A Far-Too-Brief Rundown of
Freely Improvised Music
What You Don't Know Can Deter You

by Ava Mendoza
09.25.03

n the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s, musicians like saxophonists Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, and pianist Cecil Taylor began to abandon traditional jazz harmony, form, and rhythm in favor of playing “free jazz.” This development was very controversial in the established music world at the time, although in some ways the birth of free jazz really was quite a natural progression; jazz music has always been highly focused on freedom of individual expression, and free jazz simply took this emphasis to a new level. The main premise behind the music was that as the limitations imposed by traditional forms fell by the wayside, players would be able to express their innermost thoughts and feelings musically with greater precision and depth.

Beginning in the early sixties, European musicians like guitarist Derek Bailey, bassist Peter Kowald, and saxophonist Peter Brotzmann began playing freely improvised music as well. The styles of improvisers differed from old world to new world in some important ways. Much of the playing of American musicians like Ayler, Coleman and Taylor was still in some ways recognizable as jazz, or as extremely jazz-influenced; the players still played notes, many of them played with jazz inflection and phrasing, and for the most part played their instruments with conventional techniques. Much of their music had similar criteria to jazz in terms of energy as well: loud, fast and aggressive at nearly all times.

The European school of improvisers tended to play music that was less about notes than about texture and gesture, employing highly inventive extended techniques on their instruments to do so. British saxophonist Evan Parker, for instance, who began improvising in the late sixties, had a musical vocabulary which consisted (and still consists) largely of specialized techniques of overblowing and multiphonics, of musical gestures in which pitch was unimportant. These improvisers generally played music that was less about high energy drive, and more about sonic complexity and variety. As these two styles evolved, the more jazz-influenced improvisation came to be identified as “free jazz,” while the more textural, less high-energy variety came to be called “free improvisation.” These two schools still exist today, though now the continental bridge has been more or less closed; there are plenty of American improvisers, as well as many European free jazzers. Of course, there is a great deal of gray area in between these two styles, but the distinction does remain important in talking about improvised music.

Free jazz and free improv in their inceptions were highly political in some senses; they were a rebellion against the musical establishment, a breakaway from restrictions traditionally placed on musicians by the form and tonality supported by that establishment. Rejecting the courtly mannerisms of traditional jazz music and also eschewing traditional aesthetic criteria for music in general, it was music whose intent was to be beautiful, rather than pretty, to be profoundly expressive, rather than simply catchy or pleasant, to be real, rather than to conform to acceptable standards.

Today, the political connotations of improvised music are still very much in existence. For many improvisers, spirituality and politics are highly linked. A kind of emotional or spiritual anti-capitalism often comes into play in these cases; an emphasis is placed on the process of music-making (on being fully absorbed in the creative act of improvising while playing), rather than on the product (on making music that can be considered “good” by specific criteria).The desire to possess things—material items, intellectual ideas, or musical ideas—is seen as negative, and a huge degree of importance is placed on relinquishing musical “possessions” (licks, learned devices, gestures which the player has made many times before and knows from experience will have certain effects) before beginning the act of improvisation, so that the music can be played with total openness. The idea is that even if the improvisers falls flat on his face, even if the music is terrible, it is better to be in that place of openness and to play bad music whose ideas are fresh, than to play music that creates a more pleasing product, but is in fact comprised of stale ideas lacking in genuine inspiration.

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This is not intended in any way to be a comprehensive history of improvised music! I simply want to give readers who aren’t familiar with the genre some idea of where it comes from and what it’s about.

I’ve left out ridiculously large amounts of really important information in the interest of brevity, so if interested please check out the websites listed on the right, under "Related Links". Each has excellent articles on improv and biographies of improvisers, both dead and alive/kicking, along with lots of links to related sites.

by Ava Mendoza
09.25.03

See the Sept. 2003 LiP review of Jack Wright's free improv gem, Signs of Life