- Also called:
- fusion
- Key People:
- Joni Mitchell
- Frank Zappa
- Herbie Mann
- John McLaughlin
- Herbie Hancock
jazz-rock
-
What is jazz-rock music?
Jazz-rock is a popular music style blending modern jazz improvisation with rock music's bass lines, drumming, and instrumentation. It emphasizes electronic instruments and dance rhythms.
Since the 1920s, fusions of jazz and popular music existed, contrasting jazz's qualities with popular music. In the 1960s, jazz tunes started incorporating rock rhythms. By 1969, artists like Miles Davis, Tony Williams, and John McLaughlin created distinctive fusion music contrasting jazz and rock elements.
In the early 1970s, bands such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Headhunters, and Weather Report further explored this style. This music gained a large audience and was known as crossover, appealing to both jazz and popular music fans.
2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
Which styles of music are combined in jazz-rock?
Jazz-rock combines modern jazz improvisation with rock music's bass lines, drumming styles, and instrumentation, with a strong emphasis on electronic instruments and dance rhythms. It contrasted and enhanced jazz and rock elements. Jazz-rock is also known as crossover because sales of the music crossed over from the jazz market to the popular music market.
Other fusions combined hard bop, the funky 1960s jazz, and rock tunes over which they improvised jazz.
4 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
When did jazz-rock become popular?
Jazz-rock, a fusion of modern jazz improvisation with rock music elements, gained popularity by the early 1970s. This musical form incorporates the bass lines, drumming styles, and instrumentation of rock, with a strong emphasis on electronic instruments and dance rhythms.
Figures like Miles Davis, along with associates such as John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock, pioneered this distinctive fusion. Davis's 1969 album, In a Silent Way, is often regarded as the seminal album of the jazz fusion movement, and his subsequent work, Bitches Brew, further embraced rock elements, influencing groups like Weather Report and Chick Coreaâs Return to Forever.
Although some critics dismissed Davis's post-Bitches Brew music, his efforts helped maintain jazz's popularity with mainstream audiences. The style became known as crossover because sales of the music crossed over from the jazz market to the popular music market.
2 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How do musicians blend jazz and rock elements in jazz-rock music?
Jazz-rock blends jazz improvisation with rock's bass lines, drumming, and instrumentation, heavily featuring electronic instruments and dance rhythms. In the 1960s, jazz musicians started incorporating rock rhythms into their music.
Figures like Miles Davis, Tony Williams, and John McLaughlin contrasted and enhanced jazz and rock elements. Other artists mixed hard bop with rock tunes, while some experimented with free jazz fusion, though the latter sometimes overshadowed jazz improvisation due to rock's repetitive patterns.
3 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
Who are some famous jazz-rock bands or artists?
Jazz-rock emerged as a popular music form blending modern jazz improvisation with rock music's bass lines, drumming, and instrumentation. Here are some famous jazz-rock bands and artists:
- Miles Davis: A trumpeter who, along with his associates, broke through to distinctive fusion music in 1969.
- Mahavishnu Orchestra: Known for radically high volume levels, complex textures, and fast modal playing.
- Chicago: Initially a jazz-rock unit, Chicago thrived as it moved toward a lighter, ballad-oriented rock style.
- Blood, Sweat & Tears: Achieved worldwide recognition with hit singles and a Grammy-winning album in 1969.
- Frank Zappa: Released the enormously influential jazz-rock fusion album Hot Rats in 1969.
6 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How has jazz-rock influenced other types of music?
Jazz-rock, a fusion of modern jazz improvisation with rock music's bass lines, drumming, and electronic instruments, has significantly impacted other musical genres.
Funk, with its aggressive urban dance music driven by syncopated rhythms, owes its development to jazz improvisation and was further explored by jazz artists like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. The blues, sharing close ties with jazz, have also seen jazzmen like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong incorporate blues elements in their music.
3 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
jazz-rock, popular musical form in which 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 Whitemanâs, there have been fusions of jazz and popular music, usually presenting jazzâs âhot,â swinging, staccato qualities in contrast to âsweet,â 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 Davisâs increasingly African-music-oriented groups, Williamsâs Lifetime quartet, McLaughlinâs fiercely loud and energetic Mahavishnu Orchestra, the light, danceable music of Hancockâs Headhunters and Coreaâs Return to Forever, and the mobile sound and rhythmic colours of Zawinulâs and Shorterâs 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.
" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">
Meanwhile, two other kinds of fusion music were also current. The most popular jazz-rock strain grew out of hard bop: the funky 1960s jazz of musicians such as flutist Herbie Mann, alto saxophonist Hank Crawford, and the Crusaders. Their repertoires included original and standard rock tunes over which they improvised jazz. In the 1970s the CTI record label in particular offered this kind of fusion music on albums by Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard, and others. Less commercially successful was the free jazz fusion of Ornette Colemanâs Prime Time group (beginning in 1973) and his associates, guitarist James Blood Ulmer, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, though all led valuable bands in the 1980s. One problem was that the recurring rhythmic-harmonic patterns of rock tended to dominate, reducing jazz improvisation to mere decoration.
A later development of jazz-rockâcontemporary jazz, or light jazzâappeared on the radio in the 1980s and â90s. The most popular kind of fusion music, it abandoned jazz elements almost completely and frequently used a minimum of improvisation. Stars of contemporary jazz included saxophonist Kenny G and the group Spyro Gyra. Two jazz-rock fashions of the 1990s were acid jazz, a catchall term for bop and free jazz improvising over funk and hip-hop rhythms; and neo-swing, which revived the shuffle rhythms of small 1940s swing (âjumpâ) bands.