The emergence of free jazz
like previous developments in jazz, was largely tied to the African-American
experience. Just as the development of bebop was a reaction against
popular swing music, free jazz emerged to counter the growing white
interest in finger-popping soul jazz and other music of the 1950s.
This idea can be seen in the approaches of the musicians themselves,
as in Ornette Coleman's This is Our Music (1960).
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Both these developments, bebop in 1940 and free jazz in 1960,
reveal directions that were more intellectual, less danceable,
and less marketable to white audiences. Groups like the Art Ensemble
of Chicago, the flagship group of the Association for the Advancement
of Creative Musicians (AACM), and Sun Ra made Black identity
an integral
part of their public personae as musicians, more visibly than
previous generations of jazz musicians. This is not to say that the
music
was
racially segregated; white bassist Charlie Haden was a member
of Ornette Coleman's influential quartet from the very beginning, and
free jazz's
principles were quickly assimilated into musical developments
in
all corners of global society.
Many free jazz musicians regard the music as signifying in a broadly
religious way, or to have gnostic or mystical connotations, as an aide
to meditation or self-reflection, as evidenced by Coltrane's Om album,
or Charles Gayle's Repent.
Free jazz in the world
Outside of North America, free jazz scenes have become established in Europe
and Japan. Alongside the aforementioned Joe Harriott, saxophonists Peter Brötzmann,
Evan Parker, trombonist Conny Bauer, guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Han
Bennink were among the most well-known early European free jazz performers.
European free jazz can generally be seen as approaching free improvisation,
with an ever more distant relationship to jazz tradition. That being said,
specifically Brötzmann has had a significant impact on the free jazz players
of the U.S. Japanese guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi and saxophonist Kaoru Abe,
among others, took free jazz in another direction, approaching the energy levels
of noise. Some international jazz musicians have come to North America and
become immersed in free jazz, most notably Ivo Perelman from Brazil and Gato
Barbieri of Argentina (this influence is evident in Barbieri's early work,
but fades in his later, more commercially oriented efforts). American musicians
like Don Cherry, John Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders integrated elements of
the music of Africa, India, and the Middle East for a sort of World music-influenced
free jazz.
References
Jost, Ekkehard (1975). Free Jazz (Studies in Jazz Research 4). Universal Edition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_standard
Typically this kind of music is played by small groups of musicians.
In popular perception, free jazz is loud, aggressive, dissonant and
in general full of sound and fury. Many critics, particularly at the
music's inception, suspected that the abandonment of familiar elements
of jazz pointed to a lack of technique on the part of the musicians.
Most free jazz musicians use overblowing techniques or otherwise elicit
unconventional sounds from their instruments. Today such views are
more marginal, and the music has built up a tradition and a body of
accompanying critical writing. It remains less commercially popular
than most other forms of jazz.
Beyond this, free jazz is most easily characterised in contrast with
what we refer to here as "other forms of jazz", an umbrella
which covers ragtime, dixieland, swing, bebop, cool jazz, jazz fusion
and other styles.
"Other forms of jazz" use clear regular meters and strongly-pulsed
rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz normally retains
a general pulsation and often swings but without regular meter, and
often with frequent accelerando and ritardando, giving an impression
of the rhythm moving in waves. Often players in an ensemble adopt different
tempi. Despite all of this, it is still very often possible to tap
one's foot to a free jazz performance; rhythm is more freely variable
but has not disappeared entirely.
Other forms used harmonic structures (usually cycles of diatonic chords).
Improvisors played solos using notes based on the notes in the chords.
Free jazz almost by definition dispenses with such structures, but
also by definition (it is, after all, "jazz" as much as it
is "free") it retains much of the language of earlier jazz
playing. It is therefore very common to hear diatonic, altered dominant
and blues phrases in this music. It is also fairly common for a drone
or single chord to underpin a performance (see modal jazz), but the
absence of such rudimentary devices is typical as well.
Finally, other forms use composed melodies as the basis for group
performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use
such material, and sometimes do not. In some music which is called "free
jazz", other compositional structures are employed, some of them
very detailed and complex; the music of Anthony Braxton furnishes many
examples. It would perhaps be best to call this modern or avant-garde
jazz, reserving the term "free jazz" for music with few or
no pre-composed elements.
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