effects can still be felt in the country's music today. Now, because Japanese music has always had a limited presence in the Western music world, most Americans have never heard Japanese jazz fusion (even fans of the American incarnation of the genre). However, most Americans have in fact heard Japanese jazz fusion, via one of the country's most popular exports: Video Games. Most of the really famous Japanese game music composers are admitted jazz fusion fans (notably Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu). Because of this, the genre is still at the core of some of the most famous video game franchises out there, like Super Mario Bros. Hence, chances are anyone who has played a Nintendo game in the last 40 years has in fact heard Japanese jazz fusion.
See also Jazz Rap, Progressive Rock, G-Funk, and Sophisti-Pop for other examples of fusion genres.
Artists
- The Allman Brothers Band: To a certain extent. While they're generally thought of as the Southern Rock band, improvisation was a major element of their sound, and lead guitarist Duane Allman listed John Coltrane and Miles Davis as two of his biggest influences. Drummer Jai Johanny Johanson also had a background in jazz (in fact, he was the one who introduced Duane to Coltrane and Davis).
- Animals as Leaders (also Djent): While they are generally considered djent, they have extremely prominent jazz fusion elements, especially in their later material, while all three current members have played jazz on the side (Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes with TRAM, Matt Garstka as a session musician), and Matt Garstka is also a major name in gospel sheds (which are also not jazz, but are typically jazz-adjacent).
- Atheist: Arguable Trope Codifier for jazz/metal fusions, and one of the most important Technical Death Metal bands of the late '80s/early '90s. They take especially strong influence from Latin jazz, and parts of their third album, Elements, are outright jazz without any metal elements.
- David Axelrod: Not to be confused with the speechwriter for Barack Obama. The term "jazz fusion" was actually coined in a review of his 1968 album Songs of Innocence, which featured interpretations of William Blake's poetry, and which Miles Davis acknowledged as an influence on Bitches Brew. It has also been sampled heavily in Hip-Hop and Electronic Music since the 1990s.
- Roy Ayers: A vibraphonist and composer known for being a pioneer in jazz-funk and a precursor to acid jazz.
- Jeff Beck
- Blood, Sweat & Tears
- Bohren & der Club of Gore: German jazz band who mixes ambient with metal.
- The Brand New Heavies: British group who pioneered a freewheeling genre called acid jazz, which mixed together jazz, R&B, soul, funk, electronic and psychedelic rock influences.
- Brand X: A jazz fusion group whose best known member was Phil Collins, although his participation dropped off once he became the lead singer of Genesis. The core members were also progressive rock veterans, John Goodsall (Atomic Rooster) and Percy Jones (Soft Machine), while the current lineup includes Kenny Grohowski of Imperial Triumphant, who are mentioned below.
- Bill Bruford: The drummer for Yes and King Crimson had also since formed jazz fusion bands leading up to his retirement.
- Caravan: one of the central bands of the Canterbury scene, who often featured a heavy jazz influence on their brand of progressive rock. Their most jazz-influenced album is probably 1972's ''Waterloo Lily'.
- Casiopea: The godfathers of Japan's bustling jazz fusion scene, they have released over 40 albums since their formation in 1976. They also have a case of Revolving Door Band - guitarist and lead songwriter Issei Noro is the sole founding member left.
- Chase: Led by trumpeter Bill Chase (who worked with Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton, and Woody Herman), the band had 4 jazz trumpeters fronting a rock band. The group was cut short by a 1974 airplane crash that took the lives of Chase and 3 other band members.
- Chicago: Started out as examples of this and Progressive Rock; moved more towards pop later on.
- George Clinton
- Chick Corea: A pianist who got his start in the late '60s as part of Miles Davis' band and gained fame in the '70s as the leader of the jazz fusion band Return to Forever. The group's mix of fusion, Latin jazz and prog rock made them popular with rock audiences, and they are regularly cited as an influence by later jazz rock bands. After Return to Forever split in 1977, Corea embarked on a solo career that netted him over 20 Grammys.
- Cynic: Progressive Metal fusion act that started out as technical thrash before taking a softer, more adventurous turn that went on to heavily influence a wide variety of acts and later went in a more rock-oriented direction.
- Dave Matthews Band: Their page on This Very Wiki calls them a "rock/jazz/folk/pop/jam band"—appropriately so, as the lineup that made them famous consisted of one jazz fan (Matthews), three jazz musicians, and one classically trained violinist.
- Miles Davis (arguably the Trope Codifier for the entire genre)
- 1969 - In a Silent Way
- 1970 - Bitches Brew
- Death: The Trope Makers and Trope Namers of Death Metal, obviously, and also one of the principal Trope Makers and Trope Codifiers for Technical Death Metal. Their 1991 album Human is especially jazzy, which is not surprising since Cynic's Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert played on it.
- Jonah Dempcy
- Defeated Sanity: An unusually heavy example of a Technical Death Metal band with jazz elements - in fact original guitarist Wolfgang Teske (who unfortunately passed away in 2010) was a jazz and progressive rock guitarist who'd been active since the seventies and originally started playing metal just to challenge himself before he started to treat it as a serious endeavour. His son, Lille Gruber (the only original member left in the band and one of the band's two principal songwriters), also has a jazz background. However, Defeated Sanity's jazz elements are usually used to make the music even more unsettling.
- Dixie Dregs: An instrumental band who played a mix of Jazz Rock, Progressive Rock and Southern Rock.
- DOMi & JD Beck (has prominent jazztronica and lo-fi hip-hop elements, but is ultimately jazz fusion)
- The Electric Banana Band
- Ephel Duath: Something of a mixture of Black Metal and jazz, with Avant-Garde Music and Progressive Rock elements sometimes thrown into the blender as well.
- Exivious: Dutch instrumental progressive metal/jazz fusion act that leans more towards the fusion side of the equation but still has a subtle metallic undercurrent.
- Donald Fagen
- 1982 - The Nightfly
- Gong: Prog rock band that frequently incorporated elements of space rock into its sound. Daevid Allen's incarnation hewed closer to the Canterbury scene sound (even though they themselves formed in Paris); the Pierre Moerlen incarnation was a full-fledged jazz rock band. Gong's discography can be confusing to piece together because there were often multiple incarnations of the band at once.
- Gordian Knot: An instrumental jazz fusion band formed by Cynic bassist Sean Malone, whose music mixed elements of jazz, prog, and metal. Malone's tragic death in 2020 resulted in its breakup.
- Herbie Hancock
- 1973 - Head Hunters
- Hatfield And The North: Canterbury scene "supergroup" featuring former members of groups such as Caravan and Gong. Featured complex, often lengthy, heavily jazz-influenced compositions, most linked in a way that made it difficult to tell where one piece ended and the next began. Their music was largely instrumental, but some songs had vocals. They didn't stay together too long, although several members reappeared in National Health.
- Allan Holdsworth
- Haruomi Hosono
- 1975 - Tropical Dandy
- 1976 - Bon Voyage Co.
- 1978 - Paraiso (with The Yellow Magic Band)
- 1978 - Pacific (with Shigeru Suzuki and Tatsuro Yamashita)
- 1978 - Cochin Moon (with Tadanori Yokoo)
- Greg Howe
- Imperial Triumphant (also Black Metal): Avant-garde black metal act with extremely prominent jazz and modernist classical influences and musicians who are all schooled in jazz and still play it on the side. Current drummer Kenny Grohowski also plays in the current lineup of Brand X and is a regular Trey Spruance collaborator, primarily with Secret Chiefs 3 (who are not a jazz act, but take influence from it and have numerous jazz-related tracks).
- Jaga Jazzist
- Norah Jones: Best known for her debut album Come Away With Me, which sold ten million copies and earned her Album of the Year and Best New Artist awards at the 2003 Grammys. Although strictly a jazz singer and pianist on that album, her later records have seen her incorporate indie rock and blues influences into her sound.
- Yoko Kanno: Especially well-known for the fusion-driven soundtrack to Cowboy Bebop by her band the Seatbelts.
- Shawn Lane: Guitar genius whose style is difficult to pinpoint, but he's often classified as Jazz fusion, while his collaborations with Jonas Hellborg and V. Selvaganesh fused jazz fusion with Indian classical music.
- Liquid Tension Experiment
- Magma: Strange French band who are Trope Makers and Trope Namers of a Progressive Rock subgenre called Zeuhl that draws a lot of influence from jazz, if obliquely; they have repeatedly cited John Coltrane as their biggest influence, if that's indication. The jazz influence is most obvious on the first two albums; it's a bit more oblique on the band's later music, but still there if you know what to listen for.
- Medeski Martin & Wood: A power trio (Medeski is a keyboardist, Martin is a drummer, Wood is a bassist) that helped bring fusion into the 21st century with a mix of funk, hip-hop and jam-band sensibilities. Owing to those jam band elements, MMW were one of the most popular jazz festival bands of the 1990s and early 2000s. They were occasionally joined in concert and on record by jazz guitarist John Scofield.
- John McLaughlin: English guitarist, studied jazz and flamenco in his teens, started out playing 60s R&B and rock with the Graham Bond Organisation, soon moved into avant-garde circles in Britain, then went to America and played with Miles Davis before launching a solo career which involved him getting seriously into Indian spirituality and co-founding the highly successful jazz-rock band Mahavishnu Orchestra. Branched into a fusion of jazz and Indian classical music with Shakti; since the 80s, has mostly returned to electrified jazz. Famous for having short hair in the early 70s "because it is my guru's will", but also for his blistering speed and accuracy (Frank Zappa likened him to a "machine gun"), and his restless musical imagination.
- 2014 - The Boston Record
- Pat Metheny
- Joni Mitchell: Dabbled in this style in the '70s:
- 1976 - Hejira
- Morphine: A '90s alternative band that played "low rock", a style completely unique to them that blended rock, blues and jazz together with singer Mark Sandman's deep, crooning bass-baritone voice on top. The trio stood out for completely eschewing the guitar, the instrument that most other rock groups are built around, and instead having a bassist-drummer-saxophonist lineup that is typically only otherwise seen in jazz.
- National Health: Another Canterbury scene supergroup, which pretty much picked up where Hatfield and the North left off; once again, expect lengthy, mostly instrumental prog rock compositions with significant jazz influence. They also only stayed together a few years.
- Nu Genea: Italian duo that mixes jazz music and Italo Disco with traditional Canzone Napoletana.
- Panzerballett: German jazz fusion quintet with very prominent metal influences and Genre Roulette tendencies. Their drummer, Sebastian Lanser, is also known for his role in Obscura.
- Planet X: Instrumental jazz fusion/progressive metal supergroup helmed by Derek Sherinian and Virgil Donati. Known for having featured some serious big names as session musicians (Tony MacAlpine, Allan Holdsworth, Billy Sheehan, and Dave LaRue are but a few of the people who have contributed to it).
- Pink Martini
- Pomplamoose
- Puya: A Puerto Rican Jazz Fusion/Progressive metal band noted for drawing heavily from Latin jazz and salsa.
- The Rippingtons
- David Sancious: Started out as a member of the E Street Band before forming his own jazz-fusion trio Tone. Since the 80s, he's been a highly sought-after session and touring musician, working with names such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Eric Clapton, Jon Anderson and more.
- Santana
- 1970 - Abraxas
- 2002 - Shaman
- Carlos Santana
- Shiina Ringo: A particularly eclectic example who started to gain acclaim in the late '90s for her Japanese rock/pop sound, and began to drift more towards jazz (and to garner more critical acclaim) in the mid-'00s. Her album Heisei Fūzoku (or Heisei Customs, 2007), a soundtrack for the film Sakuran, can be categorised as orchestral jazz pop. Its successor, Sanmon Gossip (The Threepenny Gossip, 2009), is a major example of Genre Roulette, but most of it qualifies as jazz of some sort or other; Wikipedia categorises it as "acid jazz". Her most acclaimed album, Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana (Chlorinated Lime, Semen, Chestnut Flower, 2003), isn't as heavily oriented towards jazz, but still incorporates it at times. Her work is often particularly influenced by Latin American jazz; she has also covered several jazz standards, titled one of her songs in tribute to John Coltrane, and recorded several collaborations with Japanese jazz/rock band Soil & "Pimp" Sessions.
- Shining: Started out as an acoustic jazz band (and spinoff of Jaga Jazzist) for their first two albums (Where the Ragged People Go, 2001, and Sweet Shanghai Devil, 2003, the second of which was significantly more avant-garde) before moving into jazz fusion/progressive rock for their next two (In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster, 2005, and Grindstone, 2007). Starting with Blackjazz (2010), they incorporated black metal and industrial influence without eschewing the jazz elementsnote , though evidently they'd been performing live in this style for quite some time already (somewhat out of necessity, since the earlier songs' arrangements were impractical to reproduce). Not to be confused with the Swedish band of the same name; while the two acts started out playing wildly disparate genres of music, both of them now incorporate elements of black metal and progressive metal into their sound, so this happens frequently.
- Snarky Puppy
- Soft Machine: Another important band in the Canterbury Scene, and probably one of the edgiest and most experimental jazz fusion bands ever.
- Volume Two (1969)
- Third (1970)
- Esperanza Spalding: A fusion bassist and singer who is probably best remembered outside of the jazz world for winning the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2011, which made her the first jazz instrumentalist to win the award, beating out Justin Bieber, Florence + the Machine, Drake and Mumford & Sons in the process. Inside the jazz world, Spalding is one of the top contemporary fusion artists, known for incorporating indie rock, art rock, funk and R&B influences into her music.
- Squarepusher: Mixes this with Drum and Bass, with the amount of jazz fusion really depending on the album)
- Steely Dan: Led by the songwriting duo Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, they were one of best known and most acclaimed jazz-rock bands of the '70s. Famous for being perfectionists in the studio, Fagen and Becker's sardonic lyrics, and their use of top-notch session musicians to create their signature sound.
- 1973 - Countdown to Ecstasy
- 1977 - Aja
- Sting: The former frontman of The Police, Sting's early solo material continued the jazz fusion approach that the band's last album, Synchronicity, leaned into. Sting would abandon the style on his third album, though traces of it still occasionally pop up.
- T Square: The other big hitter of Japanese jazz fusion, their style incorporates traditional jazz with Progressive Rock and pop sensibilities. They are well known for having composed "Truth", the theme song for Fuji TV's Formula One broadcasts in Japan; former keyboardist Shiro Sagisu is also well-known for composing the soundtrack to anime like Bleach, Magi: Labyrinth of Magic and Neon Genesis Evangelion, while founding guitarist Masahiro Andoh has lent his hand for videogames like Arc the Lad and Gran Turismo.
- Thundercat
- Tower Of Power
- Trombone Shorty: A New Orleans-born singer and horn player associated in recent years with a funk metal take on fusion, popularized in part by his appearances on the cable series Treme.
- 2010 - Backatown
- U.K.
- V (Singer): Jazz, pop, and R&B on Layover.
- War (Band)
- Weather Report: A jazz fusion band formed by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and the aforementioned Wayne Shorter, both members of Miles Davis' jazz fusion-era quartet. Among the band's best known recordings is the Grammy nominated 1977 album Heavy Weather, one of the best selling jazz fusion records of all time. During the late 70's and early 80's, the band's lineup famously included...
- Jaco Pastorius: Hugely innovative bass player from Florida; also a good drummer. Started out playing R&B, played on Pat Metheny's early recordings and also with Joni Mitchell. Pioneered the fretless electric bass when he acquired a Fender Jazz Bass which had had the frets ripped out and filled in, thereby making him the first bass guitarist who could make the instrument sing.note His first solo album contained an exhilarating and almost-unaccompanied rendition of the ferociously difficult Charlie Parker/Miles Davis bebop classic "Donna Lee", forever earning him jazz credibility. Volatile and erratic, but he was to the bass guitar in the 70s more or less what Charlie Christian was to the electric guitar in the 30s and Jimi Hendrix was to it in the 1960s. Suffered from bipolar disorder and had major substance abuse problems, and died tragically young in 1987 after being fatally beaten by a club bouncer in Florida. Still celebrated as a musician who had an incredible ability to communicate with audiences using, of all things, the bass guitar: he was a flamboyant showman as well as a superb musician, and audiences loved him.
- Tony Williams
- 1969 - Emergency!
- Frank Zappa: Musical iconoclast who mixed classical music, rock, jazz and doowop in unique contrasts and combinations. Some of his albums have a very distinctive jazzrock feeling to them.
- 1969 - Hot Rats
- 1972 - Waka/Jawaka
- 1972 - The Grand Wazoo
- 1991 - The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life
- 1991 - Make a Jazz Noise Here
