Free Jazz, or the Sentinels of Change

Isaac Chan

In 1959, at New York’s Five Spot venue with only a plastic saxophone, one Ornette Coleman was
about to mark his name in music history, as he played through his material unbound by harmonic
and structural normalcies of what had been conceived as jazz. In a short amount of years, the
nascent idea of “free jazz” would fledge into an artistic movement that ignite drastic controversies
within the industry. The giant Leonard Bernstein would be a fervent supporter, yet the pioneering
Miles Davis would derogate him as “all screwed up inside”.

This essay aims to give a brief overview on the historical development of free jazz as an emblem of
revolution, and discuss ways in which free jazz makes a musical stance.

In Jeff Schwartz’s book, the year 1959 is considered a “pivotal year in jazz”, with its “creative
currents running into free jazz”1. On top of Ornette Coleman’s daring feat, Cecil Taylor’s album, Love
for Sale, integrated his own work with Cole Porter in the past, yet his displacement of song form and
of a common groove, as well as percussive uses of keyboard clusters, hinted at something beyond
the established tunes. A multitude of societal factors (the finance of artists, the rising civil rights
movement, the propagation of experimental and expressionistic art) pushed this art form to the
peak of discussions, despite its inherent controversies.

The term “free jazz” essentially originates from the title of Coleman’s sixth album in 1960. the
magnitude and defiance of traditional harmonic structure in Coleman’s work takes on a symphonic
proportion. It incorporates a double quartet (almost with a Reich-ian hint) with extensive,
unhindered solo passages.

Free jazz (both the album and the art) is, in essence, a rejection to bebop’s preset structural and
harmonic changes; in a quasi-postmodern lens it actively reconsiders rhythm, harmony and structure
(the basic building blocks of any music). Contextually, it features a focus on the liberation of the
black race – nearly a century after the liberation of slaves, the oppression of the black race is still
heavily residual in American society. Some scholars interpret third stream jazz, which came prior in
the 40s, as homogeneous with free jazz – however while the third stream investigates more an
influence and acceptance of art music into jazz, free jazz (with a similar palette of sound) provides
more of a social-artistic impetus.

The ambiguity of “free jazz” consistently stands – it is “freed” in the bounds of structure and tonal
formulae, yet its improvisation demanded great knowledge and application of music theory, which
has been associated by musicologists with an Afrological voice of music2 - as in Taylor’s music. (His
1
Schwartz, Jeff. Freedom, Free Jazz, State University of New York Press, 2022, p. 11 ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cam/detail.action?docID=29687507.
2
Lewis, George E. “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research
Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 1996, pp. 91–122. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/779379.
album, Air above Mountains, is designed meticulously between three distinct motifs of respective
scales, and their improvisation all orienting around a uniform trichordal/tetrachordal harmony under
Steven Block’s interpretation.3) Drummer Elvin Jones says in regard to what is considered "freedom
music": "There's no such thing as freedom without some kind of control, at least self-control or self-
discipline" – essentially affirming the intricate post-tonal designs of free jazz as a form of revolution
from the vertiginous, commercial bounds of jazz prior to that. On first hearing free jazz provides
somewhat of a chaotic palette of sound (frequently due to the common feature of polyphonic
improvisation) – while pioneers Pharaoh Sanders and Ornette Coleman enthusiastically use
“overblown”, extended techniques of horns to produce unique shades of sound (Coleman’s Free
Jazz album is a primary example). It is crucial to view them in an extra-musical lens of breaking
through the usual musical vocabulary – one can draw a clear comparison between the proportions
of these long, undubbed albums, and the staple harmonic audacity in the Rite 40 years prior, both as
musical sentinels of revolution.

Coleman’s musical provocations in the late 1950s was associated with “the culture of spontaneity”
(Daniel Belgrad)4, easily associating it with the Beat movement and Abstract expressionism in
literature. The intellectual gusto provided a hotbed for innovation and revolution in that time (Jack
Kerouac of the same epoch was known to have drafted his novel On the Road in one unbroken
paragraph, as a recurring feature of unencumbered outflow of personal expression.) which gave
music an outwardly cathartic quality. Later on in the movement was Charles Mingus, who took a
different, more akin to minimalistic role, with his album Percussion Discussion mimicking a live
dialogue between merely two drums – allowing the more extensive exploration of mutually
subordinate roles through a modern-day relevant setting.

Free jazz, compared with its predecessors, warps the element of time, in the sense that the twelve-
bar blues structure, as well as the quadruple/triple metre embedded in jazz is now removed. In
Albert Ayler’s (an early essential free jazz composer) album “Holy Ghost”, this element is
demonstrated through the irregular (and almost menacing) exchange of themes through its series of
solo features. In a musical sense this “creates and releases energy” horizontally through
improvisation, and not by binding musical elements, hence allowing Ayler to consider himself “a
vessel from which energy is issued”5. Indeed this seems to add to a teleological, linear property of
jazz (reminiscent in western classical music), which actually “has a target” (Barry Guy) rather than
simply serving as entertainment; and may easily be interpreted as a means of resistance from the
ennui of jazz when exploited by the capitalistic society. Simultaneously, its straying away from
harmonic principles of bebop can also be interpreted socially as a denial of the status quo of jazz: its
predetermined form had aided its rendering unto a mere entertainment which was ceded to the
white community. The change in musical features show their separation from “pure music”6, and
their tightknit interplay with society.

3
Steven Block, Pitch-Class Transformation in Free Jazz. Block applies the (commonly associated with art music) analytical
method of pitch-class set theory into a selection of Taylor and Coleman’s albums.
4
Schwartz, Jeff. Free Jazz, State University of New York Press, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cam/detail.action?docID=29687507.
5
Baraka, Amiri, 1934-2014. Blues People : Negro Music in White America. New York :Perennial, 2002, p.174.
6
Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. Paperback ed. New York, Oxford University Press, 1998., p. 337
Both western classical and jazz worlds embrace the idea of collectivism in post-1960s music, yet with
slight deviations. In Eurological art music it is Stockhausen’s idea of a unanimity of mood that unites
minds by provoking intuition into one singular text by the composer; whereas in the Afrological jazz
world the idea of freedom seems to reign, with the idea of improvisation where “everyone plays
free” creates an ultimate synthesis of sound through every individual’s “dictates of their taste”. 7

It is interesting to note the parallel within diametric Western classical and jazz cultures: in the
former, the expansion of tonalities upon the early 20th century evolved, after the world wars, into a
sonic postmodernity of experimental music departing from tonal structures and focusing on a
synthetic sound world (Cage, Stockhausen and the Darmstadt tradition etc.); whereas in the latter
they transform from an “appetite-friendly” (in the white sense) set of tunes in harmonic
progressions and set rhythms, to one that displaces or discards all of these elements and gives
leeway to intricate personal discovery. Both musics seem to relinquish certain elements considered
immanent to their art, yet by doing so they push for a revolution against their artistic limitations (be
it an exhaustion of tonality and form, or the ennui of playing music for the oppressing race’s sake).

Ornette Coleman’s rather sentimental account on the backlash of free jazz is particularly memorable.
8
The status quo of jazz until the 40s laid in advantage of the white man, with jazz “leeched and
exploited” and its ideology and value “incessantly controlled” under the white American capitalist
paradigm. In terms of financial gain, clubs with white ownership seemed to hoard the gains of the
black musicians9, and record companies were bereaving the artists of their rights to the music – so
much so it became a dire necessity for black artists to escape this musical sharecropping (which
evolved briefly into the “loft jazz” movement). Free jazz, in the eyes of Coleman, was more than a
solitary art form – it was a communal struggle as a victim, and the backlash was, in his opinion, a
hindrance of their individual identity.

Historically, free jazz is an agent tracing the feats of black empowerment, under the thought that
their music was inherently political, and that it fed resplendently towards the civil rights movement
in the 50s-60s. It was essentially an rebelling, emblematic “vote of no confidence” towards the
“American Dream”. Throughout this period there were the Brown v. Board of Education decisions
relating to racial segregation, as well as a flourishing of Freedom Schools and the Freedom Summer.
Free jazz was an essential catalyst towards these civil currents – with music and art being the
promulgating flesh of every social movement, the aforementioned extrovert quality of free jazz is a
fervent expression of the civil incentive in discussion. Later on, Archie Shepp’s appearance in the
Algiers in 1969 was a testament towards the empowering properties of free jazz. Upon the debate
between Marxist ideals, there was an unequivocal and bold intervention stating “Jazz was African
power”, and their return was symbolic of something communally great.

7
Lewis, George E. “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research
Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 1996, pp. 91–122. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/779379
8
Carles, Philippe, and Jean-Louis Comolli. Free Jazz/Black Power, University Press of Mississippi, 2015, p. 12. ProQuest
Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cam/detail.action?docID=3039937.
9
Baskerville, John D. “Free Jazz: A Reflection of Black Power Ideology.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, 1994, pp.
484–97. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784566. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023.
Baraka refers to John Coltrane, among others, as the generation’s “private assassins”10, in the light
where his black music acts as a form of undiluted social aggression by being “as non-Western as
possible”, and through acts of subversion, sabotage and revolution11. Taking Baraka’s word
truthfully, one might categorise this radical thought as using music as torture 12 (Susanna Cusick)
from his agony towards “white babies” – or perhaps more appropriately, as a burst of dissatisfaction
following the prolonged exploitation of the black race and their culture.

Women in free jazz are noteworthy in their subversion of female stereotypes, as well as the political
agenda in jazz. The icon Billie Holiday has established a persona of the “beautiful woman unlucky in
love who told her stories through slow-burning torch songs”, and the general ‘dark blue’ quality of
her music has been associated with a certain sexual languor (certain branches of jazz were inherent
with a voyeuristic quality with the theme of yearning for a man13). As the free jazz movement
evolved, Angela Coltrane (wife of John) emerged as perhaps the leading female figure, through
music that was earnestly and inherently spiritual. Her primary album, A Love Supreme, was a multi-
movement work that answered to psalmody and spirituality extensively, while employing the
intricate style of free jazz and pondering upon the theme of god-given musical talent 14.

Simultaneously, artist Val Wilmer balanced a career of both musician and writer, with her book As
Serious as Your Life presenting her music as one that is sincerely manifesting the “human desire to
be unshackled and free”. Both artists deviate from the intense political agenda of jazz, in pursuit for
themes that answer to “finding one’s own voice” in jazz. While the musical lexicon stands firmly in
free jazz, it seems to answer to the primitive connection of God and oneself in the origins of blues
better than their counterparts. It is regrettably so that the industry of free jazz has had a “boys club”
attitude, nonetheless the growing free instrumental jazz community in Japan and southeast Asia
seems promising in defying this stance.

Ironically, it is interesting to note the musical influence of free jazz on Miles Davis the opposition.
The fact that his vehement opposition eventually caught up against him, and he would compose
pieces like Double Image (with instrumentation perhaps responding to Coleman’s Free Jazz album),
and pieces like Bitches Brew that function modally away from mainstream jazz, even featuring solos
and sonic palettes characteristic of free jazz15 - is testament to the extensive significance of free jazz.
Its properties aimed at social change has left it remaining in different forms of jazz (just as the
influence of Second Viennese School and Darmstadt composers remain in the influential sound
world of 21st century art music composers). The audacious musical prowess of free jazz works
mutually with the bold social aspirations for change at the time – and remain significant in the
Afrological development of the sound world.
10
Baraka, Amiri, 1934-2014. Blues People : Negro Music in White America. New York :Perennial, 2002, p.228.
11
Mackey, Nathaniel. “The Changing Same: Black Music in the Poetry of Amiri Baraka.” Boundary 2, vol. 6, no. 2, 1978,
pp. 355–86. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/302328. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023.
12
Suzanne G. Cusick ‘Musicology, Torture, Repair’ Radical Musicology 3 (2008)
http://www.radical-musicology.org.uk/Cusickref.html
13
(lost source and could not re-discover – sorry!!)
14
Wikipedia contributors. "A Love Supreme." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11
Sep. 2023. Web. 5 Nov. 2023.
15
Tanner, Paul O. W.; Maurice Gerow; David W. Megill (1988) [1964]. "Crossover — Fusion". Jazz (6th ed.). Dubuque, IA:
William C. Brown, College Division. pp. 135–136. ISBN 0-697-03663-4.
Evaluation – immediate notes for improvement:

Charles Hersch essay and Carles & Comolli book could be investigated further – particularly for
middle-period free jazz (this essay has a focus on early free jazz).

Perhaps more musical analysis for a longer essay

Hypothesis – is it possible to include the Agawu study on tonality here, or perhaps too mutually
exclusive?