Beaver:~
Fusion music (here in Beaver World) is simply music blending different musical flavours from different musical styles, the product of which is a deliciously interesting and unique musical meal. (..full Beaver blurb on fusion)
Richard Bona, Cameroon-born, U.S. based singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer:~
The moment you put people from different places together, there’s a fusion. It’s been happening for all of time. But in the past 50 years it’s happened more rapidly than 200 years ago because people are traveling faster, moving faster and get their information faster too.
(full Richard Bona interview here)
Australian Musician & Musicologist Dr Baz:~
Fusion music is the hybrid musical styles that we can’t fit in our glass cased museum definitions. At various times in history its has been a gypsy guitarist performing with a African drummer, a rapper dropping rhymes in Korean and topping a billion views on YouTube, a Slave providing a beat to a Spanish Brass band on the docks of Havana in the 1600s.…(full text from Dr Baz)
Diana Torres, Director of Fundación Cultural Arca, about electronic fusion music in Bogota:~
What we have found about fusion in electronic music in Bogota since we started´Conectados´ (Connected) – a program of live electronic music concerts – is that it take us to the cultural heritage of local sounds of our culture and other cultures of the world, in a space and time where the artist and the audience connect with a universal language: THE SOUND.
Australian musician Tamwah (hip hop + neo-soul + afro-brazilian):~
Fusion Music is free expression, open, evolving sounds. Change/expanse in our culture reflecting thru music.
Members of Bogota based Latin fusion band Papaya Republik:~
There are two kinds of fusion music: Real fusion, and Infusion. Infusion is just warm water. Fusion is the boiling point… Mauricio “Batori” Pardo (Production/Conceptualisation/Lead vocals)
Fusion music is a laboratory...Mauricio Guapacha (Drums)
Fusion music is a mix of styles, of music, of life, of everything…Marco Fajardo (Clarinet)
Sydney based Musician/Composer/Producer Trevor Brown (Gypsy Dub Sound System):~
Personally I hate the word ‘fusion’ in relation to music. It has serious connotations relating to a whole lot of 80’s jazz rock with world influences… and musicologically, I’m not convinced that ALL music is not fusion…where does all music come from? Many, many different places.
We take ‘fusion’ these days to mean joining or merging, but if you look at the Latin origins of the word, it means ‘to melt’, which is similar but different. I think that is more appropriate in relation to music.
A good fusion isn’t contrived – it’s where different musical languages meet and find commonality within the musical idiom, with music/sound as the medium and the discourse purely musical. Cultural , linguistic and historical attachments are irrelevant.
Julian Mosquera Muñoz, Operations Manager at Fundacion Gilberto Alzate Avendano in Bogota, says fusion music is:~
- Like a cheap handicraft to sell on the street rather than a unique, one of a kind piece of art.
- Ignorance of, and a form of shame about one’s own traditional music, instruments, beats and rhythms. Maybe the use of non-original instruments in fusion music is because artists lack the ability to create those sounds with traditional instruments.
- A desperate way of getting new audiences for one’s music – of making one’s music ‘listenable’ for those who don’t know it – especially for foreigners.
Leo Salvo, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, band leader of Rumberos, and the Papa Bear of Latin music in Melbourne:~
Nothing exists without fusion. From the moment a note came out of a voice and someone hit 2 rocks together, it was a form of fusion music.
Just like the first time and til the present day, we still find ourselves with only 2 types of music, no matter what we add or fuse with this or that…
The 2 types are Good and Shit!
DJ Cronic of Cali’s music & visual collective Zalama Crew on the contemporary fusion music scene in Colombia & Cali:~
The scene is in a very important moment. It’s like a new revival of culture and the appropriation of identity of our country and city. There are many bands creating music with the influences and research of our Colombian roots mashed up with contemporary sounds coming from different latitudes of the world. It’s the desire of making our traditional music more universal and letting other artists resigning the music with different styles.
