Tracing Backroads of Jazz-Rock Fusion
The improbable delight of Fusion Global Sounds
To make his interesting, if maddeningly brief, compilation Fusion Global Sounds, the curator Charles Maurice searched out bands and artists from regional scenes not commonly associated with the U.S.-led jazz-rock fusion movement of the early 1970s.
He focused on aggregations inspired by Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and other landmarks from the first fusion wave, tracked down and licensed out-of-print recordings and then had them remastered. He found hard-grooving bands from South Africa and Sweden, discovered a key historical moment in the evolution of the amazing Fattoruso brothers from Uruguay, and spotlighted the remarkable Dutch-French pianist Majoie Hajary with a track from her stirring 1970 album La Passion Selon Judas. (Highly recommended!)
That’s one difference between the playlist and the compilation album: Research.
Maurice – whose previous various-artists works have included the giddy AOR Global Sounds and French Disco Boogie Sounds – started with the aesthetic focus necessary for a solid playlist: Most tracks here feature the sparkling tones of the Fender Rhodes electric piano, and in terms of temperament lean toward the placidity of pop (there’s a cover of the Crusaders hit “Keep That Same Old Feeling” from New Zealand’s 1860 Band) rather than the freedom-seeking upheaval of post-Bitches Brew Miles.
Guided by just those basic filters, Maurice explored beyond the brand names of fusion; a delight of this compilation is hearing the energy and invention that local working musicians from Europe and Africa brought to the genre. At times, it sounds like they’re inspired less by fusion titans like Weather Report than the general sense of possibility that drove collisions of jazz, rock and funk during fusion’s early days.
Hajary’s organ-framed incantation, the earliest record on the set, describes an interior spirit realm that’s not too far from the work Alice Coltrane was doing in the early ‘70s. The Fattoruo’s band Outroshakers pursues a more extroverted tone; its bouyant, resolutely sunny pulse shares basic DNA with subsequent samba-adjacent hybrids, like those created by George Duke and Earth Wind & Fire. Several downtempo pieces – the dreamscape “Tropical Island” from South African composer Zane Cronje, the remix-ready “Quiet Fire” from Swiss keyboardist Renato Anselmi – show that at least some of these fusion outliers were interested in exploring moods rather than technical wizardry.
An eyebrow-raiser is “Astral Dance” by French-American drummer Daniel Bechet, whose father was the early jazz saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet. This begins with a vintage drum machine pattern and a syncopated rhythm similar to anchoring rhythm of Yes’ “Owner of a Lonely Heart;” from there, Bechet layers lush synth textures, scampering piano swoops and jabbing chords, and all sorts of unusual plucked and struck instrumental sounds. It’s a vibe.
Compilations like Fusion Global Sounds serve myriad functions in the music ecosystem. They open windows onto the lesser-known gems of styles and sub-styles, and reclaim works by artists whose ideas never connected with sizable audiences. And they activate curiosity about the strange and miraculous pathways of inspiration as it gets passed along. We didn’t need an anthology to tell us that fusion spread widely in the 1970s. But to trace murmurs from the protracted artistic conversation about fusion as it flowed and mutated around the world, this one is indispensable.
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