Weather Report - Musical Style

Musical Style

Over a sixteen-year career Weather Report's music explored various areas, centered on jazz (including both the "free" and "Latin" varieties) but also including various elements of art music, ethnic music, R&B, funk and rock. While their work was often categorized as "jazz fusion", the band members themselves generally rejected the term.

From the start, Weather Report took the unusual and innovative approach of abandoning the traditional "soloist/accompaniment" demarcation of straight-ahead jazz and instead featuring opportunities for continuous improvisation by every member of the band. This position remained consistent throughout the life of the band. From the mid-1970s individual solos became more prominent, but were never allowed to overwhelm the music's collective approach. Initially, the band's music featured a free, extended improvisational method (similar to Miles Davis's Bitches Brew-period work), but by the mid-1970s this had moved towards more groove-orientated and pre-structured music (as epitomized by their hit single "Birdland").

Joe Zawinul's playing style was often dominated by quirky melodic improvisations (simultaneously bebop-, ethnic-, and pop-sounding) combined with sparse but rhythmic big-band chords or bass lines. Having originally made his name as a pioneering electric piano player, he went on to consistently develop the role of the synthesizer in jazz during his time with Weather Report. Working with companies such as ARP and Oberheim, Zawinul developed new ways of voicing and patching electronic tones for textures, ensemble roles (including emulations of traditional band instruments) and soloing. In Weather Report, he often employed a vocoder as well as pre-recorded sounds played (i.e., filtered and transposed) through a synthesizer, creating a very distinctive, often beautiful, synthesis of jazz harmonics and "noise" (which he referred to as "using all the sounds the world generates"). By the end of Weather Report's career, Zawinul's synthesized arrangements entirely dominated the band's music.

In the beginning let's say Weather Report was a joint thing. Then, after the second album there's no question about it, it became more and more my group. Wayne wanted it like that, but we were always 'partners in crime.' No Wayne, no Weather Report.

Wayne Shorter came to the group with a reputation as a dominant role as an instrumentalist, drawn from both his solo work and his contributions to Miles Davis’ "second great quintet" during the 1960s. His choice not to follow the same approach with Weather Report led to some criticism of the group. During his time with Weather Report, Shorter was noted for generally playing saxophone with an economical, "listening" style. Rather than continually taking the lead, he would generally add subtle harmonic, melodic and/or rhythmic complexity by responding to other member's improvisations (although he could and did sometimes exercise a more frenetic style akin to that of John Coltrane or Michael Brecker). Playing both tenor and soprano saxophones, Shorter continued to develop the role of the latter instrument in jazz, taking his cue from previous work by Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Thompson and Steve Lacy.

Weather Report maintained a consistent interest in a textured sound and developments in music technology and processing. Both Zawinul and original bassist Miroslav Vitouš experimented with electronic effects pedals (as generally used by rock guitarists) with Zawinul using them on electric piano and synthesizers and Vitouš on his upright bass (which he frequently bowed through distortion to create a second horn-like voice). The band's third bass player, Jaco Pastorius, popularized the use of melodic soloing fretless bass guitar and string harmonics, as well as consolidating the driving R&B pulse in the band's music which had been brought in by his predecessor Alphonso Johnson.

With the exception of a brief quartet period between 1978 and 1979, Weather Report's instrumentation always included both a traditional trap set drummer and a second percussionist. For its first eight years of existence the group had difficulty finding a permanent drummer, moving through an approximate average of one drummer per year until Jaco Pastorius helped to recruit Peter Erskine in 1978. Erskine and (later on) Omar Hakim were the only Weather Report drummers that played with the band for more than two years.