Starting in the late 50s (especially 1959), the jazz styles, forms, structures, harmonic and chordal integrity, improvisation techniques, tonality, and instrumentation were pretty much upside down, totally going somewhere new very far from traditional jazz.
"Well, maybe the whole world is going astray" said the departed jazz cats at that time looking down from where they are but I am pretty sure they embraced the novelties after paying attention to what the new generation had to say...
Free Jazz:
As opposed to what first time average listener thinks, "Free Jazz" is not a style where the members of a jazz band go out and hit the keys of a piano, cover the holes in their horns and blow, or pluck the strings of their basses randomly and independently. It is rather the opposite in fact. One highlight to make here is that "Free Jazz" and "Free Improvisation" are not the same things at all (however please allow me to leave the "Free Improvisation" topic to another post).
"Free Jazz" is a form that mainly differentiates from its predecessors by freeing the player not to perform in a predetermined structural approach of chord progression.
We can easily say that it was an innovation of these two great jazz musicians, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor.
Here we can take a short break from "Free Jazz" and raise a question to jazz enthusiasts.
What would be the first 4 albums that you would buy (we don't download obviously😅) if you want to start a collection of jazz records? I bet most of the answers would include these albums;
- "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis
- "Time Out" by Dave Brubeck Quartet
- "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane
- "Shape of Jazz To Come" by Ornette Coleman
And Ornette Coleman's "Shape of Jazz To Come" was the pioneer of something new (the name of the album was changed from "Focus on Sanity" by Nesuhi Ertegun who was a real visionary and he had sensed that this recording would be a first of a new jazz style). As you can see from these fine examples, the period when free jazz was born, there wasn't a real search for a new jazz style as other all styles were young and at their top forms. But this is jazz and this is Ornette Coleman, both could not hold back from stirring the pot.
"Free Jazz" can very well be defined as musical freedom. Unlike previous jazz forms, it was not performed on a series of predetermined harmonic structures or chords. It was totally a new sound allowing the musicians to use their instruments in unconventional ways like playing notes on registers generally not utilized, even squeaking was common practice (I could perform free jazz with my clarinet😈).
It was called "free" because the musicians liberated themselves from structural patterns, predetermined chords and /or tempo. So they were free in a way to play whatever, whenever and however they wanted to. This led to a great opportunity for those musicians to experiment with different sounds enabling them to express their musical emotions in many different ways. One common element that "Free Jazz" shared with older forms of jazz was that the players never stopped listening to each other and never gave up the "call and response" format (maybe we can call it "reactions" now).
"Free Jazz" was mostly atonal, meaning that the compositions did not necessarily have a definitive tonal structure as was the case with earlier styles. Maybe because of this it could not attract many listeners even though it was very artistic and emotional. One could also feel influences from Indian, Far Eastern and African sounds primarily due to the fact that these exotic music styles were not based on chordal progressions as well.
One key difference compared to its immediate predecessor "Bebop" is that "Free Jazz" players improvised collectively just like the earlier forms of the genre. Obviously in a very different format and sound but still...
Maybe another album that is even more prolific than "Shape of Jazz to Come" was Ornette Coleman's 1960 recording of "Free Jazz", an album that would give the name of the newly forming jazz style. The record features 2 separate quartets, each on another channel of the recording (on left channel: Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Scott LaFaro and Billy Higgins - on right channel: Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell). You may also use the album to check the polarity of your inputs & outputs 🙈🙉🙊. It is an improvisation only album and lasts slightly less than 40 minutes...
"Lonely Woman" - Ornette Coleman
Coleman was a multi-instrumentalist, playing trumpet, violin, alto and tenor saxophones. He was never a real virtuoso in his instruments but his ideas were really beyond imagination. Almost all the compositions in his albums (more than 20 maybe) were written by him. He was a very productive and an influential musician. We can say that a lot of musicians, even today are following his footsteps, especially the avant-gardists (a more general art form, musically interpretation can be defined as free jazz) and later the ECM artists.
"Free Jazz Part 1" - Ornette Coleman
Another main figure of "Free Jazz", as important as Ornette Coleman, is pianist Cecil Taylor. However, it might not be too fair to classify him only as a musician performing with this style. He can be considered as "above all styles". He was a classically trained pianist and a poet. His playing technique and sound was very different treating the piano as a percussive instrument (indeed it is in a way) just like an instrument with 88 tuned drums. He played without swinging and mostly created energetic textures with his piano rather than sentences. One can not hear melodies in his music. Taylor had given the clues of free jazz with his first album "Jazz Advance" in 1956. However his real widely accepted free jazz album is "Unit Structures" in 1966. You can feel the influences of contemporary 20th Century European composers such as Bartok and Stockhausen as well as American Charles Ives. We can say that he was a real modernist and performed in many styles such as "post-bop", "avant-garde" and of course "free jazz" (some jazz historians have a tendency to differentiate both forms: "avant-garde" and "free jazz"). In my opinion, free jazz is an extension of the avant-garde movement. This is evident especially in Cecil Taylor's later works, following the "Unit Structures"; he has made recordings that are closer to the art form of avant-garde by exploring the nontraditional, radical and experimental. We can maybe argue that avant-garde jazz has been evolved in the form of free jazz in the 60s but continued to grow on its own path incorporating many different unorthodox styles along the way.
"Enter Evening" by Cecil Taylor
On the other hand, culturally, the new jazz style was very well reflecting the sentiment of the society (especially in the USA) unleashing themselves from their inhibitions (i.e. sexual revolution, drug use, mini skirts, 1968 protests & Woodstock later). As it's been the case for the last century, unfortunately it still was an expression of anger by African-Americans who were still fighting for their civil rights (a lot was going on in the form of social tensions about racial integration such as "Freedom Riders", "Freedom Summer Project" and "Freedom Schools").
Apart from Coleman and Taylor, Albert Ayler was also a very innovative American musician who played the tenor saxophone in a way that was difficult to categorize. He was constantly trying to physically explore and push the limits of his horn that resulted in a raw and brutal sound. His sound was extremely different than other sax players. Unfortunately many average listeners thought that his music was only noise, a stigmata that he shared with almost all avant-garde musicians.
In 1965, John Coltrane was recording his masterful "Love Supreme" in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey. This album was already giving the signals of Coltrane's transition to a more spiritual level with his life and music. After going cold turkey, he was transforming almost with the speed of light. His productivity and energy was at such a level that he recorded the album "Ascension" only six months later than "Love Supreme". The new album was a perfect example of free jazz.
Then came the eccentric Sun Ra. At that time he was arguing that his music sounded more free than what the "freedom boys" were playing. It was true that he was different than the others, he was a "mystic cosmic traveler"...Some jazz historians discuss that Sun Ra was even a greater figure than Coleman and Coltrane especially in terms of improvisation structures due to the fact it was extremely difficult for a band with 50 members to improvise collectively when compared to 6-8 musicians. He was also a pioneer on using different instruments during his performances.
"Cosmos" by Sun Ra
Some other important characters who have shaped "Free Jazz" one way or the other are; bassist/pianist Charles Mingus, clarinetist/saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre, alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, saxophonists Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders , Anthony Braxton, trumpetist Don Cherry and the band Art Ensemble of Chicago. In Europe, guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann. During later years, some of these musicians would be the forerunners of "Free Improvisation" which was a more European thing...
"Free Jazz" was most probably the least popular jazz style of all time. Can you imagine that giants such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor could not even find venues to play in or half of Coltrane's listeners leaving his concerts during the intermission? I believe starting with free jazz and avant-garde, jazz music became trapped in a bell jar attracting a few listeners with an acquired taste. Is this bad? I am not in a position to answer that question but we need to accept that everything especially in art, happens for a reason...Today there are jazz musicians performing in a wide variety of styles from "Dixieland" to "Free Jazz" and we are free to choose what pleases us most musically. Therefore one can not and should not say that this jazz style is good or that style is terrible only by listening to it. We have to keep in mind that each style is something creative ad innovative and has resulted from the urge of questioning, experimenting and exploring the unknown, which defines jazz in a nutshell...
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| Bix Beiderbecke has said it almost 100 years ago |
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