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Esperanza Spalding and the future of fusion Destroying Jazz by Michael A. Gonzales
With the release of Miles Davis’s revolutionary records In a Silent Way in 1969 and Bitches Brew the following year, the genius trumpeter, with the invaluable assistance of an amazing crew of young collaborators, created the musical future shock later called fusion.
Best described as improvised music that incorporates rock, funk, and soul into the grooves, fusion “revamped…Black music’s avant-garde through the use of electronics,” musician and cultural critic Greg Tate explained in 1983. However, when rock critic Lester Bangs wrote that In a Silent Way “gives you faith in the future of music,” he had no idea the prophecy of his words. A few years later, Miles Davis’s alumni, including keyboardist Herbie Hancock, pianist Chick Corea, guitarist John McLaughlin, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, formed their own innovative groups Head Hunters, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and, of course, Weather Report.
Yet, from fusion’s early days as a noisy musical contender, many narrow-minded jazz aficionados and critics were unable to appreciate the sonic change when acoustic became suddenly antiquated. Appalled by upstarts infiltrating their music with electric guitars, Moogs, wild percussion instruments, tape loops, and synthesizers, purists referred to the new musical movement as anti-jazz. In Considering Genius (2006), jazz traditionalist and essayist Stanley Crouch stated that fusion was “the aesthetic death valley” of jazz.
Yet, while the genre became quite popular, not many women instrumentalists ventured into fusion. With the exception of Alice Coltrane, Bobbi Humphrey, Joni Mitchell, Patrice Rushen, Meshell Ndegeocello, and a few others, fusion has long remained a male-dominated field. “Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and that fusion is what I want to capture in my own music,” says bassist, vocalist, and composer Esperanza Spalding, who won the Best New Artist Grammy earlier this year.
On Spalding’s three solo albums Junjo (2006), Esperanza (2008), and Chamber Music Society (2010), the twenty-six-year-old Portland, Oregon, native incorporates various styles ranging from Latin rhythms, funk, bossa nova, soul, orchestrated strings, and improvisational noodling. Currently working on her highly anticipated fourth disc, which Spalding told Billboard she would be recording in May, she is also the best chance of jazz-fusion regaining popularity in the new millennium.
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