Free Jazz
 

your thoughts?

As a whole? Hell yeah.

It takes on Capital J jazz.

you mean ornette coleman beats wynton marsalis?

sure.

(and yet: http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyon...ul_wynton.html )

any preferences? likes? dislikes? views on past/present/future?

i'm sorta polling SYG on the matter...

Isn't it just musicians getting together and messing around/improvising? It doesn't do much for me... I like things that are a little more thought out and structured.

true Free Jazz, where actual accomplished Jazz musicians are exploring a free form composition method, is amazing and I love it.

the kinda free jazz that is just a band with three high school band horn players making ludicrous noises at random? not like so much.

You get what you pay for.

haaa haa ha

It's an incredibly broad term, for me. I know it sort of has its roots in your Dolphys and Colemans, but does it also include your Brotzmanns and Kirks? I'd definitely say that I've very rarely seen anyone under 45 do it well, and generally it's better done by people in their 60s and 70s.

yep

you gots to MASTER the rules before you can break them with interesting results.

It's better not done at all. Most music would be composed this way if anything of worth actually came out of it.

Do you mean in the context of free jazz or in general? I think free jazz (and free improv) definitely require a great deal of dexterity to produce good stuff; I think they require a great deal of affection and taste as well. I don't know how many of you have heard Ayler's Music is the healing force... but it's utterly dogshit; the man made 2 of my favourite jazz albums (Spirits/ Bells) but completely lost it on that one (for me).

More generally, there's loads of examples of not necessarily tutored musicians making amazing music. Nihilist Spasm Band, the Shaggs, the A Band (fnar) or whoever.

TO ZE BUNKERS EVERYVUN! ZUMVUN HAST BROKEN ZE RULEZ! VE MUST BURN ZE HERETICSH!

Fuckwit.

99.9% of music is not made this way for a reason.

Am I going to have to pull out a Boxxy gif?

yes, it's a broad term for everyone i think, and the question of where to set the limits on it is not an easy one.

while free jazz originated in the 50s-- would you consider it a contemporary form, or a relic of sorts?

It's a glib Cage-ism, but once a musical door is opened, it generally stays open. I don't think it has anything like the urgency it had as a nascent form; I don't think it's even approaching any sense of still being 'avant-garde' (whatever that loaded term means to you). I certainly don't think it's a relic as I saw a bunch of guys under 30 doing free jazz just last week. It definitely has a continued life in music theory and practise. Personally, I can't play it for shit, because it's still very close to head music (in the jazz sense).

It's a bit of a bland statement, but do you think that Tallis stops being important just because he's been dead 100s of years? In that immanent moment of watching Spem in Allum, it's still incredibly exciting. Free Jazz isn't so utterly divorced from structure as to be that holy grail 'total improv'.

Oh, also - I think it's incredibly dangerous to suggest that music always has to be 'contemporary'. Sometimes things take a lot longer than we expect to sink in. Schnittke's getting a smidge of recognition at the moment, but he's by no means where the lesser composer (to my mind) Shostakovich is in the public perception, and they've both been dead a long time.

I think (as many said) free jazz can be BEAUTFUL. But, I remember downloading a live coltrane album (live in Japan maybe?) that just too much for me. One of the songs was an hour long. I listened to it just to see if I could.
I remember somebody once said to me "what's this?" i said "free jazz" and they said "is that called that because it's free (as in no money)?"
Good jazz musicians don't sit waiting for time to wail, the most improtant thing is to listen to the other musicians

nice points, thanks.

the reason i asked about the "relic" bit was because i wanted to get a sense of how other people who are more musically inclined than me perceive this genre. i just spent the day listening to albert ayler and it's as current to me as anything going on elsewhere.

as for tallis, etc-- the thing with classical music is that it has a lively tradition of performance-- the music remains contemporary because its performance remains very much alive-- it hasn't become culturally irrelevant. it's not just a numbers thing, but i'm thinking in terms of social participation, not individual pleasure.

the reason i started this thread was to help me organize my thoughts around this bizarre idea of starting a free jazz blog. i won't be writing it, but i do wonder about investing energy into a relevant project that can reach some sort of audience.

i was at a poetry reading recently & two things happened 1) i wanted to kill most of the poets, 2) i wanted to kill poetry. poets reading to poets is an exercise in mutual handjobs, and it makes poetry (bad poetry anyway) totally irrelevant.

this is all part of a long story that is too long to tell, but yeah, i guess my question is is free jazz relevant to the development of new music today? and the answer is OF COURSE!