The Cultural Challenges and Limitations of Free Jazz in the 1960S
Iain Anderson. This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. vi + 258 pp. $22.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8122-2003-2. Reviewed by Zachary J. Lechner Published on H-1960s (July, 2008) The emergence of free jazz music in the 1960s ing status of jazz" (p. 2). He posits two chief ques‐ presented a significant challenge to the jazz tions: How influential were black activists and in‐ canon. Free improvisers such as Ornette Coleman, tellectuals in transforming the cultural hierarchy, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, and Sun and, after World War II, did a broadening of Ra pushed the boundaries of jazz. For these per‐ wealth and education bridge the void between formers, bebop, hard bop, modal, and other jazz high and low culture? Anderson argues that free innovations of the 1940s and 1950s were too re‐ improvisers and their supporters challenged the strictive. They abandoned fxed chord changes promotion of jazz as "America's artform" and of‐ and tempos. For some listeners, it sounded inno‐ ten attempted to claim it as distinctive of the vative and exciting; others found the music chaot‐ African American experience. In doing so, they ic and threatening. drove away most of the jazz audience. Universi‐ Iain Anderson, an associate professor of histo‐ ties and other high arts institutions interested in ry at Dana College, disagrees with the critics of better representing and supporting black culture, free improvisation, as Anderson generally refers as well as the avant-garde in the arts, welcomed to the style.
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