Birds of Fire brings overdue critical attention to fusion, the musical idiom that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s, as musicians blended elements of jazz, rock, and funk. Fusion never coalesced into a distinct genre; many artists and critics disparaged the music as amorphous and hard to define. Kevin Fellezs contends that fusion's much-derided hybridity was its very reason for being. By mixing different musical and cultural traditions, fusion artists sought to disrupt generic boundaries, cultural hierarchies, and critical assumptions. Fellezs develops his argument through rigorous analysis of the music of four distinctive fusion artists. Interpreting the work of Tony Williams, John McLaughlin, Joni Mitchell, and Herbie Hancock, he explores the challenges that fusion posed to generic conventions and considers the extent to which a musician can be taken seriously as an artist across divergent musical traditions. Fellezs concludes Birds of Fire with a look at the current activities of McLaughlin, Mitchell and Hancock; Williams's final recordings; and the legacy of the fusion made by the four artists in the 1970s.

Kevin Fellezs is an assistant professor of music at the University of California, Merced.