I can only answer this question of what fusion means to me because fusion means something different to everyone.

To me, fusion is jazz mixed with rock, that is to say jazz played on electric instruments, perferably with electric guitar being the lead voice since a too-loud distorted guitar is what people associate with rock music. I mean if there is a blaring distorted guitar people call it rock music regardless of what notes are being played.

This is why people think Holdsworth is a rock musician and why you do not find him in the jazz section of the cd shop.

One thing that characterizes and makes fusion distinct from instrumental or progressive rock and progressive metal are the lines and the changes and chord voicings. If a player does not speak with a jazz vaocbulary and involve jazz changes, it is not fusion to me. If a player uses alot of intricate power chords, this is not fusion to me.

What fusion is not:

progressive rock or metal: clever chords and maybe even odd meters but with power chords and the usual penatonic soloing, using unaltered, obvious scale structures that is closely tied to blues. Rock also tends to involve soloing over one or 2 maybe even 3 chords. While fusion does this too at times, it does usually imply changes even though the tonal center is not moving.

Yes I will agree that jazz is blues but is so much more, it invloves playing chords over chords that move, this is known as superimposing chords. Other concepts involve reharmonising and sequencing which is basically taking the same pattern and converting it to a different chord or scale degree.

What distinguishes fusion from jazz is the electric element, jazz is played on acoustic instruments.

Now on that note you can have classical/jazz fusion played on an acoustic instrument. For example pianist Paul Bley or guitarist Ralph Towner.

This is my conception of what fusion is to me, I will repeat the idea that what fusion is will be different for everyone.

Fusion's original definition was best: a mixture of jazz improvisation with the power and rhythms of rock, however it may also include a mixture of virtually any style mixed with Jazz including: funk, blues, rock, hip-hop, folk, eastern, African, Cuban, avant-garde, classical, and virtually anything else available to borrow from. Often times, fusion does borrow from more than one of the previously mentioned styles. Up until around 1967 the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate. But as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces. Of the first experiments with jazz and rock were done by Miles Davis on the records "In A Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew" released in 1969, when acoustic instruments were replaced by electric ones. Miles was changing his sound around frequently during that period, and was highly influenced by the new and fresh sounds of Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, and Sly Stone.

By the early 1970's, fusion had its own separate identity as a creative jazz style (although sneered upon by many purists) and major fusion groups began to evlove including such artists as Return To Forever, Weather Report, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Dreams, Brand X, The Dixie Dregs, UK, Gateway, Oregon, Steps Ahead, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, and the various bands Miles Davis formed. Thes groups played high-quality fusion that mixed together some of the best qualities of both jazz and rock.

Unfortunately, as it became a moneymaker and as rock declined artistically from the mid-1970's on, much of what was labelled fusion was actually a combination of jazz with easy-listening pop music and lightweight r&b; crossover, what started out as an artistic movement at some point moved to a commercial sound and was marketed as so. The term "fuzak" was used by musicans to mock this commercial movement, implying that the popular form of fusion had become much like easy-listening muzak.

The promise of fusion to an extent went unfulfilled although it continues to exist today thanks to groups such as Tribal Tech, Bela Fleck, Jazz is Dead, Vertu, Vital Information, The Zawinul Syndicate, as well as the contributing efforts of Allan Holdsworth, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Chick Corea, and others listed above just to name a few.

Many of these artists struggle just to get by as the form is a lesser-known and not as well appreciated style of music. Most groups find it difficult to sell records and get gigs or make money and it became difficult to maintain a fusion band. Allan Holdsworth once said something about not liking to ask the people in his band to work endless hours for free, and having to sell his guitar just to put his record out. Fusion today struggles as a genre to survive, but every true artist must play what they believe in regardless of public acceptance and due to this, fusion refuses to die.

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