The difference between Fusion and Fusion

What is the difference between the kind of Fusion that is listed in the archives and the bands that are not listed? Apparently, that genre is widely open for interpretation.

Among others, bands like Bozzio Levin Stevens and Derek Sherinian are listed as Fusion artists. When I listen to the Sherinian albums, I can't understand why other similar artists are not included, for example Jeff Beck, Marty Friedman, Tony MacAlpine, Eric Johnson, Scott Henderson, ... even Satriani and Vai are similar, but borderline (please don't make this a "artist XYZ isn't prog" thread, we have enough of them already).

Another area that is not included is Jazz Fusion ... at least bands like Tribal Tech are missing.

Is there a definition of some kind of "Prog Fusion"? Or is Fusion on this website just used as a catch-all genre for bands that don't fit anywhere else (like Zappa)?

Don't you mean Fision and Fusion?

Snow Dog wrote: Don't you mean Fision and Fusion?

Don't you mean "Fission"?

On this site 'fusion' is now wide open to interpetation, and lost any relevant and tight meaning. The jazz rock fusion and other jazz fusion discussion groups elsewhere on the web appear to be more sensible and far less ambiguous with their meanings - therefore they know what other contributors are writing about!!!

So from the beginning again (and boring as it seems I've now written about  and argued the semantics of this subject for a decade):

Fusion: a fusion of two or more different musical genres.

Jazz fusion: the fusion of jazz with one or more other musical genres.

Jazz rock (fusion): a fusion of jazz with rock, and sometimes too other musical genres. Hot Rats has been sometimes called the best hybrid of jazzwith rock.....

Rock jazz:  used once upon a time for bands that  used jazz to a limited extent (e.g. Nice), but the term also took in brass rock groups such as Chicago, BST and even If.

Jazz funk: jazz funked up with soul music, from Herbie Hancock to Stevie Wonder, to Tower Of Power (also brass rockers) to Kelvinator, and probably Miles Davis from Jack Johnson and Bitches Brew onwards, was more jazz funk than jazz rock, ( on We Want Miles Mike Stern pushed Davis deeper into jazz rock), and the current cutting edge is David Fuiczynski.

Nu.fusion: newer form of jazz rock, where newer rhythms are employed -  started in the mid 90's by American Jon Hassell, now lead by separate Norwegians,  Bugge Wesseltoft and Nils Petter Molvaer.

Jazz drum'n'bass - where real d and b are used, for instance Wayne Krantz's rhythm section formed Boomish - while the best selling Swedish group EST employ D & B in straighter new jazz (sometimes called nu.jazz).

World jazz fusion: jazz fused with one or another form of world musics, e.g. Indo-jazz fusion  (the first jazz fusion group formed in 1965 was called Joe Harriott/John Mayer's Indo Jazz Fusions, Shakti, Zakir Hussain, Trilok Gurtu, etc.), Arab jazz fusion (often with the oud as lead), gypsy jazz (perhaps the oldest type dating back to the late 30's with Django Reinhart and nowadays associated with Birelli Lagrene, and E. European musicians). Afro-jazz started out of South Africa (Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breathe) but  now strong (sub-Saharan) regional variations can be heard. When African musicians move to cosmopolitan cities allsorts of new jazz based musics can be heard, e.g. ZuBop in London or Magic Malik in Paris.

Flamenco jazz: e.g. touched upon by McLaughlin, DiMeola, DeLucia.

Folk jazz: jazz fused with folk (usually  Anglo Celtic or Anglo/West European folk - so strictly a sub-division of world jazz) e.g.  Danny Thompson's solo work, some of John Martyn's (eg. Live At Leeds), Jan Garbarek with Agne Buen Garnas on Rosensfole.

And some some particular cases of jazzrock merged with Japanese influences - Kazumi Watanabe, or Vietnamese folk with jazz: Ngugen Le.

Then serious/classical music with jazz: ranging from the plainsong with Jan Garbarek sax improvi.e.  his collaboration with the Hillaird Ensemble (what drummer Steve Smith impromptually told me was 'monk jazz'!!) to Jacques Loussier or MJQ messing with Bach - or Stravinski and Bernstein writing for jazz musicians.

Then we get to the specifics of progressive rock merged with jazz, known as 'progressive fusion' - and perhaps where the root of confusion lies. Specifically members of Dream Theater getting together with well known members of other bands, to  play instrumentals that included some improv - but was it strictly jazz improv????? Hence Liquid Tension Experiment (aka Contact Angle Goniometry - an obscure  surface physicist's joke btw). Then Bozzio Levin and Steven arrived as Black Light Syndrome and the floodgates went down. The Fr. Canadian label Unicorn records seems to have a number of prog fusion groups signed - Spaced Out being an excellent start point.

Jam jazz - yet another ambiguous and so confusing term, which include Medeski Martin and Woods and Bela Fleck & The Flecktones. Then Bela Fleck you're reminded that Country music in its various forms has regularly been  hybridised with jazz, e.g.more recent work by Bill Frisell and hints of it in earlier Pat Metheny Group albums.

So went anybody uses the word 'fusion' alone wrt to music, I cringe.

Shack Man wrote: Fusion = music. listen to it, and like it, or don't like it.  Don't get caught up in what different music should be called.

Yes that my theory but it  doesn't always work in practice. How do you explain what a type of music is about, when a sample of a band's music is not available (and even if a sample is available, is it representative)? Nobody goes out and buys records purely because they like the name of a band but have no clue to the music - is there anybody who likes absolutely every type of music there is to be heard? You have to use terms correctly to provide clues - definitions devised properly will help give clues. I see terms use don this site with considerable degrees of ambiguity, and know the newies trying to find out about various types of music, are going to be confusion - worse, end up buying records they wouldn't like.

I am not familiar with these: The Mistakes, Mike Keneally (albums like Sluggo! or Hat), Tribal Tech, Eric Johnson - Venus Isle.

BUT...

Tony MacAlpine - Chromaticity is a good example of metal-fusion, imo. As are all Planet X albums, Derek Sherinian's solo stuff, Jordan Rudess (at least his last two solo albums are clear metal-fusion for me), Steve Vai, Matalex (though I heard only their Jazz Grunge), Mindflowers, Michael Harris (Distorted Views, Sketches From The Thought Chamber)... and quite many others.

Btw, this is one of my favorite sub-genres of prog.

So has it been decided by the collaborators that jazz rock bands (i.e. scott henderson, vital information, tribal tech, etc.) are not prog and shall not be a part of the archives?

Personally, I could go either way on it.  it can be justified that they should be here, it could be justified to leave them out.  However, we have included weather report....

GoldenSpiral wrote: So has it been decided by the collaborators that jazz rock bands (i.e. scott henderson, vital information, tribal tech, etc.) are not prog and shall not be a part of the archives? Personally, I could go either way on it.  it can be justified that they should be here, it could be justified to leave them out.  However, we have included weather report....

IMO that's a good decision, because these bands are closer to Jazz than Prog, and I don't think that they would refer to their music as "Prog". It would be nice if there was a section of progarchives that deals with music that is not exactly prog ... I believe that something like that is being discussed by the admins. But I guess that it would consume too much time on part of the collaborators and admins ... if so, I'd rather want them to focus on PROG.

Edited by MikeEnRegalia

MikeEnRegalia wrote: The "Metal Fusion" is something to argue about ... I agree that artists like Vai belong to that category, and should be included in the archives. Not just because they are similar to artists that are already listed (Sherinian), but because the play progressive Fusion. Then again there are those who believe that the entire genre doesn't belong here ... it's an interesting topic.

We need to break off and form progmetalarchives.com so we can include all these great bands that some of the folks around here are too stubborn to accept!

philippe wrote: Since when Marty Friedman and others shreders play fusion music? (I know that Mc Alpine is called as a fusion guitarist but it remains too discreet). Al Di Meola, Allan Wholdsworth and few others are really fusion guitarists...why are you always looking for progressive elements where they don't exist?

 

You don't know your Holdsworth then - some reference points: UK in the late 70's, Soma in the late 80's  to  K2 in 2005, are prog.