Shake Your Jazz Hands, It's Free Jazz Week!
 

Yup, it's free jazz week. As far as I can tell, free jazz has no strict definition as the term usually describes something the music is not or does not do, such as follow typical jazz conventions.

Wikipedia says :

One album which is generally regarded as important to that whole free jazz thang is Coltrane's album Ascension which was released in 1966. Here's a taste!

Without doubt my favorite subgenre of jazz.

Obligatory, sure, but Al's playing is always beautiful.

Anarchic.

Favorite jazz album of all-time. Only fair that it gets its place. Its free-ness is debatable, though.



This one needs a lot of time to unfold, but it grows into something wonderful.



Really cool to watch; the sound quality is sort of low, but just seeing how they react to one another is wonderful in itself.

And of course, Ascension is necessary. I second it.

I bought Ornette Coleman's 1959 (finally released in 1961) album the Art of the Improvisers as blind purchase at my local second hand vinyl shop when I was a teenage fanboy of mostly sixties psychedelic bands and early protopunk rockers like the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and the Ramones. I had no idea of what Ornette sounded like or what free jazz was. Nothing had prepared me for the inspired chaos and sublime fury of Circle With the Hole in the Middle. The urgency of the music hit me with the force of a sledgehammer.

Circle With the Hole in the Middle the first song on the album, opened my eyes to an entire realm of musical possibilities that I was previously unaware of.

Strangely enough, not a single of the millions of YouTube members had posted a copy of this song so I went ahead and posted it myself so you could hear it.

Free jazz is not my favourite sub-genre (I think it's sort of an acquired taste), but I still listen to it from time to time. I have to be in the mood for it :)

I also don't know a whole lot about it, and it was sort of skipped over in my Jazz history class. It wasn't even an essay topic! But here are some pieces that were included on the CD's that came with the textbook:

Sun Ra - Distant Stars


Eric Dolphy - Gazzelloni (there's some pretty cool flute in this piece too! :D)


Albert Ayler - Spirits

Double post, I know - but they've already managed to block it!!! :mad:

Sound Grammar is the most recent Ornette Coleman record and it's pretty fantastic. I think it won a Pulitzer, actually.

I'm never sure when Jazz is 'free'. It's a thin line between free and 'regular' jazz.

I know that one of his records won a Pulitzer, but I'm not sure if that was the one. Correct me if I'm wrong. I do know that it was the first and only time a Pulitzer was awarded to a musician.

Jazz in itself doesn't have many strict guidelines either. I think free jazz, for all intents and purposes, was (or is) a sort of a break away from the more established sub-genres of jazz. Like when Coltrane started making more avant-garde records. But you're right, sometimes it is hard to tell them apart. I just think of free jazz as being more modal, in terms of harmonic structure, as opposed to using more traditional scales and chords found in "regular" jazz music.

Nope, Pulitzer Prizes for music have been around since the 1940s I think. Sound Grammar won the 2007 award.

You're right. I looked it all up :)

I remember being super confused when I first heard that because I mixed up the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes.

To me, it all has to do with the style of improvisation. After all, the most fundamental aspect of jazz is its improvisation. Some styles of jazz (modal, bebop) had very secure and defined styles of improv, use these scales, revolve your tonality around the rhythm section, etc.

Free jazz proposes a much more limitless kind of improvisation. The general 'avant-garde' jazz actually often has very ridgid and well-defined scales or patterns that the soloists follow, but free jazz is a quantum leap forward in that respect. The actual ability for musicians to play off each other, and to come off as rational and not just random, is key.



It's not the freest thing that Al did, but it's among the most impacting; it's the first track in 3 years that I 'loved' on Last.fm within my first listen. Absolutely captivating playing.

I like jazz that has a certain theme, but I don't mind if it takes off now and then.

Something like this


or this


But I don't think that would be considered particularly 'free' :)

The differences are fairly clear but brilliant players like Trane, Mingus & Miles frequently blurred the categorical distinctions between regular (traditional) jazz and free jazz. Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra & Eric Dolphy are more firmly entrenched in the pure free jazz tradition. All of the above mentioned players were all masters of the traditional jazz form, regardless of their inclinations toward the free jazz form.

The differences between traditional jazz and free jazz are as follows:

• Traditional jazz is built on a framework of established song forms, such as the 12 bar blues, or the 32 bar form of a popular ballad. In free jazz, the dependence on a fixed and pre-established form is eliminated, and the role of improvisation is correspondingly increased.
  
• Tradtional jazz uses clear defined meters and strongly-pulsed rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz retains rhythms but often swings without regular meter. The rhythm of free jazz frequently accelerates or slows down depending on the improvised musical direction.
  
• Traditional jazz follows conventional harmonic structures. Free jazz, by definition dispenses with harmonic structures, but free jazz frequently employs combinations of the diatonic, altered dominant and blues phrasing of traditional jazz. In free jazz you may hear dissonant off key playing but it's not because the players are tone deaf...free jazz has a different set of tonal & harmonic ground rules.
  
• The most striking element of free jazz harmonics is the use of Eastern atonal harmonics and polyrhythmic structures that characterize African tribal music, Arabic music and classical raga music from India.

In reality free jazz is not a modern musical form, rather it's an exploration of ancient and more primitive musical forms that predate the more refined and conventionally structured traditional ballad, dance song or 12 bar blues. Many of the ancient forms of free jazz come from tribal cultures that existed long before the discovery of America.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is the ultimate traditional jazz theorist and has made the controversial argument that jazz ended when jazz musicians abandoned the conventional American blues and ballad form & began the free jazz experiment. It's a conservative cultural perspective, but there is some logic behind it because traditional jazz was built on traditional American music forms while free jazz is built on more exotic music forms from Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. For Marsalis, traditional jazz died at the end of the bop era; and free jazz, fusion, & post bop traditions are musical mutations of jazz but not valid forms of traditional American jazz.

That's a great explanation of free jazz vs traditional jazz :)

You can always count on Gavin!

Man, that album is off the hat rack. I'm happy you gave a nod to it, Tore. Nobody has brought up Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, which surprises me, but by today's standards can we really call it free jazz anymore?

I loved that record, and I really loved Dancing In Your Head as well.

I feel as if, after reading Gavin's and clutknuckle's posts, that this is, after all, appropriate. Let me know.

The Bad Plus!




and they have a slew of covers they do as well



from Sabbath to Nirvana
from David Bowie to the Pixies
from Rush to Radiohead

These guys have a lot to offer

More to come from other artists later.

To be honest, I have only listened to a small portion of Jazz, that being Miles Davis. I enjoy it however and would like to expand my tastes but can people please give me some recommendations? I really like the old school Jazz bars style Jazz if that makes sense.

This thread might help you: http://www.musicbanter.com/jazz-blue...enre-jazz.html. I guess you could also try the Jazz Recommendations thread - http://www.musicbanter.com/jazz-blue...on-thread.html

NB: Free jazz is probably only for the more seasoned listener of jazz music, if you know what I mean. But if you're into the whole Avant-Garde/Experimental thing, then listening to some of these might not be so bad.

I'm not a big fan of free jazz. Of course, some great artists have done amazing things with the genre, but as a whole I don't think free jazz makes for an enjoyable listening experience. Maybe my mind is in the wrong place or I just haven't been exposed to enough of it, but that's my personal opinion. However, on a different note, free jazz has helped to create some incredible music that doesn't necessarily fit under the free jazz umbrella. For instance, it would be impossible to deny the influence free jazz had on musicians like Charles Mingus and Thelonious monk, to name just a couple. Of course, musicians like Mingus and Monk not only were influenced by free jazz, but influenced the genre itself.

I see Ornette Coleman and free jazz in the 1950s and early 60s as a genre that pushed jazz too far, so far that there had to be some sort of counter reaction by other musicians. This reaction, in my opinion, is what helped to create some of Mingus's best work in the 60s, as well as a slew of other artists' albums from that decade.

I have honestly been dreading this week. I knew jazz week would come sooner or later.

While I wouldn't really say it's free jazz music by any means, it's very adventurous. Adventurousness is part of free jazz, but the music here is still very structured and any improv likely follows a strict rule-set (ie. use this scale, abide by the rhythms in back of you, etc.), even though that solo a bit over halfway through the song was pretty atonal. Doesn't stop it from being really cool, though. I only had the chance to hear the second link, but it was good stuff. I really liked how the piece evolved over the 6 minutes; the pianist in particular was really good at keeping you intrigued and interested over the whole thing.

May sound kind of nerdy or obsessive, but I don't consider Free Jazz musicians to desire 'enjoyability' as a facet of their craft. It's very raw, passionate and visceral on a base level, and it's something I listen to when I need to feel shocked, to be jolted, to have my personal opinions on what constitutes as musical expression turned upside down. Listening to an album like Spiritual Unity helps me attain a special and previously unattainable level of self-understanding. I don't really 'enjoy' Free Jazz, I absorb it, live it and breathe it. Its adventurousness and its slippery qualities venture through the most under-enlightened parts of my mind and create a new person.

So yeah, kinda like the stuff. Might not aim for 'enjoyability', but I'd give my left arm to Ayler, Coltrane, or any of the other greats for the compositions they've given me.

All right, I'm following your logic, learning some things, etc. Glad you had a chance to check them out and set me straight. I've been, probably, calling lots of things free jazz that aren't. That are just wild and sporadic.

Here's another attempt, with Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet.

Skerik is a friend of Les Claypool, playing in Les' Fancy Band and Frog Brigade, as well as playing in Garage a Trois, Sadhappy, Dead Kenny G's, Critters Buggin, and more.