JAZZ FUSION - The Summer Season Episode 2

It’s JAZZ FUSION WEEK!! Jazz fusion is a music genre that developed in the late 1960's when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.

Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz.

As with acoustic jazz, jazz fusion also employs brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone, but other instruments often substitute for these. A jazz fusion band is less likely to use an acoustic piano and double bass, and more likely to use electric guitar, synthesizers, and bass guitar.

Here is the music we’ll be exploring in this episode. I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO ANY OF THIS MUSIC. 

Freight Train Shuffle – The Players

Trains – Steps Ahead

Tutu – Miles Davis

Dr. Hee – Tribal Tech feat. Scott Henderson

Tower of Inspiration – Dave Weckl

Growing – John Patitucci

Some Skunk Funk – Brecker Brothers

Minuano (Six Eight)" – The Pat Metheny Group