Disco, Punk, New Wave, Heavy Metal, and More by Britannica Educational Publishing

Author:Britannica Educational Publishing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
Published: 2013-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

Jazz-rock is just one of a long line of fusion styles that have evolved alongside jazz. In it, modern jazz improvisation is accompanied by the bass lines, drumming styles, and instrumentation of rock music, with a strong emphasis on electronic instruments and dance rhythms. Since the recordings of 1920s bands, notably Paul Whiteman’s, there have been fusions of jazz and popular music, usually presenting jazz’s “hot,” swinging, staccato qualities in contrast to “sweet,” legato popular music characteristics. With the slow development of a unique identity in rock music, occasional jazz tunes also began including rock rhythms in the 1960s. Beginning in 1969, trumpeter Miles Davis and associates such as drummer Tony Williams, guitarist John McLaughlin, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and electric keyboardists Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Larry Young, and Chick Corea broke through to distinctive fusion musics. Jazz and rock elements contrasted, even competed with or enhanced each other, in bands of the early 1970s such as Davis’s increasingly African-music-oriented groups, Williams’s Lifetime quartet, McLaughlin’s fiercely loud and energetic Mahavishnu Orchestra, the light, danceable music of Hancock’s Headhunters and Corea’s Return to Forever, and the mobile sound and rhythmic colours of Zawinul’s and Shorter’s Weather Report.

The most important work by these musicians dates from the early 1970s; since then, most have alternated between periods of playing fusion music and playing mainstream jazz. The jazz-rock idiom gained one of the largest jazz audiences since the swing era ended in the mid-1940s. The style was also known as crossover because sales of the music crossed over from the jazz market to the popular music market. Guitarist Larry Coryell was popular in the early years of jazz-rock fusion; guitarist Pat Metheny, with his pastoral harmonies, has been a star since the late 1970s.

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