Jazz Fusion Music

The Sixties and Seventies:
During the latter part of the sixties, the jazz musicians started mixing the improvisational techniques and forms of jazz with rock’s electric instruments and the rhythms of R&B and soul. However at the same exact time, some of the rock artists started adding elements of jazz to their music. During the seventies, was the most visible decade for jazz fusion - however, the style had been represented well during the recent times. Instead of being a musical style that was codified, the jazz fusion can also be viewed as a musical approach or tradition. There are some styles of progressive rock music that has been labeled as fusion.

Typically, fusion music is instrumental and often with complex meters, time signatures, rhythmic patterns, lengthy improvisations and extended track lengths. There are many fusion musicians that are prominent that are recognized as possessing a high level of virtuosity, which is combined with the complex compositions and the musical improvisation in the meters which is rarely ever seen in the western forms of music, perhaps it is the best recognized in the jazz work of composers like Don Ellis and Dave Brubeck.

Generally fusion music receives very little airplay on the radio broadcast within the United States, owing to its usual lack of vocals, complexity, and extended track lengths that are frequently used. On the other hand, European radio is a lot friendlier to fusion music and the genre also has a rather significant following in South America and Japan. There are several radio stations on the internet that feature fusion music, which includes dedicated channels on the services like Yahoo Launchcast and AOL Radio.

Origins of Jazz Fusion:
Miles Davis, a composer and trumpeter had the greatest known influence on the actual development of the jazz fusion music genre by a one single individual. In ’46, his recording career began as Charlie Parker’s sideman and between ’49 and ’62, he was able to record several albums and records under his very own leadership popularizing in several different jazz genres, the hard bop music genre, cool jazz music genre and modal jazz music genre were the most notable. The prominent musicians that had passed through the actual ranks of Davis’s bands during this particular time, included John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley as well as Hank Mobley.

Over time, the jazz fusion music genre has grown to include several different genres of music that all are incredibly intertwined with the jazz music genre.