from the 70s onwards and based on contemporary rhythms.
came up in the 70s, when modern rock rhythms were integrated into Jazz by musicians like John McLaughlin, Pierre Moerlen ("Gong"), Alan Holdsworth, Jean Luc Ponty , Pat Martino (with only one album called "Joyous Lake" (he played jazz based on walking-bass lines and swing on his other albums) as well as quite a few others.
At the same time many rock and pop musicians integrated elements from jazz and classical music into their style because they and their audience were becoming bored with the simple "formatting" of rock, while they resented the pop attitude of that times mainstream acts, which concentrated either on highly simplistic (to avoid saying stupid) political statements or on optical elements (clothing, haircuts).
This led to related styles like "classical rock", "art-rock" or "progressive rock" (YES, Gentle Giant, King Crimson) .
Some of the musicians like John McLaughlin were extremely successfull with "Gold"-certified albums in several countries. The style was very broad and included european groups like "United Jazz & Rock Orchestra" (with Charlie Mariano, Volker Kriegel, Wolfgang Dauner a.o.) , Nucleus or IF.
Today the style is played by very few musicians - the german group MATALEX (since 1993), US-group METRO, canadian group UZEB (now not performing anymore), the recently revived BRAND X (originally with drummer Phil Collins before he joined Genesis), Canadian bassist Alain Caron and Alan Holdsworth are probably the best surviving examples of this high-energy style.
It is usually dominated by guitars and keyboards, melodic - and the musicians tend to play the long solos they are not allowed to play in normal rock anymore.
Some of the jazz-rock musicians cooperated with Miles Davis, who founded the early concepts of
which originally was not even called this name. Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and to a lesser extend Chick Corea combined more funky rhythms with jazz solos. Corea concentrated more on combining hispanic, classical and rock influences with his early group "Return To Forever". (and could therefore be seen as jazz-rock at least in the beginning of his rock influenced period). Parallel to this the group "Weather Report" developed a combination of wild synthesizer textures, jazz, rock, funk and ethno-elements into their own style. The bandleaders Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter are still very successfull today - and bassman Jaco Pastorius became a legend for comibing melodic playing on a electric bass with virtuosity and good taste in the group - before he died very early. His replacement Victor Bailey is still alive - and can be heard with quite a few people including Bill Evans, Jane Getter a.o.
The overall style evolved with Stanley Clarke (bass), George Duke (keyboards), Lenny White (drums) and others developing a more "commercial" direction with lyrics and singers.
Other musicians involved in this include singer Gayle Moran, Steve Gadd (drums), Don Alias (percussion), Airto Moreira (drums & percussion), Flora Purim (vocals) and guitarist Al di Meola.
For anyone wanting to check out the style - please be careful which albums of these musicians you buy, since all of these musicians have played in many different styles of jazz.
Important albums are:
Since then Chick Corea has recorded a few albums with his
"Electric Band", which was partly based on the style.Another great
musician who continues to be a star since then is singer Al
Jarreau.
Over the years his group featured some of the best jazz musicians
around - including Mike Stern, Hiram Bullock (both guitars) and
Marcus Miller (bass).
From this a very commercial music developed, which was called "Fusion" and seen very negatively by many journalists. The more pop-oriented style usually had very simple melodies and easy to follow solos - as well as a very smooth sound, which was not very dynamic and was seen by many purists as boring.
The main musicians were Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Earl Klugh (all guitars), David Sanborn (alto sax, slightly harder edged then the others), Grover Washington Jr. (sax), Bob James (keyboards) as well as groups like Spyro Gyra. George Benson joined the direction.
They were supported by drummers Idris Muhammad, Billy Cobham and Steve Gadd (who together probably played on more then 80% of the important recordings of the style.)
The musical style can still often be heard if you watch US-TV talkshows or comedy live-shows, since these often have house-bands playing the style. The most famous of these is the "Saturday Night Live" band, which always hires great musicians before they become famous on their own. Musicians from this group include Marcus Miller, David Sanborn, Hiram Bullock, Jane Getter among a few others.
In the 1990 the concept developed into "Smooth Jazz" , which can be heard on many radio stations in the US, where this "radio format" has a market share of around 20 % in most big cities. The radio stations want the music to be relatively "smooth" and good to be played in the background. This results in special versions being done by many musicians just for this radio format - and these versions are usually "artistically castrated" - solos are left out or shortened, the sound is made less dynamic etc... Most of the musicians are actually much more interesting then can be heard on these stations - but for this you have to hear them live or (in some cases) on their normal album-CDs.
Interesting musicians in the style are:
Chuck Loeb (guitars) , Nelson Rangell (sax), Spyro Gyra (but for this group I can only recommend their live albums)
Miles Davis returned to the scene after some years of reconvalescence from a heavy accident in the mid-80s with a new funky pop-jazz style, which was extremely popular and led to sales of several millions of his albums from this style.
The main albums of the master himself are:
The members of these bands included many very influential musicians of today (as was the case with Miles group members of the earlier phases.
This time the guests included Mike Stern and John Scofield (guitars), Marcus Miller (bass), Adam Holzman (keyboards) Branford Marsalis and Bill Evans (sax) for several years - all of these are by now very influential. Holzman has influenced many drum&bass remixers and musicians in the UK and the US, Bill Evans was one of the first jazz musicians to include rap vocals into funky jazz and Marcus Miller established himself as a pop-producer and arranger as well as a strong bandleader with very funky jazz.
There were also countless other musicians involved in these recordings an tours - including Omar Hakim , Paulinho Da Costa, Darryl Jones, Robert Irving III. Drummer AL Foster also showed in the group that he can play funk as well as older jazz rhythms.
Probably the most important albums from the Miles Davis influence are:
Some american groups combined more funky rhythms and pop vocals with jazz. They were not marketed as Jazz, even though they were very near to older jazz styles and therefore are seen by many jazz writers as pop-groups.
They include "DREAMS", "Blood,Sweat & Tears" and "Chicago Transit Authority" (which later changed the name to "Chicago").
Vibraphonist Gary Burton and bassist Steve Swallow were among the main artists combining so-called modal playing (compositions based on the scale systems of early church modes or derivation of these - instead of typical mayor or minor scales as most classical compositions and rock) with complex harmonic sequences as in bebop or popular swing tunes of the first half of the century.
They often also used rock or latin rhythms - but the instrumentation (and therefore the sound)was more typical to jazz then rock and therefore quite different from Jazz-Rock and Fusion.
From this concept a whole group of musicians became well-known -
and one of them, guitarist Pat Metheny, even reached the sales charts
and wide popularity worldwide after cooperating with David Bowie.
Other great musicians are the guitarists John Abercrombie, John
Scofield, Mike Stern and Bill Frisell as well as the often overlooked
guitarists Randy Roos and Mick Goodrich. There were also many other
good musicians from this "school" - including Tiger Okoshi (trumpet),
drummer Jun Saito and pianist Dave Kikoski (who later started playing
more Neo-Bebop and became know for this)
Most of the musicians came from the Berklee College of Music in Boston - the same school that also was one of the main educating grounds for the jazz-rock and jazz-funk musicians as well as countless professional players who can today be heard with many popstars.
While "Acid Jazz" was an english hyped dance style, it is not considered Jazz by most people. While some of the musicians were actually interesting, most were very mediocre dance producers who thought they could use the name jazz for their product to make it interesting. This is typical for the UK-pop-business anyhow - journlaists, musicians and marketers there seem to think that it is enough to give something a new good-sounding name associated with something of quality to become successful. They tend to ignore the fact that for longterm success the product (the musician) must be good too. They also try to sell a "Genre" instead of the real thing. And this is contrary to the century-old realities of the entertainment business that a good quality product and personal strenght and originality are necessary - and that the audience is not as dumb as some journalists think.
Acid-Jazz turned into a commercial disappointment - and a very "tired" thing - within two years. But some good ideas led to something interesting, which could be called Post-Acid-Jazz.
There are several very individual styles combining broken dance grooves, electronic sounds, samples and live playing now - and these musicians come from several fields. The belgian rock group "Wizards Of Ooze" made some memorable recordings in this field, which combined stylistic influences from 50s jazz acts (not sampled, but played manually) on their early albums and on tracks for the "Acid jazz" compilations. The austrian remixers "Kruder and Dorfmeister" also did some very interesting stuff, and Adam Holzman combined this with his experience in Miles Davis' band and the funk style he played when he worked live for Chaka Khan. From the UK there are also some interesting musicians on the label "Outcaste" - which also combines jazz musicians with modern electronics. Another interesting case is Errorhead, acombination of guitar and tekkno grooves which is somewhere between instrumental rock, tekkno and jazz - and the modern conceptual equivalent of the early "artrock" styles.
Drum&Bass, while usually being seen as an underground dance style, is actually closely related to jazz - and some pop groups are heavily influenced by jazz again - including "Massive Attack", who sampled grooves from the above mentioned Billy Cobham as the basis for their biggest hits so far. The only insulting thing about it is that a lot of these young musicians get the credit for great grooves without either inventing nor performing them.
Combination of jazz improvisations with often more moody dark sounds, less rhythmic drive and influences from european melodic and harmonic traditions. Check out Jan Gabarek and many albums on the record label ECM - as well as young pianist Markus Burger (who recorded a jazz album based on religios hymns called "Spiritual Standards") and bassman Dieter Ilg (who uses european traditional folk songs in his trio with guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel and drummer Steve Arguelles).
For a long time, jazz musicians have used rhythms, sounds and ideas from non-european cultures in trying to create their own recognisable music, setting them apart from other musicians. In the 70s, Weather Report and other groups already created such combinations - but recently this has come back big time. In some cases musicians from Africa, Asia or the caribean led such groups - some times after studying jazz and pop traditions at US-music schools. One of the leaders of "Weather Report", keyboardist Joe Zawinul, actually came back with such a combination. While wacthed with suspicion and sometimes malice by the new traditionalists, some of these musicians are starting to become successfull now.
Author: Alex MerckLast Updated: 25. December 1999