Kevin Fellezs’ Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion gives a detailed history of the fusion movement of the 1960s and 1970s, with specific reference to four case studies: Tony Williams, John McLaughlin, Joni Mitchell and Herbie Hancock. Fellezs’ title refers both to McLaughlin's second album with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the ‘airy yet luminous freedom these young musicians actively sought, soaring between the categories on which musical practices and discourse rested and that they believed all too often constrained their artistic efforts’ (p. 5).

The book is laid out in two parts, with three theoretical and historical chapters followed by a detailed historical and musical study of each of the case studies. While each of the seven chapters retains its own focus, Fellezs binds the text together as a whole with overarching themes and arguments. Early in the text, he lays out the inadequacies he sees in the established generic definitions of rock, funk and jazz in the 1960s, suggesting that ‘genre is the index against which musical value is determined by critics, musicians and fans alike, despite almost universal disavowal for drawing rigid lines around musical practices’ (p. 15). Fellezs then begins a long theme of definition by absence, as he suggests that some of the most creatively powerful musical and social qualities of the fusions under consideration fall between existing genres, and therefore cannot be categorised. He introduces Isobel Armstrong's concept of the ‘broken middle’ to capture what he sees as a synthetic resolution of seemingly dialectic oppositions.

Each of the seven chapters is titled with an aptly-named fusion album or track, as well as a description of the chapter's content. Thus ‘Bitches Brew’ becomes a study of generic meetings. This chapter outlines the hierarchical opinions often held by proponents of jazz, rock and funk, as well as the restrictions that these established views placed on musicians who wished to push the boundaries. However, the irony of devoting an entire monograph to an idiom the author considers to have ‘never ably coalesced into a genre of its own’ (p. 26) and to be ‘anticanonical’ (p. 27) weakens the argument of this chapter somewhat. In Chapter 2, ‘Where Have I Heard You Before?/fusion's foundations’, Fellezs again uses genre as a theoretical focus, this tracing the foundations of fusion in jazz, rock and funk. A convincing addition to standard discourses surrounding genre in popular musics is Fellezs’ exploration of the racialisation of the genres under consideration. Literature reviews of the three musical strands are used to emphasise the varying artistic status attributed to each idiom by the critical establishment. Chapter 3, ‘Vital Transformation/fusion's discontents’, focuses on negative critical reception of fusion. In another example of Fellezs defining concepts and movements by what they aren't, he suggests that the generation gap between jazz, rock and funk fans was a barrier to the uniform success of fusion. These three opening chapters can be taken together as an introduction to the concepts of genre and the emergence of fusion. However, this theoretical section does not stand alone, as the ideas are not fully developed.

The reasons for this become clear later in the book, as Fellezs continues these concepts and develops them within the context of his chosen case studies. Each musician is shown to have used the mismatch between his or her source idioms as a springboard for creativity. He writes: ‘It was incumbent on these young musicians to find a set of criteria that addressed the unique set of musical competencies required to create a music formed from idioms that required such distinct sets of musical skills that they were seen as incompatible or mutually negating’ (p. 81). Fellezs explains that Williams’ Lifetime used their blending of rock and jazz to question the tensions between high art and popular art that were held by proponents of each idiom. Joni Mitchell, on the other hand, felt unable to fit herself and her music into identifiable categories and so created a fusion in order to avoid such pigeonholing.

The racialisation of genre that Fellezs expounds features significantly in his discussion of McLaughlin, who was ‘wary … of the racialized implications for intercultural exchange’ (p. 13) in his own work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. (‘Mahavishnu’ is the Hindu word for ‘creative spirit’, and Fellezs’ discussion of McLaughlin also explores the musician's relationship with religion and spirituality.) McLaughlin's collaboration with Tony Williams also ‘provided a lightning rod for the debates surrounding black creativity and the desires of black artists such as Williams to lay claim to broader, even universal, aesthetic legitimization and audience appeal’ (p. 115). Fellezs explains that Joni Mitchell's lack of formal musical training, and her position as a female bandleader and frontwoman in ensembles otherwise consisting of experience male jazz and rock musicians, placed her in a subservient position in performance and rehearsal contexts. Her creation of a black male alter ego, humorously named ‘Art Nouveau’, around the time of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (1977, and the title adopted by Fellezs for Chapter 6) allowed her to explore different positions of power and musicality. On the other hand Hancock, Fellezs claims, was ‘certainly aware of the racialized connotations’ (p. 213) held within his music. Therefore by titling an ‘artfully casual’ hardbop composition ‘Watermelon Man’, with its ‘images of southern black life’, Hancock could consciously explore and manipulate perceptions of race and class.

By far the most persistent theme in Birds of Fire is that of the ‘broken middle’. In his introduction, Fellezs suggests that the four musicians form a ‘broken middle’ flowing across, between and through geographic, temporal, cultural, national, ethnic and generic limits. He uses this concept cleverly, suggesting that Tony Williams’ Lifetime found a creative musicality in the ‘broken middle’ between jazz and rock. For John McLaughlin, the negotiation of spirituality and everyday life provided a ‘broken middle’ that influenced his musical aesthetics. Mitchell's activities in several artistic media (including music, art and poetry) ‘uniquely illuminated fusion's negotiations in the broken middles between artistic media, as well as musical genres’ (p. 149). Hancock's phenomenally successful Head Hunters emphasised the broken middles between jazz and funk, as well as between music as art form and music as commercial success.

This is an excellent and engaging study of this under-represented musical idiom. My only criticism is that the opening theoretical chapters are underdeveloped, but Fellezs more than rectifies this with the superbly negotiated studies of individual artists. Birds of Fire will appeal to scholars and fans alike, with enough scholarly engagement for the former, and enough biographical and musical detail for the latter.