Buy this product here: Personalized Cowboy Our Home Ain’t No Castle Quilt Bedding Set
Home page: TAGOTEE SHOP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DL: What it gets down to is whether the musician is open and receptive enough to go between both worlds. Coltrane or Haden could do it. Dexter and Ornette not so much. We have to look at the free jazz music in New York. It wasn't just Ornette. There was a lot more to free jazz than Coleman. There was Cecil Taylor. If we think of how Cecil played it makes Ornette seem like nursery rhymes! There was Cecil's intensity, the use of his elbows and arms, crashing all over the piano using it as a percussion instrument. Cecil was quite rhythmic in a lot of ways. Ornette and Cecil both came on the scene silently and reservedly just saying: "We're doing something new."
But by the time you get to 1964-66, free jazz begins to have a bit of a social element of rebellion in it. Certainly, there's a tie-in with what was going on in American history and culture, with a lot of questions about color and race, which is still happening today. So the "free" music came to represent or express some of the feelings about race on the part of the musicians who played it. My own overall goal as a musician was to be able to play anything you put in front of me regardless of style. The only thing I couldn't do was, of all things, Dixieland! But today, fifty years later, the question is whether musicians can play in both camps, mainstream and free jazz, and the answer is yes, by and large they can! They can play "Oleo" or "Blues in F" and then play completely "free" with no agenda. They can just walk in the room, say hello, have a glass of wine, and start playing. I do that a lot in Europe, which by the way has provided a real home for free jazz. There still is a lot more free jazz in Europe than there is in the States, even now.
AAJ: When you bring in the aspect of race and culture, it appears on the surface at least that free jazz is a rebellion against the status quo. And we've got to realize that Dexter Gordon was rehearsing for a gig at a club, not an experimental workshop.
DL: Well, Dexter could have said, "OK, Ornette, that's not what we're into, but I'd like to hear a little bit of what you're doing." Personalized Cowboy Our Home Ain’t No Castle Quilt Bedding Set
Free Jazz as a Rebellion Against the Status Quo in Music and Society AAJ: It sounds on the surface at least that free jazz is experienced by many as a rebellion, and people, including musicians, reacted to it initially with either extreme: love it or hate it. It was as if you were forced to choose sides in the conflict.DL: It would seem that way. And that's where the social element comes in. The whole Black Panthers thing was going on in the 1960s and 70s. When I was with Miles Davis back then, I was the victim of reverse racism—not terrible but present. I was the lone white guy in Miles' group at the time. There was a lot of tension between white and black, including the question of who represents the "real thing" in jazz. Some of the critics would say about free jazz: "It's cacophonous, there's no clear melody, it didn't swing," etc. On the reverse was: "You're not free enough!" When you get into the whole social thing, at the other extreme, for example in 1964, there was a concert series called "The October Revolution" in New York organized by trumpeter Bill Dixon that received a lot of press.
See more:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/716213146990780624
https://twitter.com/StoreTagotee/status/1367734219506548736
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=366254514669409&id=329330831695111
Visit our Social Network: TAGOTEE Pinterest, Twitter , Instagram and Our blog TAGOTEE over-blog, Tagotee blogspot
Comments
Post a Comment