Melvin Gibbs is a composer, musician, artist and writer, born, raised, and currently based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has been called "the greatest bassist in the world" by Time Out New York magazine and is the 2019 winner of JazzTimes Magazine's Critics Poll in the category: Electric Bass.
His wide-ranging musical resume includes membership in the bands Defunkt, The Decoding Society, Power Tools with Bill Frisell & Ronald Shannon Jackson, the alt-rock Rollins Band (where he was nominated for a Grammy), The Zig Zag Power Trio with Vernon Reid and Will Calhoun of the band Living Colour, Socialybrium with Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame inductee Bernie Worrell, and production and performance work with artists including Femi Kuti, Caetano Veloso, dead prez, Eddie Palmieri, David Byrne, Arto Lindsay and Sonny Sharrock to name a few.

He has composed music for films, installations, and performances for visual artists including Matthew Barney, Stan Douglas, and Arthur Jafa.

For 20+ years he has been a member of the band Harriet Tubman, who The New York Times wrote gave one of “The Best Jazz Performances of 2017” and NPR wrote gave “The Best Jazz Performance of 2018”.

His own projects include Elevated Entity, which is a pioneering mix of Yoruba religious music, hip-hop, and jazz, God Particle, a collaboration with theoretical cosmologist and saxophonist Stephon Alexander, the author of “The Jazz Of Physics”.

In 2021 Northern Spy Records released his EP “4 + 1 equals 5 for May 25”, a mediation on the murder of Mr. George Floyd and its’ aftermath, and in 2022 Editions Mego released Anambia Sessions Vol. 1: The Wave, an album of his avant-electronic music. He is currently writing his first book, “The Science Of Black Music”, for Basic Books.