When originally published in 1974, Ekkehard Jost's
Free Jazz was the first examination of the new music of
such innovators as Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and the Art
Ensemble of Chicago. Jost studied the music (not the
lives) of a selection of musiciansblack jazz artists who
pioneered a new form of African American musicto arrive
at the most in-depth look so far at the phenomenon of
free jazz. Free jazz is not absolutely free, as Jost is
at pains to point out. As each convention of the old
music was abrogated, new conventions arose, whether they
were rhythmic, melodic, tonal, or compositional,
Coltrane's move into modal music was governed by
different principles than Coleman's melodic excursions;
Sun Ra's attention to texture and rhythm created an
entirely different big bang sound then had Mingus's
attention to form.In Free Jazz, Jost paints a group of
ten ''style portraits''musical images of the styles and
techniques of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette
Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Don
Cherry, the Chicago-based AACM (which included Richard
Abrams, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie,
Anthony Braxton, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago), and
Sun Ra and his Arkestra. As a composite picture of some
of the most compelling music of the 1960s and '70s, Free
Jazz is unequalled for the depth and clarity of its
analysis and its even handed approach. |
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