Free Jazz
- Author: Schwartz, Jeffrey
Free Jazz
- Author: Schwartz, Jeffrey
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About
A new and accessible introduction to this exciting, controversial, and often misunderstood music, drawing on extensive research, close listening, and the author's experience as a performer.
In the late 1950s, free jazz broke all the rules, liberating musicians both to create completely spontaneous and unplanned performances and to develop unique personal musical systems. This genre emerged alongside the radical changes of the 1960s, particularly the Civil Rights, Black Arts, and Black Power movements. Free Jazz is a new and accessible introduction to this exciting, controversial, and often misunderstood music, drawing on extensive research, close listening, and the author's experience as a performer. More than a catalog of artists and albums, the book explores the conceptual areas they opened: freedom, spirituality, energy, experimentalism, and self-determination. These are discussed in relation to both the political and artistic currents of the times and to specific musical techniques, explained in language clear to ordinary readers but also useful for musicians.
Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter Overviews
- 1. Freedom
- Free
- Harmolodics
- Time, No Changes
- 2. Spirituality
- A Love Supreme
- Universal Consciousness
- The Nubians of Plutonia
- New Africa
- Karma
- Bridge into the New Age
- 3. Energy
- Ascension
- Machine Gun
- We Now Create
- 4. Experimentalism
- Imaginary Values
- Sound Structure of Subculture Becoming
- Ankhrasmation
- Language Music
- Zooid
- Conduction
- Search and Reflect
- 5. Self-determination
- The Jazz Composers Guild
- Self-Reliance Productions
- Wildflowers
- Uptown and Downtown
- 6. Ancient to the Future
- A Jackson in Your House
- Dogon A.D.
- Notes
- Index
