Billy Bang, a violinist whose gritty, expressive and spirited playing earned admiration in contemporary jazz circles, died Monday at his home in Harlem. He was 63.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, said Jean-Pierre Leduc, his friend and agent.

Prominent as a bandleader and a sideman throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Bang achieved his most success with the 2001 album “Vietnam: The Aftermath,” which featured music inspired by his time serving in the Army during the Vietnam War, played with peers who had also served. The album — and a 2005 sequel, “Vietnam: Reflections,” which included Vietnamese musicians — in turn inspired “Redemption Song,” a 2008 documentary film about him.

Born William Vincent Walker in Mobile, Ala., on Sept. 20, 1947, Bang moved with his mother to Harlem as an infant. He studied violin in school and took up drums and flute independently. He briefly attended the exclusive Stockbridge prep school in Massachusetts with no music curriculum, then dropped out, moved to the Bronx and was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam.

After a struggle with alcohol and drugs on his return to America in the late 1960s, which he recounted in his liner notes for “Vietnam: The Aftermath,” Bang identified the free-jazz scene created by players like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman as a means for addressing issues of race and social justice. Taking up the violin again, he studied with the prominent avant-garde jazz violinist Leroy Jenkins, and became immersed in the 1970s downtown loft-jazz ferment.