Jazz Fusion & Jazz Funk

Why is it that some older jazz fans have such a dislike for fusion and Jazz Funk albums?

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better than smooth jazz, but it just doesnt sound right. if its full rock or full funk i can respect it. having a half-breed thing is just not something i /like/

Can you give more reasoning to why you dislike it?

What's some jazz fusion you've listened to?

(I'm asking respectfully, I like getting perspective on it sice I've been talking about the genre frequently lately)

making sense of why i dislike something is just as easy as making sense of why i like something, its difficult to explain, or more accurately impossible to explain. ive listened to that album and some herbie hancock, and i can just say i dont like fusion jazz.

Alright, fair enough, thanks for explaining what you could.

Which Herbie? (I'm guessing Headhunters)

you guessed correctly, along with some other albums mentioned in this chart

Oh hey! I made that chart!

Well I'm glad you've been giving him a listen.
Have you tried any of his early/standard stuff?

(I updated the chart btw)

Ok shit I need to re-word.
I made the LIST for the chart and another user made the visual for it. My bad. Poor wording (I don't wanna take his credit)

for a long time one of the important elements of jazz was that it needed to swing and new styles like free jazz and fusion and funk that didn't have that traditional swing feel didn't sit well with purists

so basically it seemed to fans of music in the bebop tradition to be a total sell-out style that was missing some of the most important qualities of jazz

Really well put response, thanks for your viewpoint.

It's a shame so many view it as a 'sellout' thing when there's so many good albums in the genre.

I guess also forms (less 32 bar AABA's or 12 bar blues forms etc) and harmony (where are all the ii-V-I's?) were also changing and old conventions abandoned with free and fusion, so basically most of what people thought jazz really was all about aside from improvisation were changing

it's a shame that you still find these attitudes 40 years later with many musicians who have a formal jazz education - just because you need to know and understand the roots doesn't mean you have to repeat them

I think Bill Evans said it well: "When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing to teach is style"

Evans also said about jazz that it's not a "what", but a "how" which makes a lot of sense to me.

What makes jazz unique from other genres of music is its particular approach towards technique and improvisation. Jazz is like a conversationalist; good jazz is like a very social person with a high vocabulary that can speak about anything to anyone in whatever situation.

Subgenres like Jazz Fusion and Jazz Funk eschew those qualities of jazz for structures more common in non-jazz stuff. Sure as a result you get stuff like say...the ridiculous arrangement on Bitches Brew or the kind of grooves we see on Headhunters which are really unlike anything that the jazz genre has to offer otherwise. But as a result they rely too much on repetitive themes to be any good in a jazzy way; to use the conversation analogy again, it's like one person saying the same exact thing over and over again. It's still good stuff, but most Jazz Fusion works more on the standard of how one judges progressive/psychedelic rock, and Jazz Funk works more on the standard of how one judges funk music of course.

Purists will be purists. The elements of jazz that carried over into the jazz rock/fusion/funk were the ideas of improvisation, complex harmonic changes, and the conversation. It's a different dialect of the swing/bebop language but it' still rooted in jazz. thats why any time you listen to these tunes live they're never exactly the same. It's all still improv even around the thoroughly composed tunes in fusion. to the user talking about repetitiveness, there needed to be something to hold on to, in bebop the repetition came from the changes during a chorus, I think they just took that and replaced it (not entirely) with funky riffs or guitar riffs or whatever. It's still very much in the jazz tradition in so many ways, and I can't imagine anyone (purists) who know anything about jazz wouldn't acknowledge that and understand that. but some people just really like to swing. I know I do, but I also love all of billy cobhams shit, all of the tony williams lifetime albums, and all the stanley clarke shit as well as the ornette colemans, mingus', and pharaoh sanders'

But it's not about the repetitiveness of a chorus, in jazz there are obviously phrases and themes that are being built upon. But because of how they are being built on, using my conversation analogy, it's more like someone talking but staying on the same subject. Compare that to say...each individual block of tracks like Pharaoh's Dance, Bitches Brew, or Watermelon where it's constant samey repetition rather than say...how John Coltrane takes the main theme of Giant Steps or the first part of A Love Supreme, and building on them with variations, key changes, techniques, etc.

One can argue that yeah before hard bop/post bop, jazz had more straightforward repetition as well, but that's the stuff that went on to become pop music rather than what is jazz itself.

nothing wrong with repetition, though

a lot of bop-tradition is very formulaic and repetitive, modal jazz was pretty much rebellion against the limiting nature of functional harmony, there's only so much wankery you can do with ii-V-I and I don't think anyone wanted to pursue that stuff after Giant Steps

Like I said , a lot of that was what went on to become aspects of pop music in general rather than what is unique to jazz. Not to mention that going back to a form that's arguably more repetitive at times definitely felt like a regression to certain jazz peeps.

i think those tunes served different purposes too. much like rock-it! was a heaping pile of dog shit pop tune meant to function as a pop tune, where as with say watermelon man the focus is on rhythmic conversation between instrument which i'd argue comes from the west african drum tradition with of course a modern (at the time) funk twist. and again, if you listen to any live version of this tune, you won't listen to the same thing over again. I think it was miles who said something to the effect of "the album is just the advertisement for what you'll hear live, we don't play the same thing twice"

I'd just argue that there's nothing inherently great about bebop forms and harmony - shit was just an evolution of the popular music of the time

if you think of it that way, applying jazz-like improvisation, musical self-expression and soloing conventions and all that to rock and funk styles was basically the same thing cats like Parker and Dizzy were doing earlier with popular music of the time

I'll just mention here that in the late 60's and 70's there was a concentrated effort of taking away white man's influence from jazz and pursuing more Afro-centric jazz that was heavier on rhythms and basically modal and simple in harmony - Pharoah Sanders and other stuff like that that would often be called spiritual jazz now came out of that kind of thinking

of course, fusion world music (don cherry) and other dudes walking around in afro-garb and shit were all about the motherland. a lot of prominent modern musicians still have that chip on their shoulder, thomas pridgen, chris coleman immediately come to mind

See, I got two beefs on this. First, for actual rhythmic conversation in terms of what jazz does, free jazz was doing that to the next level. Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, Coltrane's Meditations with its crazy two drum parts, that kinda stuff was doing that.

Now you said "with a funk twist." BUT, at the same time, what came with that was a minimalism approach to jazz, thus being counter to ideas mentioned as minimalism was the latest in white people music around that time. Not to mention Miles straight up having shades of Stockhausen on On The Corner.

It was for sure great for helping spice up rock and funk styles. But then, again it was more just rock and funk with fantastic rhythmic work than jazz itself at that point.

Cherry settled in Sweden, though. In Europe the post-war generation was pretty eager to apply jazz ideas and principles to local styles, which I think was great.

I often feel like US jazz fans never really caught up with that. European jazz is still pretty shallowly known and understood in the states IMHO.

as a European jazz fan I just find that kind of bop-centered thinking to be pretty old fashioned - in my opinion the world of jazz already blew up with different styles and forms in the late 60's and I'll use the term very liberally

sure, there's a lot of depth in bop-based playing today and that's great, but it just feels wrong to define that as the only jazz tradition with everything that's happened since

Anyone got any similar albums to this?

hancock himself wrote/talked about watermelon man and chameleon being based on rhythmic interplay.

I don't know what to tell you about the minimalism other than the tunes are skeletons for which the musicians use to explore funky ideas, much in the jazz context, and I don't think funk was a white person thing. is it possible minimalism overlapped unconsciously because of the nature of the funk which is by nature a dance music? funk was very much an afro music and I'd imagine they were exploring those concepts.not to mention hancock was a child during most of the jim crowe era where as older generations of musicians really had that hate towards white america because they lived their adulthood through that shit. dunno

I can't even begin to describe this album. But I want similar as well.

the jazz tradition is bebop though. thats where it all come from. swing was the predecessor

First time checking the album out from YouTube, so excuse me for any stupidity

are you that Herbie fanboy trying to get people to rec Herbie albums?

because with all that vocoder-stuff in the beginning I have to mention Herbie's Sunlight from the same year. Also Herbie's Dedication that was only released in Japan for a long time pushes some of the same buttons, although it has a lot of acoustic piano moments as well.

In any case, I think Hancock is your best point of reference in US jazz for similar stuff in that time period.

here are some albums from 2016 that might interest you:
Yussef Kamaal - Black Focus
Takuya Kuroda - Zigzagger
Jeff Parker - The New Breed

Based on some quick listening, I think that album was kind of ahead of it's time - it's not as plastic-y sounding as most of similar US smooth jazz of late 70's, but I think it's actually pretty similar to current retro-minded fusion

euro jazz sucks

yeah, until 1959 it was

jazz is alive - unless we want it dead

I'm sure this thread now answers OPs question

I don't agree with that. I think, as a jazzer myself, a deep knowledge of bebop really informs the rest of the styles because it all came from bebop. world fusion, free jazz, insert whatever here jazz all stems from one spot. if a kid is like i want to play jazz and begins right at fusion, then he's playing fusion licks without knowing how they came to be, the history of the music. every great musician i've ever known, met, and played with are all fucking historians and have a deep knowledge of the past. they don't just strictly play bebop, a lot of them play contemporary/smooth/ one guy in particular is only like 22 years old and mixes free jazz, death metal, fusion, hip-hop, all that shit into one giant mashup. that doesn't just come out of thin air, he played jazz heavily for almost a decade before making his music which is still informed by the bebop tradition.
youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZApUzKnCY

more of rache
youtube.com/watch?v=j2UjOzlnMHw

That's not bop thinking though? It's more centered around modal/free/avant garde jazz thinking since bop style thinking limited approaches to improv/approaches in jazz. Most forms exploded big time by the late 50s, not 60s. Fusion/funk approaches to jazz often feel like regressions comparatively due to again, limiting approaches to improv/technique but in a different way from bop and forms before it. Of course, like I said, the fusion/funk stuff works from a non-jazz perspective due to its arrangements and timbres. Shit, formally some of the Headhunter tracks were using 32 bar stuff as old as the 1920s maybe older.

Either way, I feel at that point Herbie was for sure doing a lot more for funk than jazz.

I don't disagree that from a pedagogic stand point musicians studying jazz should be taught bebop history and styles - major fusion figures like Miles, Herbie and Zawinul were certainly capable of playing earlier styles.

Surely a professional jazz musician must be able to play many different styles and know a large number of standards - regardless of what their own style and voice is.

That still doesn't mean that whatever music is being made needs to clearly be in the bebop tradition and from what I know very different sounding end results have some roots in jazz tradition. I personally find that much of the most interesting music in jazz today comes from combining different ideas.

I'm just trying to say that jazz is not just Bebop or Bop and after fusion and the work of artists like Herbie and Miles and everything that has happened since 1959 this really shouldn't be a discussion we're having any more -.jazz is today really wider than that and if you want to refer exclusively to Bop-tradition, just call it that

My mind was blown when I first heard it. I only knew of him because of YMO(but hadn't listened to more than a few songs at the time) and because of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. I honestly can't even describe what it was like because it was so unique and not what I was expecting at all.

Thank you user, especially for the recent stuff. I'll check this stuff out and should probably listen to everything Sakamoto has to offer even if it's not all jazz.

post what you think if you get around to that stuff when the thread is still alive - curious about whether that stuff appeals to you at all

But the talk was NEVER about staying to "bop" traditions. Developments in jazz that happened from modal, free, and avant garde jazz stuck to developing what made jazz unique universally among ALL jazz tradition. Fusion/jazz funk have made the non-jazz world wider, but have also in a way made jazz narrower because the idea of "characters" doesn't exist in those genres as much. You don't listen to the hippest jazz for some new hip sound or w/e. Every legit jazz instrumentalist has their own personal style, and that is what we explore. Fusion/jazz funk doesn't allow that exploration of style since they are far more based around compositions.

>fusion/jazz funk doesn't allow thatexploration of style since they are far more based around compositions
I disagree. You can tell when you're listening to billy cobham vs lenny white, both who played fusion and both had a unique style and approach to the instrument within the same style of music. pretty much any great fusion musician has a way of showing their personality with whatever they play. I used drummers naturally because I play drumsand thats what I study. like my example with mike mitchell earlier. his style is a blend of all styles of music but it's uniquely him. youtube.com/watch?v=j2UjOzlnMHw

well you can go and argue that with Herbie, Chick, Shorter and the ghost of Miles all you want but that's basically bullshit and it's really, really weird how anyone who claims to like jazz can think like that in 2017

Yeah, and due to the limits of structure in the fusion genre, there's very little variation as to what can be done to really show their personality. Certainly not the case with the like of someone like Elvin Jones especially on the later stuff he did with Coltrane. Fusion's limit to more poppy forms and structures will never allow for that level of freedom. Hell look at Tony Williams' playing before and after Davis went fusion. Williams started doing less interesting things and was more used for just the usual "keep a beat here" type stuff.

If you wanna use another example, Herbie Hancock on Maiden Voyage vs his later stuff. On Maiden Voyage he has a far larger vocabulary and his playing is far more three dimensional with the sheer variety of technique on display. Post-Sextant it's all more limited piano chords/piano rolls kinda play.

>b-but some big names in jazz said so!
I can find even more names who'll say otherwise and back me up.

>how can you think that way in 2017 it's bullshit!
>literally using the current year argument

Cool, now instead of saying that, lets actually talk about the actual music content. Though I don't honestly hold it against you, either because I used think of jazz in a very similar fashion as you until I really started paying attention to every detail and I started listening to A LOT more jazz.

Keep in mind that jazz fusion and jazz funk aren't the only developments into jazz. Sonny Sharrock's later stuff, John Zorn with his Masada groups, Don Cherry's pre-70s cheesy fusion stuff, a group like LAM in 2016, etc. all do new sounds/timbres while still keeping a good focus on technique/improv.

Started with Sunlight and I'm definitely feeling this. I can see the similarities even beyond vocoder even if the overall vibe is slightly different. This had to of influenced Daft Punk a lot.

OP Here, just saying I'm glad to see all this discussion of Herbie in the thread, keep it up guys, I love it :)

you should include dedication, thats a great album

I was hesitant to include it since it was kind of a 'live' album and less of a studio one (I wanted to only include studio ones).

yeah that makes sense i guess, when i first heard it that blew my mind. he always seemed to be ahead of some of the trends of the time

I might give a listen to his live/collaboration albums and make a seperate, smaller chart for that.

>hasn't listened to Herbie's full discography
>pretends to be an expert on the guy
Some "fan" you are