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EMTA
GENERAL HISTORY OF JAZZ
lectures 25 - 32
Docent: Arne Luht
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The 2nd generation of free jazz in the USA:

The Great Black Music

The end of the 1960s and all the 1970s were probably the hardest time for avant-garde jazz
musicians. In the 70s, jazz-rock had its "golden era" and the broad audience thought that the
most radical revolution in jazz – Ornette Coleman's free jazz – that was born in the end of the
1950s, had somehow disappeared and was forgotten. The real insider story was very different:
we might say that free didn't disappear but went underground. And there, some of the
important ideas for the future jazz were born.

Amiri Baraka and the NEW BLACK MUSIC

A. A new generation of young free jazz musicians emerged, mostly black and well educated.
They were seriously impressed by the "October Revolution" of 1964, which introduced free jazz
to the broad audiences in New York. Next year, black writer AMIRI BARAKA initiated the NEW
BLACK MOVEMENT and organized a concert under the slogan NEW BLACK MUSIC.

Those young free jazz musicians began to use the term THE GREAT BLACK MUSIC instead of jazz.
This meant not only jazz but the whole black music with its African roots, the early slavery and
spirituals. The Great Black Music was supposed to be the new strong source for black identity in
the midst of the white America.

B. Free jazz got organized: In Chicago, the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians) was established in 1965. Its leader was a piano player and composer Muhal Richard
Abrams (1930-2017). The organization's objectives were:
1- to teach young musicians to create a broader basis for free jazz
2- to create new high quality music
3- to find dignified work and concerts
4- to create a high level role model function for young black people

AACM's slogan was "Great Black Music Ancient to the Future": Keep all the traditions but at the
same time ensure the spiritual growth of young musicians! Being 'creative' they understood the
free-jazz kind of experiments with sound, rhythm, form and melody. They decided to avoid
traditional swing, bebop and hard bop styles. Neither did they use the sounds and rhythms of
the trendy jazz-rock and its electronic instruments. Virtuosity was declared "not so important",
spontaneity and authenticity were more important.
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AACM had some followers in the same year: in St. Louis - Black Artists Group Of Saint Louis and
in New York - Jazz Composers Guild (lead by the organizer of the October Revolution, Bill
Dixon) were established. And although the initial idea was to organize black people only, in New
York three whites were also part of the movement: pianist Paul Bley, composer, arranger and
pianist Carla Bley and Austrian trumpet player Michael Mantler. They were already part of the
October Revolution, now they established Jazz Composer's Orchestra (JCO), and the members
of the orchestra initiated a foundation called JCOA (Association), to be able to organize
recordings and record releases.

Art Ensemble Of Chicago (AEOC)

The flagship of THE GREAT BLACK MUSIC was a Chicagoan band The Art Ensemble Of
Chicago (AEOC), born in 1967. It was created by free jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophonists
Joseph Jarman ja Rocsoe Mitchell and a double bass player Malachi Favors. Three years later
the drummer Don Moye was integrated into the band. The musical principles of the AEOC were
very different from other jazz styles:

AAOC - principles:
1. Every musician was a multi-instrumentalist, the band used musical instruments from all
over the world and their stage looked like some kind of ethnographic museum
2. Inspiration was found outside of jazz, mainly from Africa; their costumes and face
paintings were African, but the inspiration could also come from foreign street bands
3. Their concert had to be a visual performance, too, with dramatic sketches or recitations,
if needed
4. Sound was made because of sound, not according to some earlier concept of jazz
5. Their improvisations didn't have a fixed tempo
6. Improvisation was free, according to the moment's emotions, not on the traditional accord
progressions like in jazz usually
7. The form of compositions was built on short melodic phrases that were developed and used
as a basis for improvisations
8. Silence had an important role - AEOC used more silence than anybody else in the history of
jazz

NB! AEOC is not a band for 3-minute "hits"! Listen to the concerts/records as a whole – to be able to
follow the very interesting drama and development of improvisations and atmospheres!

AEOC – Berlin Jazzfest, 1991

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_U96i763zk
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Anthony Braxton (1945- )
... is a very original saxophone player, composer and musicologist from Chicago, grown out of
the AACM scene. Braxton, like Thelonious Monk in 40s and 50s, is an IDIOSYNCRATIC figure,
incomparable with "normal" jazz musicians. He probably plays all the woodwinds that exist. He
is a virtuoso, but in a different way. He is probably the only saxophone player who doesn't have
any influences from Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. And he doesn't have the traditional feeling
of the swing. His early idol used to be the white Paul Desmond (composer of Take Five), and
according to other black musicians that was ridiculous because Desmond could not swing. But
exactly because of that Braxton was the right man for the AACM, where musicians avoided the
traditional ("old and tired") swing anyway.

His musical thinking is not easily understood:

▪ His melody lines are kinda atonal but not like from Arnold Schönberg
▪ His tone is kinda oriental
▪ His works for a small ensemble are for unusual settings: trombone + sax only, or trumpet +
clarinet + synthesizer
▪ In his monumental compositions like For Four Orchestras one can feel that he was (a
little bit) impressed by the giants of the 20th century: Cage, Stockhausen and Penderecki.

Braxton has written a lot about his composition style: Tri-Axium Writings (1985, 1700 pages)
and six books about composing: Composition Notes (1988).

In 1969 Braxton made the first solo saxophone record, a double-LP For Alto. Every
improvisation is dedicated to a different musician or artist.

For Cecil Taylor – score:

Braxton: For Alto, 1969 – To Pianist Cecil Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIeoAP9hNg4

In 1974 the LP What's New In The Tradition? came out, an extraordinary recording where
Braxton wanted to show that it was still possible to say something new with the so called
"standards" like Charles Mingus' Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat.
Braxton: Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat, 1974 – with the contrabass-clarinet;
the melody appears in the end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8gIaVUkVdU
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Charlie Haden & Liberation Music Orchestra
The third free jazz big band, after Carla Bley's Jazz Composers Orchestra and German's
Alexander von Schlippenbach Globe Unity Orchestra – the Liberation Music Orchestra, created
in 1969 by the free jazz double bass player and pioneer Charlie Haden. His need for a big band
was purely political: In South America, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the former comrade of the
Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro, tried to organize a communist revolution. He was
caught and killed in Bolivia. Supposedly the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a
role in this operation and at the same time Americans were waging war in South Vietnam.
Haden felt the need to give his musical answer to those events. He took some famous Spanish
folk songs and mixed them with free jazz – to create a "revolutionary" atmosphere. His Song for
Che is based on the famous Spanish folk song El vito, also well known in jazz as John Coltrane's
modal jazz work Olé.

Charlie Haden & Liberation Music Orchestra – Song for Che, 1969
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMDWVl11D_A

Charlie Haden got arrested and put in prison for one day in Portugal, as he played there with
Ornette Coleman. The reason: he dedicated a song to African freedom fighters in Portugal's
African colonies. His Liberation Music Orchestra made couple of more political records later.

Carla Bley (1938-)

... is a white composer and keyboard player, and the only woman who was already active in the
October Revolution scene in 1964 and then took part in early activities of the AACM in Chicago.
Her compositions were unusual and free-minded back then. Her opus magnum is the 3-hour
giant word Escalator Over The Hill, that came out in 1972 and was declared a JAZZ OPERA . She
still works with big band, if (financially) possible. The following piece is kinda modern spiritual
for a big band.
The Very Big Carla Bley Band, 1990 - Who Will Rescue You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6s0cjSUDJE

Sun Ra (1915-1993)
... is a pianist who actually doesn't belong to the first or the second wave of free jazz. He used to
play with big bands already in 1930, playing swing. But then, in the 60s, he decided to search for
a new inspiration and decided (in his mind) to leave the planet Earth... and until the end of his
life he said that he comes from the planet Saturn and is active in the whole Universe.

Sun Ra's improvisations contain free jazz, African influences, modern jazz and art music and
electronica. His orchestrations sound pretty unusual and he always finds some different colours
for usual instruments. He also uses electric instruments that are no-go for free jazz musicians.
Some critics said that he is a genius, others were convinced that he is a charlatan. The same
happened to Ornette Coleman in 1959...
Sun Ra Arkestra – NBC-television show Saturday Night Live, 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmqe_v11q3U
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1970s: NEW YORK - LOFT SCENE
Some free jazz musicians of the 2nd generation didn't go underground but went – in the strict
sense of the word – to the upper floor, to New York LOFT . Loft is the upper floor of a former left
behind factory building. Lofts were cheap in the 1970s and some musicians and artists made
excellent studios out of them.

Sam Rivers' Studio RivBea

The first free jazz LOFT was built by the saxophone player Sam Rivers (1923-2011). The house
belonged to the painter Virginia Admiral, who happened to be the mother of the movie actor
Robert De Niro. The loft was called RIVBEA (Bea was his wife).

Studio RivBea, musicians: Art Ensemble Of Chicago-men Roscoe Mitchell and Don Moye,
Anthony Braxton, jazz composer Henry Threadgill (as), Sunny Murray (dr), David Murray (ts),
George Lewis (tb), Michael Jackson (g, not the King Of Pop!), Barry Altschul (dr), Leo Smith
(tp), Oliver Lake (as, ss, fl), Anthony Davis (p), David Ware (ts), Hamiet Bluiett (cl, bs) and the
drummer Stanley Crouch, who later became an extreme enemy of the free jazz and jazz-rock.

Lofti-musicians combined free jazz with intense groove. They also began to use chord
progressions again, but mixed with wild free improvisations. In May 1976, they had a 10-days
recording session at Studio RivBea, that became a 5-LP set called The Wildflower Sessions.
LOFT: The Wildfower Sessions – New Times, 1976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Madl5_2apO0

World Saxophone Quartet

Four saxophone players at RivBea – Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, David Murray and Hamiet
Bluiett – founded The World Saxophone Quartet in 1977. They were not the first saxophone
quartet in history, but they became very popular and have followers until today.
World Saxophone Quartet, Berlin 1987 – Come Sunday (Duke Ellington)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn-NCvN9qY

LOFT scene - SUMMA

In the lofts of the 1970s, many ideas were born that influenced the jazz in following decades.
By the end of the 70s, the yuppies discovered the cheap lofts, bought the houses, renovated
them, raised the rent ten times. Today only very rich people can afford to live in a loft. Already in
the middle of the 80s, there was no single musical loft alive in Manhattan.
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FREE+FUNK = FREE FUNK
The Great Black Music and AACM denied jazz-rock and experimented on the basis of free jazz.
Loft scene began to add stable tempo to the free. The pioneer of the free jazz, ORNETTE
COLEMAN, thought that the rhythms of the lofts were not enough and the jazz-rock was not free
enough. So, Ornette decided to be a revolutionary again. In 1973, he founded his next very
unusual band for jazz: 2 electric guitars (Bern Nix and Charlie "Chuck" Ellerbee), bass guitar
(Rudy McDaniel) and drums (Ronald Shannon Jackson). Their style was a free mixture of free
jazz, black soul funk and African rhythms, and got the name FREE FUNK .
In 1975 they went to the studio in Paris and made the record Dancing In Your Head, two long
pieces and two short ones. The long ones are two variations on the Theme of the Symphony.
That was from Coleman's monumental work Skies Of America that he recorded as a soloist with
the London Symphony Orchestra in 1972. The cover remarks of the Dancing... are the first time
when Coleman speaks about his improvisation and ensemble method called HARMOLODICS .
Even today, nobody seems to be able to explain exactly what does it actually mean. Coleman
himself said that "this is a concept where all the rhythms, harmonies and tempi are equal, like
the melodic lines above them are equal, too."
Coleman: Dancing In Your Head - Theme from a Symphony, Var. 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NVdfSy3RS0

James Blood Ulmer (1942-)

Another "revolutionary man" of the 1970s was black guitar player James Blood Ulmer. He was
against the so called fusion, and in his opinion, the loft scene in New York didn't have enough
vital force. Ulmer and Ronald Shannon Jackson released the LP Are You Glad To Be In America
on English label Rough Trade (1980), and saxophone players there were two from the RivBea
loft – Oliver Lake and David Murray.
Ulmer: Are You Glad To Be In America – Pressure, 1980
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpuqFJ-Te7w

Ronald Shannon Jackson (1940-2013)

... when writing his own compositions, used the term "double coding", meaning that in one
work at the same time very different and "not compatible" styles are possible. That was
postmodern attitude that made his bands sound very adventurous.
R.S.Jackson & Decoding Society: LP Street Priest – City Witch, 1981
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IzcyG8x99E

DEFUNKT
The free funk works by Ulmer and Shannon Jackson became an ideal for the band DEFUNKT . Its
founder was trombone-virtuoso Joseph Bowie (the brother of AEOC's trumpet Lester Bowie) in
1978. Defunkt combined free jazz and funk, and cut all the clichés of disco music and jazz into
pieces, deconstructed them and put them together again into a danceable music. The audiences
really loved it! Defunkt seemed to make everybody free and jumping happily.
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Defunkt has had many members, among them the guitar player of the later supergroup Living
Colour, Vernon Reid. On the bass for the last 40 years is still a woman, Kim Clarke. Defunkt has
released 20 albums. Their live-act is always highly energetic and freeing.
Defunkt: Live, Berlin 1981 – In the Good Times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaPQw4S3Kzo

LAST EXIT
The most radical band born out of the free funk aesthetics is the American-European LAST EXIT .
It was put together by the "extremist" German free saxophone player Peter Brötzmann and the
Americans - guitarist Sonny Sharrock and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. Bass player and
producer was Bill Laswell.

Last Exit was active from 1986 to 1994. Their music was 100% (!) free improvisation. There were
no discussions of agreements before their concerts, and they never-never used a music paper
and never wrote anything down! Their music was usually very loud, dense, dissonant and almost
all the time on the highest energetic and emotional level. As if they would say: "People, wake up!
Don't let yourself to lull to sleep by the polished, streamlined virtuosity!"
LAST EXIT – Frankfurt/jazz festival, 1986 - Destination Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66MJ-KOFBFQ

Last Exit made one studio- and 5 live-records. In the 1980s that kind of music was also called
PUNK JAZZ , NO WAVE , EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC or NOISE MUSIC .
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1981: MILES DAVIS' COMEBACK
Miles Davis "retired" in 1975, after 2 concerts in Tokio, having hard period physically (the heavy
car accident still caused pain) and also "feeling empty" mentally. He announced that jazz was
dead and then decided not to touch his trumpet any more. In reality, his label Columbia began to
release Miles' older tapes and the audiences got the impression that Miles kept recording all the
time. Miles led pretty wild life and didn't even touch his trumpet for 4 years... and then one day,
he began to jam with his nephew's punk band, in their garage. And his next step was to start
practicing again. And finally, in 1981, he put his new band together and released a new album
The Man With The Horn.
Miles Davis 1981: The Man With A Horn - Fat Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGd9_atxTfo

That was the beginning of the most advertised and promoted comeback in the history of music.
In the free world there was no media channel that didn't inform people about it, somehow.
The music of Miles Davis was different again. Now it was a very carefully calculated mixture of
funky rhythms, colors of electric instruments and jazz improvisations. He didn't have the kind of
ambitions he used to in 1960s, and it seemed to be not so important any more! Davis became
like a fixed star of the international jazz tours and festivals. Now, the event seemed to be more
important than the music. Everybody wanted to enjoy Miles' aura, before it was too late. Miles
got almost one million dollars for 8 concerts in Japan – an unheard sum of money for jazz!

Miles' next record We Want Miles got Grammy. But his role in recording studio was not crucial
any more. A lot of music was composed, arranged and programmed by some young musicians.
The crucial role in this comeback had the 27 years old bass player Marcus Miller. Miles told him
later: “You brought me back!” Miles definitely wanted to play for younger audiences and for
that reason his repertoire included modern pop hits like Human Nature by "The King of Pop"
Michael Jackson and Time After Time by pop singer Cindy Lauper. The last one you can still
hear in many bars all over the world.
Miles Davis: You're Under Arrest - Time After Time, 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZraztL63tg
Cindy Lauper's original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQY7BusJNU

MILES' 1980s FORMULA (listen to TUTU)

1• often non-improvised backgrounds, produced by Robert Irving III or Marcus Miller
2• drummer in funk-style, adapted by Al Foster or later by somebody else; bassist playing in
(Marcus Miller's) funk-style
3• added: "Jimi Hendrix' guitar student" + "John Coltrane's saxophone student",
who could play hot solos immediately; those solos were played above thick sound layers,
produced by synthesizers.
4• Davis put his unique trumpet sound on top of those prepared funk vamps
(that made the big difference and created "the Miles Davis band", like Marcus Miller said)
5• everything was very arranged, not free and wild like in the beginning of the 70s. But still, the
music was energetic and the sound of the band instantly recognizable and very different from
other jazz and pop bands!
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Since his comeback until his death in 1991 Miles Davis travelled across the world. His concert
was like a powerful drama-performance: dialogues of instruments, the movements on the stage,
dynamics, developments of different elements, climaxes... everything that belongs to a drama.
Miles' bandmates said that he always wanted to play "for today's audiences" and to be "hip". As a
proof of that attitude was his decision to make a record with hip-hop musicians. The record,
Doo-Bop, could not be finished because of Miles Davises death. It came out posthumously in
1992 and got a Grammy award.

Many great musicians came out of Miles' bands. All of them have said that they were very
grateful for that experience. There have been very powerful jazz musicians before him – Louis
Armstrong, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane – but nobody has changed that much in time and
nobody has showed jazz from a different angle like Miles Davis did.

MILES DAVIS - CITATIONS:

- Do not fear mistakes! There are none.
- Don't play what's there, play what's not there!
- I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
- Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
- For me, music and life are all about style.
- I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every
morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
- If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

LISTEN-WATCH-READ:
DVD: The Miles Davis Story
Miles Electric

BIOGRAPHY: Wikipedia
Autobiography (with Quincy Troupe)
Miles Beyond: Electric Explorations by Paul Tingen

M.Jackson/M.Davis: Human Nature – live in Vienna, 1991

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOpHgL52iUQ
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MILES' SIDEMEN OF '80s

Some bandmates from 1969 to 1991:

SAX: Wayne Shorter, Bennie Maupin, Gary Bartz, Dave Liebman, Bill Evans,
Bob Berg, Steve Grossman, Kenny Garrett
KEYS: Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Robert Irving III
BASS: Ron Carter, Dave Holland, Michael Henderson, Darryl Jones, Marcus Miller
DRUMS/PERC: Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, Billy Gobham
GUITAR: John McLaughlin, Pete Cosey, Mike Stern, Foley, John Scofield

In 1970-71 left the band: John McLaughlin, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Wayne
Shorter and a little bit later Keith Jarrett – to found their own bands. By 1975 all of them were
famous and big stars with their own jazz-rock bands (only Jarrett wasn't jazz-rock).
In 1980s 2nd wave left: those were musicians of Miles' comeback period, 1981 and on.
They also are excellent jazz-rock musicians: guit. Mike Stern (1953-), sax Bill Evans (1958-), guit.
John Scofield (1951-), bass Marcus Miller (1959-). BUT there is a difference: none of those
musicians has had his own "working band" for a long time! They change their bandmates almost
every year.

MIKE STERN (1953-) was with Davis in 1981, the comeback year. His first solo album (with
Jaco Pastorius on bass) came out in 1986: Upside-Downside.
Mike Stern: Upside-Downside - Mood Swings, 1986
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HX1Va6KHN8

MARCUS MILLER (1959-) has fulfilled his dream – his original sound. And Miles Davis'
big recognition (You brought me back!). There is a fixed place for Davis' music in Miller's
concerts, for example the famous modal milestone So What that was recorded in Miller's year of
birth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXS4qSZS6zE

JOHN SCOFIELD (1951-) was the guitarist on Miles' last 3 albums for the label Columbia:
Star People (1982), Decoy (1984, Grammy) and You're Under Arrest (1985). His guitar solos
were kinda curious and he kinda forced Miles to improvise more again. Scofield's own early
records: Still Warm (1985) ja Blue Matter (1987), both still electrifying.
John Scofield: Still Warm - Techno, 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FySrtU5KFC4
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PAT METHENY
Patrick Bruce Metheny (1954-) is probably the only jazz-rock superstar who has never played
with Miles Davis. Metheny sounds very different from other guitarists, and his methods of
improvising are pretty different, endlessly flowing and growing. Together with the keyboard
player Lyle Mays (1953-2020) they created the most amazing universe of sounds and absolutely
unique musical language. This beauty is beautiful for the broadest audiences.

Metheny has played and recorded with very different musicians. Here, only one piece from his
1984 record First Circle. The beginning is not very "Metheny-like". The idea comes from
famous downtown-minimalist composer Steve Reich, from his 12 years old Clapping Music.
That was Reich's breakthrough in 1972, his first "hit".
Steve Reich: Clapping Music, 1972 video+partituur
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzkOFJMI5i8

Pat Metheny: First Circle - The First Circle, 1984

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UOjwowDRQ4
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STEPS & STEPS AHEAD
Of the new jazz-rock bands, founded in early 1980s, the most interesting was Mike Mainieri's
"supergroup" STEPS in New York. Mainieri was one of the early jazz-rock player Jeremy Steig's
band Jeremy And Satyrs in 1968. Now, he was the first to use the new SYNTH - VIBE ' or electric
vibraphone. His virtuosity with 4 mallets was amazing. The bass player Eddie Gomez had also
played with Steig, but then got famous with the trio of the pianist of the century, Bill Evans.

The saxophone in the band was Mike Brecker and the pianist Don Grolnick. Both of them played
in the early brilliant jazz-rock band Dreams. Miles Davis was a big fan of the band and came to
their concerts often. Miles probably designed his own jazz-rock style (Bitches Brew) a little bit
after Dreams. Steps' drummer was Steve Gadd, a rare drummer one could recognize by his
sound and character of his beat. Gadd used to play with Chick Corea before coming to Steps.

STEPS performed regularly at New York's 7th Avenue South club in 1981. That was a sensation.
Mainieri explained that they play "contemporary bebop". Their compositions were written out,
mostly 3 or 4 part pieces with clear melodic material. Changes in texture and tempo were also
written out, but still – there was always enough space for long improvisations.

In 1982 the band took the name STEPS AHEAD, travelled across the world and were successful.
But then the members began to change and four years later (1986) the band was dissolved, then
they came together again and went apart again...
Steps Ahead - Live in Tokyo, 1986 – Oops
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alm1urbmbX0

MICHAEL (MIKE) BRECKER (1949-2007)

... began after Steps Ahead with his own career as a band leader. In 1987 he released his solo-LP
Michael Brecker (Pat Metheny, Kenny Kirkland, Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette). This is still
an important album that combines post-bop and jazz-rock. Like already with STEPS AHEAD,
Brecker sometimes played the new unseen instrument, the EWI-2000 wind controller
syntheziser, or "blowable synthesizer", invented by the Japanese company AKAI. Despite of the
new sounds this new instrument didn't find its place in jazz.
MICHAEL BRECKER band – Upside, Downside, Hambrug 1987
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeEUWo__-ys
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NEOKONSERVATIVES
Wynton MARSALIS & "YOUNG LIONS"
In the beginning of the 1980s, a young, 19 years old man popped up in the USA. For him, all
that funk, jazz-rock and "electrified stuff" meant betrayal of jazz. It was trumpet virtuoso
Wynton Marsalis, who grew up in the family of musicians in the good old New Orleans.

WYNTON MARSALIS (1961-)

Marsalis became a leader of one new thing in jazz, the NEOCONSERVATISM . It was an attempt to
go back to the "old values". American audiences had experienced a lot of dissonances since the
invention of free jazz by Ornette Coleman. And for very many people all those radical
experiments like free and free funk and punk were "too much". Apparently Marsalis understood
this and he had enough energy and courage to try "to restore the good old times".

DEXTER GORDONS sensational homecoming

In the autumn of 1976, the big event in jazz world was the homecoming of the saxophone player
Dexter Gordon (1923-1989). Gordon had played bebop together with Charlie Parker. The last 15
years he lived in Europe, being a big star in Kopenhagen. Now back in New York, he gave a
concert at the Village Vanguard. It was recorded and released as Homecoming (Live at the
Village Vanguard). The music business organized a powerful advertizing campaign under the
slogan "straight ahead". The message: Gordon's bebop doesn't make any kind of strange and
weird turns like avant-garde jazz. This is clear and honest music!

Now the critics began to write about the "return of the swinging jazz". Homecoming sold 40
thousand copies and for a 35 years old jazz style it was a huge number. Suddenly, the jazz
veteran was "the hottest name in town". The giant wave of bebop revival or neobop began.
Bebop that was "too complicated" for the masses in 1940s turned out to be pleasant, nice
"classical jazz" now, and very well understandable after free, jazz-rock and free-funk.
Dexter Gordon: Homecoming – It’s You Or No One, 1976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI5numHuD-M

Marsalis & Art Blakey

Wynton Marsalis' conservative star was rising fast also because "the father of the hard bop",
drummer Art Blakey (1919-1990) invited him into his Jazz Messengers in 1980. Marsalis was 19
then and Blakey was 61:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5RDNt52Dz8

Jazz Messengers was the hottest stuff in the middle of 1950s, the inventor and the engine of the
hard bop. In the 70s Blakey hardly survived because his band was called "the last bastion of the
traditional jazz". But now Marsalis', being in Blakey’s legendary band, became an idol for many
young musicians. They began to research and play the music of their grandfathers as if the
development of jazz in last two decades hadn’t existed! Record companies declared this long
gone jazz style to be the future of jazz. They made young musicians play and record "in the real
old style". And young audiences got young pseudo-geniuses presented to them, young musicians
who's ideal was to copy the jazz of the 1940s and 1950s. This young generation of jazz players
were soon advertized as "Young Lions".
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Young Lions + Stanley Crouch
Soon, Wynton Marsalis was the leader and the spokesperson of the Young Lions. The jazz critic
Stanley Crouch, the former free drummer at the loft RivBea, was of big help for him. Now,
Crouch seemed just to hate all the new jazz. He propagated the view that jazz-rock's (mostly
white) musicians and Miles Davis "sold out" – sold themselves to the music business to make big
money. According to Crouch the only "right" jazz in the future was the jazz made before the free
jazz, i.e. from 1920s until the end of the 1950s.

Wynton Marsalis was able to play perfect traditional jazz and also the Western classical music.
In 1983 he got a Grammy for his jazz-LP Think Of One and a Grammy for his recordings of
trumpet concertos by Haydn and Mozart. Now, he was a star unseen before. The media gave him
the image of a young hero and international star. And there were other reasons for his fast fame:

1■ he was young and black. That was important for producing the image of the Young Lions,
because a white guy could not be the saviour of the traditional jazz!
2■ he had studied at the most prominent music institution in the USA, the Juilliard College and
could also play classical music = he was "highly educated"!
3■ this argument of education, with some help by the European classical music, enabled
"the aristocratization of jazz"
4■ Marsalis was extremely well dressed, in a conservative way, like jazz musicians before the
free jazz. And he didn't smoke and didn't drink alcohol (too much). And, of course, he didn't
consume stuff like "white horse" (heroin), although his "before-free-jazz" idols often did.

NEOKONSERVATISM – MUSICAL PRINCIPLES

- thematic material – mostly standards, but also same kind of original compositions
- improvisation – using traditional chord progressions; sometimes modal jazz
- no free tonality or sharp dissonances; they were used sparingly and only as short effects
- always swinging, mostly with one basic rhythm. Important was play with time and
around time!

Miles Davis used the same rhythmical principles with his famous "second quintet" in 1960s.
But the difference was that back then it was something completely new and a big adventure.
Twenty years later, in 1980s, Marsalis could not do anything else than to copy this and maybe
add some rhythmical polish to it.

In the summer of 1981 at the Kool Jazz festival in Cincinnati, Marsalis played together with all
the former members of the Miles' 60s quintet: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams
and Ron Carter. The music was the same, and Miles Davis asked Marsalis after the concert:
"Didn't we do it well enough back then?"
Marsalis: Standard Time, 1987 – Cherokee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOCnWBGIaPc

JALC and JAZZ WARS of 1990s

In the end of 1987, American congress passed a resolution no. 57, that said: "JAZZ IS AN
AMERICAN NATIONAL TREASURE AND HAS TO BE SYSTEMATICALLY SUPPORTED ." Suddenly,
jazz seemed to be as important as the classical music. And this also meant financial support...
The Lincoln Center For Performing Arts in New York was the temple of the euro-american high
culture. Now it became the place for jazz concerts and yearly jazz festivals, too.
 15
In 1991 the JALC (Jazz at Lincoln Center) was established and the position of its director went
to... Wynton Marsalis. According to its statute, the works of the most important jazz composers
were to be performed at the JALC. In the very first concert Marsalis performed his own work In
This House, On This Morning, that he had commissioned for himself by himself as a director.
Crouch wrote a 10-pages text to it: "This is a work that steps right next to Duke Ellington's
Black, Brown and Beige...." Since that first big event, scandal upon scandal occurred...

Today, those mudslingings are almost forgotten. Some young lions are still playing and some of
them are pretty good: Roy Hargrove (1969-2018), Terence Blanchard (1962-), Terri Lyne
Carrington (1965-), Christian McBride (1972-). Marsalis has written more monumental works in
traditional style and has even played together with his white "opposites" like the rock guitarist
Eric Clapton and country singer Willie Nelson.

SUMMA SUMMARUM
... the "jazz wars" were not bad only. They got some young people interested in jazz generally,
the high quality and creative music that was a good alternative to pop mainstream that you could
hear in any coffeehouse. And it might be that because of those "jazz wars" many more
musicologists are dealing seriously with jazz, its history and aesthetics and theory today, like it
has been done in classical music for centuries.
 16
NEW YORK DOWNTOWN

Downtown: usually middle/city center, in New York "down-town" or Manhattan below the 34th street

New York downtown as a musical appearance started in 1960, when Yoko Ono opened her loft
(SoHo/112 Chambers St) for concerts of new music. The organizers there were avant-garde
composers La Monte Young (1935-) and Richard Maxfield (1927-1969). Among the works
performed there was La Monte Young's Composition 1960 #7, which instructed the performer
that "the notes B and F# are to be hold for a long time". It was the beginning of the new style
called minimalism that was about to conquer the world.

This early avant-garde scene created other movements and styles, too: fluxus, performance art,
art rock/experimental rock, conceptualism, post-minimalism, totalism. THIS TEXT HERE
DEALS ONLY WITH THE JAZZ DOWNTOWN THAT BEGAN IN EARLY 1980s.

EARLY JAZZ DOWNTOWN

At the same time with the rise of the Marsalis' neoconservative jazz, in New York downtown
many free improvisers and avant-garde musicians began to perform their very different music.

The early jazzy downtown is a group of musicians, born between 1950 and 1955 and had played
together with Anthony Braxton: Ray Anderson -tb, Marilyn Crispell -p, Marc Dresser -b, Marty
Ehrlich -sax, fl, Mark Helias -b and Gerry Hemingway -dr. Around those ex-braxtonians another
group began to stand out: Joey Baron –dr, Hank Roberts –tšello/voc, Herb Robertson –tp, cn,
flh, Ed Schuller -b. The leading figure of those musicians was the saxophone player TIM BERNE,
a follower of the loft-scene saxophone-giant Julius Hemphill.
 17
Berne and his followers decided to avoid the most extreme aspects of the free jazz and free funk,
because those were hard to understand for broader audiences - like long group improvisations
on the highest emotional level. They started using fixed tonality and functional harmony again
and wrote more "understandable" melodic material. They also started playing with steady pulse
again like the loft scene had done in the 70s. The result was a different contemporary free jazz.
Tim Berne Sextet: LP Ancestors – Sirius, 1983
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ_MBj27S3g
Tim Berne – Nightmusic TV show (showmaster/sax: David Sanborn), ca 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PbjdeADwLI

But still, those downtown musicians didn't get really broad- audiences-friendly. And that's the
reason why they played mainly in Europe, where the audiences were more used to all kind of
modern experiments. Their recordings can be found mostly on European labels like ENJA, Black
Saint/Soul Note or Leo Records (founded by the Soviet emigree Leo Feigin in London).

BLOCK PARTY and HIP-HOP CULTURE

In the middle of the 1970s a new tradition was born in South Bronx, a pretty dangerous part of
New York: As young blacks in one neighbourhood wanted to have a good time, they brought a
DJ SOUND SYSTEM onto the street... Those parties were illegal, also the power supply was taken
straight from electric wire poles. But if everything was peaceful, the police didn't care...

This new kind of street-action changed history: a new HIP-HOP-CULTURE was born. It's
singing was RAP, its dancing was BREAKDANCE (B-boying), its visual expression or "writing"
was GRAFFITI and the leader of the show was MC - MASTER OF CEREMONIES.

This black subculture – like all earlier subcultures – invented their own language, SLANG for
greetings, clothes, drugs, women, sex, weapons, cars etc. Also their own very different taste for
fashion was invented: extremely wide pants (baggy pants), jackets with a hood (hoodies) etc.
The first supergroup of the new subculture was the Sugarhill Gang:
Sugarhill Gang – Rapper's Delight, 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te7FLFK3o7A

Unexpectedly, the most important propagandist for the new hip-hop-culture turned out to be an
older and very famous jazz musician, a 43 years old HERBIE HANCOCK. In 1983 he released a
single Rockit. It was produced by the free funk bass player Bill Laswell, the programming for
synthesizers and drum machine was done by Michael Beinhorn. Hancock's concert was shown
on TV worldwide and soon the scratching, a technique used by block party DJs, was popular
everywhere. Hancock's mind blowing sci-fi stage show guaranteed the commercial success of
Rockit, too.
HANCOCK: Future Shock – Rockit, live 1984
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPTHjZ6JYIU
 18
NO WAVE
At the same time with the hip-hop culture, in New York's white Lower East Side the no wave
aesthetics was born. No Wave was kind of "American punk". The idea was similar to the English
free improviser's ideas of the 1960s: Avoid any style! Don't follow any musical tradition!

No Wave – like the name tells us – was an ironic answer to the New Wave and its "beauty-
sounds" that appeared right after the punk started. But American no wave was also a reaction
against the British punk. Americans said that the Brits only use cliches of the old rock&roll.
And of course, no wave was definitely anti-disco. The well-polished disco sound conquered all
the dance clubs all over the world after the movie Saturday Night Fever came out (1977).

Approximately at the same time one very special young man returned to his home town New
York: ARTO LINDSAY (1953-). His parents were missionaries and thus the family spent years in
Brasil. Arto's first dream was to be a writer, but now he discovered something more exciting: he
became a musical revolutionary. Lindsay's new credo was no wave and he began to play guitar
without playing any "normal" chord or any "normal" melody. Lindsay himself has said lately that
he still can not play guitar "in the proper way". And to be honest – he never needed to...

Lindsay put his no wave band DNA together, with Japanese female designer Ikue Mori, who had
to play drums, and performance-artist Robin Crutchfield, who had to play keyboards. They
played their instruments in a very unusual way, with non-standard playing technique that
produced all kind of unheard sounds and noise. After the British keyboardist, composer and
producer Brian Eno moved to New York, Lindsay and Eno put together a 4-record sampler No
New York (1978), with no wave bands. This sampler is a very important historical no wave
document now.
Lindsay's DNA: No New York – Lionel, 1978
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EAlpbVSSA0

JAMES CHANCE (1953-)

... who also played on the No New York, was probably the fiercest figure in the end of 70s New
York. He was saxophone and keyboard player, songwriter and singer with the name of birth
J AMES S IEGFRIED . He always used his artist names: James Chance or James White. After
couple of years at the Michigan University he left it and studied at the Wisconsin Conservatory,
then left it too and went to New York in 1976. There, he became a player of free jazz and punk
and became one of the early creators of the no wave. Chance's first band was Flaming Youth, but
soon he became a student of the famous loft scene saxophone player David Murray and under
his influence founded a new band, The Contortions.

Contortions was a mixture of free jazz and funk, something like Ornette Coleman had done. But
Chance's band was more rocky and his performances were visually wild, too. It was not rare that
in the end of the concert Chance began fist fighting with the audience.
James Chance: Contort Yourself, 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCI24Lt9aNQ

NO WAVE existed from 1977 to round 1982. The only ones of no wave musicians who got
famous were singer, artist and actress LYDIA LUNCH and the band SONIC YOUTH.
 19
"Downtown cool": JOHN LURIE
James Chance – like some musicians remember – had a strange devotee, a young saxophone
player who tried to dress like him, tried to behave like him and tried to talk like him. That young
man was JOHN LURIE (1952-), and he was designated to be a world famous musician, actor, film
composer and a successful painter.

John Lurie grew up in New Orleans and came in 1974 to New York. There, together with his
classically educated pianist/composer brother Evan, they founded the band L OUNGE L IZARDS .
* Lounge lizard: a well dressed man who frequents lounges and night clubs where rich people gather,
(and who tries to seduce a rich woman)

Lounge Lizards was the hottest band in 1980s New York. Lurie's compositions had all possible
elements like soul funk from James Brown, different movie-kind of soundtracks, African juju
and knawa or the music of the Far East. All this was well and logically integrated into the band's
repertoire and worked as an organic whole.

Lounge Lizard had many member changes, almost all the famous downtown musicians had a
short trip here:: Arto Lindsay, Marc Ribot, slide-guitar virtuoso Dave Tronzo, Toni Garnier
(the musical director of Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour), John Medeski and Billy Martin
(later: Martin, Medeski & Wood) and many more. For a while the former members of the band
even had their own band, Jazz Passengers. Lounge Lizards was also the band behind Tom Waits'
LP Rain Dogs (1985).

A special part in making Lounge Lizards a hot band played John Luries borsalino hats and his
good vintage suits, and of course his modern paintings on the covers of their albums. That was a
cult in itself, a "downtown cool". The important culture magazine, The New Yorker, wrote later:
"From 1984 to 1989, everybody wanted to be like John Lurie, or to go to bed with him".

Lounge Lizards existed more than 20 years, made 22 albums and at the same time Lurie himself
composed music for some 20 movies, Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train
and Get Shorty (Grammy nominee) among them. He was also acting in some movies.

Later, he founded his The John Lurie National Orchestra, actually a trio with him as saxophone
player plus 2 percussionists! In the beginning of the 21st century he was diagnosed with Lyme'i
disease. Since then, he devoted himself to painting and is successful again.

Lounge Lizards' albums and concert videos – like those by the AEOC – should be listened as a
whole, because only then the exciting developments, changes in atmosphere and improvisations
can be understood, and used as an inspiration even today.
LOUNGE LIZARDS – Big Heart, live 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqbwraLF7p4
Lounge Lizards – Live in Berlin, 1991
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GpO5o6o1Ww
 20
DOWNTOWN & JOHN ZORN
The extraordinary powerful and influential New York's downtown scene emerged in the
second half of the 1980s around the saxophone player JOHN ZORN (1953-). The "laboratory"
of this circle was the club KNITTING FACTORY or KNIT, opened on the 47 East Houston Street
in February 1987.

John Zorn is one of those rare New York musicians who was born there and grew up there, in
Queens. Zorn said that he always felt like an outsider: he had long hair and dressed like a
hippie. And most of the time he just watched TV and bought different records: jazz, rock, ethno,
blues, a lot of film music. As a child he learned piano, guitar and flute, as a 14 years old he got
interested in composition, especially in Stockhausen and Charles Ives. After he discovered the
music of John Cage, he got interested in improvisation and aleatorics. Then he studied at the
University of St. Louis for a while and took part in Black Artists Group. But after he had listened
to Anthony Braxton's solo-LP For Alto, he decided to study saxophone, left the university, went
back to New York and became a street musician. His favourite tastes were no wave and other
New York hybrids that combined electronics, jazz, rock and where all kind of noise had an
important role. New York noise was different from European one: the main thing was the speed,
the pulse of the life on the Big Apple.

GAME PIECES: MUSIC AS A (SOCIAL) GAME

John Zorn has had very different "compositional periods" in his life. The first radical new
attitude toward composing was GAME PIECES , not "songs" but playing pieces, figures.

Game pieces don't have musical content, or they have only a little bit of it. There are fixed
structures of communication, systems, which enable to "switch on" or "switch off" certain
players. By showing special playing card to a specific musicians in the band, the leader/promoter
asks him/her to react. Those cards can also be shown by the musicians themselves – the system
is interactive.
Zorn said that he is "writing for musicians who already have their personal, original sounds
and ways of improvising and it's impossible to express those qualities as a sheet music, on
music paper, anyway. Accordingly, I let them produce their individual noises and sounds and
the musical result of the composition depends on who is playing what, at what time and with
whom together."

GAME PIECES' AESTHETICS is the basis of Zorn's compositional language:

1) fast and sudden change of styles. Zorn said that he could not concentrate on one
thing for a long time and his music is perfect for impatient people, because the
information changes very fast: it's like watching TV – if you don't like one channel, you
can zap and take another one... and maybe you like it then. None of those "emotions"
lasts longer than 23 seconds.

2) techniques of movie production:

album Big Gundown has different actors/musicians in every episode (downtown's
artists), they play different roles according to their personalities that suit to certain
situations. American film industry also uses actors for certain roles and certain types of
situations only.
 21
3) category of play above of playing: Traditional jazz musician plays himself,
develops his idea and "tells a story" – the idea of my rules of game is not to develop an
idea but to deconstruct it!

4) Strukture (form) more important than the content: I'm not interested in how
something sounds. I'm only interested in how does it function, how the connections look
like. Every musician on Earth can play my music, it is a universal language and my
idea is to invite all kind of musicians to the one "melting pot”.

COBRA, 1985
… is the most famous game piece. The name comes from highly popular computer war game of
the 80s. Zorn recorded this work twice: first one live in 1985 and the second one in 1986 in
studio. The musicians on the recordings are all the downtown "hard core": Bill Frisell and Arto
Lindsay -g, Zeena Parkins -harf, Bobby Previte -perc, Anthony Coleman -p, Wayne Horwitz -p
and others. Zorn himself acts as a PROMPTER or agitator, coordinating the game/composition.
John ZORN - Cobra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m1pjR1AQbc

FILE CARD COMPOSITIONS was his next composition period, similar to the game pieces
but more precise. Listen to the albums Godard and Spillane (1985-1987).

TRIBUTE TO was Zorn's third creative phase. He recorded tributes to film composer Ennio
Morricone, to the "father" of the free jazz Ornette Coleman, blues giant Albert Collins etc.

Tribute to Ornette Coleman: Spy vs Spy, 1988

Zorn recorded 17 pieces of Coleman's music, playing them with the speed up to 360 bpm. None
of the pieces is longer than 2 minutes, and there are some 1-minute pieces – too short for
improvising.
Zorn explained that "it all happened like a WHAM! One explosion from the start to the end. The
idea was to play faster and faster, shorter and shorter and to make everything even more
powerful. It certainly creates controversies and many people will hate it. As Ornette Coleman's
music came out, it was a shock and to create that kind of shock was my goal, too."

Coleman's original: The Shape Of Jazz To Come, 1959 – Chronology

(listen ca 1 minute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oH63aiGCs4
Zorn: Spy vs Spy, 1988 – Chronology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGb6Wcsw68k

NAKED CITY...
... was Zorn's band, kinda "Mahavishnu Orchestra of 1990s ". The album with the same name
was released in 1990 and is stilistically MULTISTILICS or HYPERFUSION . Enjoy, all of it!
Naked City full CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i56QO9O8qso&list=PLSCSp1orGuYc6e7Blv-
kaDt3nDr6ITGwy
 22
The next band after Naked City was P AINKILLER , a trio, founded together with the drummer of
the death-metal band Napalm Death, Mick Harris, and free funk bass & producer Bill Laswell.
They mixed avangard-jazz with grindcore and are the forerunners of avant-garde metal.

Painkiller: Guts Of A Virgin (Japanese horror movie, 1986)

Zorn: band Painkiller – Portent (pahaendeline asi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kIarBW5Vc

RADICAL JEWISH CULTURE & "KRISTALLNACHT"

After his Jewish father died, John Zorn began to research the Jewish culture. In 1992, at the Art
Project festival in MUNICH, group of downtown musicians played Zorn's work Kristallnacht, a
game piece/noise music that was supposed to describe Jewish life in Germany from 1930s until
today. Also Zorn released his manifest: "The New Radical Jewish Culture".

Tzadik
To propagate his "new radical Jewish culture", Zorn founded the label Tzadik Records. Under
this label one can find a lot of very different and interesting music.

Without doubt, John Zorn is the most prominent and influential man of 1980s and 1990s New
York downtown. And also the most controversial one.

To explain his music, he said: "Take a bicycle and drive the Broadway up and down and you
hear everything that is inside my music!" This is roughly the same that Thelonious Monk said
some forty years earlier: "If you want to know what is in my music, come to New York and open
your ears!"
ZORN DOCUMENTARY 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7jyzXY1JAo
ZORN DOCUMENTARY 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQkM3jpw768

KNITTING FACTORY
Knitting Factory or Knit was opened in 1987 and soon it was the SYNONYM of the NEW MUSIC.
The list of musicians who played there sounds like a list of classical jazz avant-garde stars today:
John Zorn, John Lurie ja Lounge Lizards, Don Byron, Bill Frisell, Dave Douglas, Marc Ribot,
Joey Baron, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Wayne Horwitz, Brandon Ross, Marty Ehrlich, Zeena
Parkins, Marilyn Crispell, Tim Berne...

The owner of Knit was Michael Dorff. He began with local jazz festival in 1988 (slogan: "What Is
Jazz?") and Knit published its own CD-s. This first and very fruitful period lasted until April
1994. Then they were forced to move to a new place. The owner opened another Knitting Factory
in Los Angeles and like the critics in New York said: In that West Coast club one could listen to
the music that "is pleasant for broader audiences"... Later, Knit had to move to Brooklyn, and all
the avant-garde New York moved there, because Manhattan is too expensive for creative
improvising musicians today...

NB! Not all downtown and Knitting Factory musicians identified themselves with John Zorn.
There were quite different creative musicians, too.
 23
Other early Knitting Factory musicians

BILL FRISELL (1951-)

... a guitarist who grew up in Denver. For a year he studied at the famous jazz school, Berklee
School of Music in Boston, but left it and then studied with the grandmaster of the jazz guitar,
Jim Hall.
Frisell has his very personal sound and style. His roots are pretty colourful: jazz, blues, country,
noise music, rock, folk etc. His early specialty was a very clever use of the volume pedal and a
guitar with a loose neck!
In the 80s, he was a house guitarist for the label ECM (after a recommendation by Pat Metheny).
In 90s he worked with John Zorn's Naked City, and later turned to American traditional music,
so called "Americana".
Frisell's Knit-times: Rambler, Live in Germany, 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn_0ug1oxPE

MARC RIBOT (1954-) [ribou]

... is another nonconformist guitarist who has done a lot of work in Knitting Factory scene. But
he also had quite different settings, playing together with Cuban musicians or with the cult-
person, singer, songwriter and actor Tom Waits. For all the young musicians, Ribot's following
sentence might be helpful:
"Everybody wants to know - and makes it so important - what note you play... People
spend years learning of what note to play, and that matters like 5%! What matters
95% is understanding the project, understanding it semiotically!"
Marc Ribot' Band "Rootless Cosmopolitans" – Friendly Ghosts, 1990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCX2M7CGLPU

DON BYRON (1958-)

... is a clarinet and saxophone player and composer, a New Yorker born in Bronx. Byron studied
at the New England Conservatory and then was a student of the Third Stream composer (and
the author of the first serious theory of jazz, Lydian Chromatic Concept), George Russell.

Don Byron is able to play very different styles. He belonged to the Knit scene but has recorded
with many other top musicians of the USA, among them Duke Ellington Orchestra, Anthony
Braxton, Vernon Reid, Steve Coleman, Cassandra Wilson, Jack DeJohnette, ensemble Living
Colour, and then the classical orchestras like Atlanta Symphony or Klangforum Wien in Austria.
Speaking about his musical collaborations and compositions, Time Magazine wrote: "Calling
Don Byron a jazz musician is like calling the Pacific wet - it just doesn’t begin to describe it."
Don Byron: Music For Six Musicians - I'll chill on the Marley tapes..., 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjVYuF2ue40
 24
KNIT – SUMMA
Compared to the British free improvisers and "sound researchers" of the 1960s, N.Y. downtown
was much more colourful, had much less stylistic rules and was not so serious. And they had
much stronger rhythms in their creations.

DOWNTOWN – SUMMA
New York's downtown was not elitist like the uptown, where the followers of European classical
tradition used to live and listen to their works performed in important academic halls like
Lincoln Center, Town Hall and Carnegie Hall.
1. downtown was not a conception but a strategy of survival
2. downtown artists were fleeing from the mass culture
3. they were convinced that business ethics destroys art work, because it doesn't ask what
an art work means for a human and how is it important for his life – business ethics asks
only: How much will anybody pay for this work?
4. downtown was convinced that if anything is somehow linked to commerce, then it is
already poisoned
P.S. DOWNTOWN didn't exist only in New York. Same kind of scenes existed in Chicago, San
Fransisco, Los Angeleses, Seattle and elsewhere.

OTHER "ORIGINALS" (no-KNIT)

HENRY THREADGILL (1944-)
... is a Chicagoan saxophone and flute player. Only 4 years younger than Herbie Hancock, but
mostly known among musicians. Among them he is considered the very original modern
composer. Threadgill was a member of the AACM, and has written not only jazzy band pieces
but large-scale works for classical symphony orchestras and different chamber ensembles,
always inviting the musicians to improvise.
Playing it UNsafe: Henry Threadgill Part I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGdPJEmPka4

In 1975 Threadgill had his first band, the trio Air (Artists In Residence; not to confuse with the
French pop group). In 1980s he had an unusual Sextet with seven members: 2 drummers, bass,
cello, trombone and trumpet. Later he formed experimental bands Make A Move, Flute Force
Four, X-75, Aggregation Orb and Zooid. Threadgill mixes African traditions, New Orleans style,
latin sounds, folk music and even the modern opera. He has worked out his own composition
techniques, influenced by the linear polyphony of the New Orleans jazz:
a. creates groups of intervals out of certain chords
b. those groups are basis for the harmony and counterpoint of that work
c. improvisation will be done on certain rows of intervals or serial blocks
LP Makin' A Move – Make Hot And Give, 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmu-LmaJ8no

Threadgill's band The Very, Very Circus created very intense sounds: 2 tubas, 2 electric guitars,
all kind of latin percussion, french horn, violin, accordeon, exotic instruments and singers:
Band VERY VERY CIRCUS – Too Much Sugar For A Dime, 1993
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iMgVw8U0Vc
 25
STEVE COLEMAN (1956- )
... is another saxophone player from Chicago. His big idol was Henry Threadgill, but he went his
own way. Contrary to John Zorn who is of the same age, Coleman decided to do some serious
research of music history, old Egyptian and Greek mathematics and astronomy, theory of the
golden ratio, Central European folk, and finally he created his own cosmology.

CHARLIE PARKER studies

If Wynton Marsalis and his followers just played in the style of Charlie Parker or other bebop or
hard bop musicians, then Coleman listened to Parker differently: he was interested in the
rhythmical interaction between saxophone and drums (especially Ko-Ko, 1948 live), and saw
inner divisions there: 4/4 time 8 = 3+3+2 and then 2+3+3 and in the end 2+2+1+3 and 1+3+4.

NEW IDEAS OF MUSICAL RHYTHM

Coleman put different rhythm layers on top of each other, creating some kind of African
polymetric "drum orchestra" score for his bands. The result was that binary/two-part meter
sounded very "unstable but exciting" because of highly complex structures. Steve Coleman called
this kind of music "afrological".
Steve Coleman - Law Of Balance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGxQ5XcyuNM

He had different bands: 5 Elements, Renegade Way, Mystic Rhythm Society, Strata Institute

M-BASE
In the end of 1980s he and his followers spoke about themselves as M-BASE collective. Since
everybody tried to know what "M-Base" means, Coleman delivered an explanation: M-BASE =
Macro-Basic Array Of Structured Extemporizations. This is not a term to fool anybody or to
be against Wynton Marsalis. We just want to express our lives through music, based on
improvisation and structure. Our goal is to build common musical languages that have
broader collective basis: macro-basic-array.
Black Science: Steve Coleman & The World of M-Base documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87OZ0F5G9AA

In 1996 Coleman went to Cuba and discovered the folklore-group Afro Cuba De Matanzas.
Thanks to those people some African traditions and cosmology were still alive: the cult of Arara,
Congo and Joruba traditions, vodun (voodoo) and many more. They also played holy Batà
drums. Coleman played with them at Havana jazz festival and recorded The Sign And The Seal.
COLEMAN: The Sign & The Seal: The Diurnal Lord (for AGAYU), 1996
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urf6Dprht1g
 26

The end of the 20th century

Jazzy landscape in 1990s
Already the 1980s didn't have one leading jazz style, and in 1990s the picture became even more
confused. Many new style names appeared, there was a short hype', then they fell apart and
some sub-styles were born... and a little bit later they disappeared too, because the new bunch of
new names were created. But most of those styles had something common: SAMPLER –
SYNTESIZER – SEQUENCER – HOME STUDIO – INTERNET .

SAMPLER & SEQUENCER

The first sampler in mass production was Fairlight CMI (1979). The price: 25,000 dollars!
(medium yearly salary in the USA was 17,500 $). Only few musicians could afford that kind of
luxury. The first "cheap" sampler AKAI S900 was released in 1986, for 2250 US$, or the salary
(brutto) of one-and-half months.

In 1990s those electronic devices got affordable and the first result of it was mixing whatever
stuff could be recorded. The result was a MASH-UP. The new CUT & PASTE -aesthetics was born
and this caused huge philosophical discussions about ethics etc., and of course it was a stuff for
many court cases – because of "stolen" melodies or chord progressions etc. etc.

This technical revolution inspired some art music composers, too. The minimalist Steve Reich
who came from 60s New York downtown scene, used sampler for his original work City Life
(1995). Reich recorded all kind of sounds and speech/announcements in the streets of New
York, combined them with acoustic instruments and movie clips and created a very dynamic
work that expressed the tempo of our times:
Steve Reich: CITY LIFE, 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMcz4jhDWMI

INTERNET
In the middle of the 1990s more and more people could use the internet. That was the next
revolution that changed music making again, and changed (and is still changing) the music
business and the ways musicians connect to each other. Through the internet the musical tastes
of people changed, and the need for "something new" became much stronger than ever. The
fundamental impact of internet on human kind is daily stuff for discussions today and like
usually, we still can not foresee the distant future.

New "jazzy" styles of the 1990s

HYPERFUSION...
... or combining/mixing whatever styles. In the early 90s the term was used for a while to
describe bands that combined couple of styles like jazz, heavy metal, funk, prog-rock etc. In jazz,
John Zorn's Naked City was one of that kind of bands. And kinda "hyperfusion-world-music"
mixture already in the 70s was Joe Zawinul's Weather Report.

In the last decade of the 20th century the postmodern attitude became popular also in rock and
pop music: Anything goes! Now the most "effective" way to create something new was to collect
"ideas" from internet and to put "your own face" together.
 27
Music critics reacted to many minimal changes with a new style name, for example if a hard
rock guitar player managed to play a highly virtuoso and complicated "not-hard-rock" solo.
One of those bands was New York's Living Colour. It was called alternative-metal, crossover,
funk-metal or hyperfusion. The founder of the band, guitar player Vernon Reid, got his
"education" in free-funk bands Decoding Society and Defunkt and to play whatever energetic
virtuoso free stuff was no problem for him.

Living Colour & hyperfusion

In 1989 they released a song The Cult of Personality. Vernon Reid plays fantastic free-funk-
noise-music guitar solo and something else is very unusual for a rock band of that time: they
integrated original tapes with sentences from black leader Malcolm X and presidents Roosevelt
and Kennedy into their composition – i.e. hyperfusion!
Living Colour – The Cult of Personality, 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ver7VKnSOUU
the same song live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwwJkaT2PHM

Iceburn Collective
... is a serious hyperfusion band and to understand their ideas and sounds, their recordings
should be listened from the beginning to the end. The band was founded in 1991 in Salt Lake
City's by three musically educated men: guitar player and singer Gentry Densley was Bachelor of
Music, the bass player Doug Wright played in symphony orchestra and the drummer Dan Day
had studied at the Berklee College in Boston. The band members changed but the leader Gentry
Densley always took care of using multiple styles: jazz, heavy metal, bebop, punk, classical and
atonal music etc. for hyperfusion. Their music can also be called jazzcore, because they mix
jazz, hardcore punk, the speed of metal and melodic and harmonic material of the progressive
rock. In many cases, their compositions are like suites, lasting for more than 15 minutes.
Iceburn Collective: History (CD: Mediavolutions, 1996)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VEQ2mUDcg

ACID JAZZ...
... term was invented by the London DJ (disc jockey) Gilles Peterson. In 1987 he began to mix
old hard bop, funk- and soul-jazz records for dancing. Mostly, he used the vinyls from famous
jazz label Blue Note. The term "acid" was a street name for the drug LSD, which was used by
hippies to "expand awareness". For Peterson, the name came from a Chicagoan club style acid
house, where DJs used the drum machine Roland TR-808 and for the bass the Roland analog
synthesizer TB-303.

Some famous British acid jazz bands were: organist James Taylor's Quartet, saxophonist Steve
Williamson, bands Galliano, Night Trains and The Brand New Heavies. The bands usually
followed certain rules to "play the right style:

• drums: funk/hip-hop rhythms, main beat, only few fills, shuffle-play on snare drum
(metal or cupper piccolo snare). Tempo: 88-116 bpm, not more!
• percussion: if at all, then afro or latin rhythms with congas or syncopated shekere
• bass: melodic lines, straight (with fingers!), no slap, popping or pick playing!
sometimes double bass instead of the electric one
 28
• guitar: jazz/funk chords (9/11/13) in high register, usually straight or wah-wah-pedal
No powerchords!
• keys: 1 or 2 keyboards, simple arrangements; focus on main sounds (piano, Fender Rhodes,
Wurlitzer organ), rarely strings' sounds
• winds: sax-trumpet-trombone trio; sometimes flute; mostly high density unisono licks

The rules may differ but the most important point was to have the right groove and deep
danceable and jazzy sound! BRITISH and USA acid jazz were different: Brits' rhythmic side
came more from the funk of the 70s, in the USA it was more influenced by jazz and almost didn't
use sampled sounds.

BRITISH ACID, Dave Toop:

DAVE (David) TOOP, 1989 – Black Dahlia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MO8hPojVOI

USA ACID, band Digable Planets, Grammy-song:

Digable Planets - Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat), 1993
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM4kqL13jGM

The boom of the acid jazz began in 1989, as the London group Brand New Heavies released their
single People Get Ready. Acid got very popular because of its unique groove (and the word
groove became trendy, too).

REBIRTH OF THE COOL...

... or neo-cool was connected to older jazz, too. Its creators said that their "inspiration was
Miles Davis' record Birth of the Cool, but they also understood that in modern times many
different elements should be used ".
GROOVE COLLECTIVE was founded in 1990 in New York. They used samples from the 40s jazz
and played citations from bebop. For example the introduction and thematic material of their
hit Rent Strike was taken from the 1945s bebop era composition by Tadd Dameron, Hot House:
GROOVE COLLECTIVE – Rent Strike, 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP1Z6IXS1dQ

JAZZ/HIP-HOP FUSION
was born in London, like the most club styles of the 1990s. In 1992 the local band Us3 released
their song Guantaloop, it became a huge hit and since then, people spoke about the new style
jazz & hip-hop fusion or jazz-rap. Us3 used a hit by Herbie Hancock from 1964, Cantaloupe
Island. It was the first platinum record (sold over 1 mill. copies) of the now legendary label Blue
Note. Us3 rearranged it and called it Guantaloop (Flip Fantasia).

Herbie HANCOCK - Cantaloupe Island, 1964

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B1oIXGX0Io

Us3 Guantaloop (Flip Fantasia), 1992

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwBjhBL9G6U

P.S. Jazz-rap was already used by New Orleans bands in 1910s cutting contests, to make fun of and even
insult the competing band. The idea was to look better and accordingly, to make more money.
 29
DRUM & BASS + JAZZ = JAZZSTEP
One very popular club style in the 90s was (again from England) Drum & Bass (D'n'B).
There, drum and bass have the dominant role in the sound picture, everything else is mostly
little colour and spare melodic material that is not "too complicated" for the club visitors.
Drum & Bass had a jazzy follower, born ca 1995 – the jazzstep. That style was mostly played on
Bristol and London: drum&bass + electric-jazz kind of structure.

The first important jazzstep band was 4hero, actually a duo by two London musicians and D'n'B
DJ-s. Their records were released by Gilles Peterson's label Talkin' Loud. 4hero also used other
pseudonyms: Jacobs Optical Stairway, Tek 9, Nu Era and Tom and Jerry.

4hero - Third Stream, 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps0MfM8-y0Q

SWING DANCING = NEO SWING = RETRO SWING

After all those electric adventures, something "very old and acoustic" came up and conquered
the world: swing dancing. Couple of things had happened: Disneyland's managers felt that
young people might like the swing music that big bands used to play there on Saturdays. In the
summer of 1997 they organized dance parties for young people on Fridays, under the slogan
Jump, Jive, Boogie, Swing parties. Next year the company Gap began advertizing their new
khaki pants on television, using a Louis Prima hit Jump Jive An' Wail from 1956 for their
commercial. There one could see young people dancing like in the swing era dance jitterbug:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ735krOiPo

The commercial was sensationally successful and young people all over the western world got
interested in that old style dancing. Suddenly, swing big bands were "in", and now they played
swing with strong influences of rock&roll and rockabilly styles. That was swing dancing craze!
In the USA the "battles" of swing big bands were organized, like 60 years before, in the golden
swing era.

The first swing-dancing star was a guitar player and singer who had been famous for a long time
with his rockabilly band Stray Cats - Brian Setzer. He was already 40 years old, and now he put
an excellent swing big band together, The Brian Setzer Orchestra:
The Brian Setzer Orchestra – Jump Jive An' Wail, 1998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWcN5YxuYc&list=PL2H0HVz3HIGG5NEb
MlfgQ6qmlSBs4VETE

Swing retro lasted for some three years. To keep a big band alive is very expensive nowadays...
But swing dancing didn't disappear – in the 21st century, a new swing style was invented, the
electro swing, made by small bands and still popular in big cities.
 30
SMOOTH JAZZ
As jazzy styles got popular in young people's clubs, the big music business tried to make some
more money out of jazz, too. And the new promising term was SMOOTH JAZZ.

SMOOTH began in California in 1987. Then the Los Angeles' radio station KTWV decided to
optimize its music programs under the name "all-fusion rotation policy". To offer something
new, they began to use the term SMOOTH JAZZ , as if it were some kind of new style of jazz!

Under the "smooth" they put all kind of softer jazz-rock and fusion and everything else that was
a little bit jazzy, polished, delicate, fluent... smooth. The promoters said that this is "the modern
version of the 70s jazz-rock". Musicians were asked to record that kind of mild, sweet music that
radio stations need. One New York radio station published an advertizing: "We are looking for
lively pieces of music, with melodies that would also be well recognizable for non-musical
audiences!"

Smooth jazz became the most popular radio format of the 90s, and the profits of radio stations
went up by unbelievable 77%. By the end of 1990s the USA had 200 radio stations specialized on
smooth jazz.

For a serious jazz musician, the "smooth jazz" is not jazz but muzak, background sound or
"wallpaper" for supermarkets. Muzak also had synonyms elevator music, piped music or lift
music. More intelligent people used the word FUZAK = fusion+muzak.

Today the terms are often confused and in big record stores one can find "the king of swing"
Benny Goodman or Ella Fitzgerald on the shelf of the "smooth"... as if they were the musicians
who played that "style". Goodman and Fitzgerald were great progressive jazz musicians of their
time in the jazz style called swing! Swing could be soft and it could be hot and very wild too.
"Smooth jazz" offers only extremely limited emotions, if any at all, and is just a cheap
consumption goods. Don't let yourselves be lulled into "smooth"!
 31

1990s – SUMMARY
1) Wynton Marsalis and neoconservatives were still active. In 1991 Jazz At Lincoln
Center (JALC) was established

2) Knitting Factory avant-garde was blossoming; John Zorn's label Tzadik released many
very different new bands;

3) Younger generation began to combine jazz-rock, heavy metal, prog rock and other styles;
older and new jazz-rock musicians were active, Miles Davis' former bandmates among them;

4) Some bands began to study old jazz and the so called repertory bands emerged; they
played stylistically pure old styles like New Orleans or swing or concentrated their research on
some former musician: Phineas Newborn project, Monk projects, Mahavishnu Project etc.;

5) New excellent big bands were established: Marsalis (at JALC) and Maria Schneider;
some old famous big bands still worked and travelled: Ellington, Basie, Mingus;

6) Crooner's comeback: many young singers who stayed in classic jazz tradition: Harry
Connick junior, Diana Krall, Jamie Cullum etc.

7) "Megamix": new important tools for composers: sampler and home studio. Some
musicians began to mix everything: jazz-rock+heavy metal+prog+free+hip-hop etc. =
hyperfusion. New club styles emerged: acid jazz etc.

8) Teaching jazz became a norm in universities;

9) Jazz festivals: in Europe and Asia more jazz/blues festivals than ever!

(10) 1991: collapse of the USSR! Estonia and other Eastern European states free
again! Now, you are free to do anything you like (according to democracy, of course).
 32
JAZZ TREE until 1999
..............................................

1990s new and retro styles • hyperfusion

DOWNTOWN & KNIT
NEOCONSERVATISM
Miles Davis' comeback
free funk
Loft scene N.Y.
free jazz 2nd generation
JAZZ-ROCK "golden era"
Miles Davis & jazz-rock
early jazz-rock in England and USA
European free improvisation
JOHN COLTRANE
Ornette Coleman & FREE JAZZ
Third Stream • MODAL jazz
COOL (West Coast) • HARD BOP (East Coast)
dixieland revival • early R&B
progressive jazz
BEBOP
SWING
DUKE ELLINGTON
CHICAGO • HARLEM STRIDE • BLUES CRAZE
Jelly Roll Morton
Louis Armstrong
N.O. style in Chicago & Joe King Oliver
NEW ORLEANS
BLUES
RAGTIME
brass bands • society bands
minstrels & banjo • folk hymn • spiritual
African music, drums • work song, field holler, cries & calls
20.08.1619 - first African slaves in Northern America
English folk song, ballad, irish reels • European emigrants' music
anglican church hymn and psalm
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA