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The Cultural Challenges and Limitations of Free Jazz in the 1960S

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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. His book This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, free jazz. The irony of free improvisation's re‐ the Sixties, and American Culture is much more assessment in the high-brow world, Anderson than a defense of free jazz, although he does ana‐ demonstrates, "suggests the difficulty of resisting lyze the criticisms in an epilogue. Anderson's ongoing attempts to sustain the stratification and main concern lies in understanding the function‐ sacrilization of American culture" (p. 181). ing of cultural authority. In the introduction, he Over the course of fve chapters, Anderson writes, "This book explores the question of who describes jazz's emergence as a national cultural makes decisions about the value of a cultural symbol in the 1950s, the challenges posed by free form and on what basis, taking as its example the improvisation, free jazz's complex relationship impact of 1960s free improvisation on the chang‐ with black nationalism, the narrowing audience H-Net Reviews for jazz in the 1960s, and fnally, the institutional‐ high-class genre defined by development and ization of jazz outside of the music marketplace. progress. Anderson notes how many Americans' For those readers acquainted with Penny Von association of jazz with progress and individual‐ Eschen's scholarship, much of Anderson's treat‐ ism ftted well with the consensus interpretation ment of jazz in the 1950s will be familiar.[1] Nev‐ of U.S. society in the 1950s. The author's under‐ ertheless, his discussion of the connection be‐ standing of non-musical reasons for jazz music's tween jazz and American Cold War foreign policy shifting fortunes is astute. It recognizes that a cul‐ helps to orient the reader to the contentiousness tural product like jazz operates within the larger at the center of debates over the music. Washing‐ framework of the marketplace. Anderson's atten‐ ton policymakers reeling from the international tion to this obvious, but often neglected facet of embarrassment of U.S. racism sent abroad State jazz history, requires us to place cultural produc‐ Department tours headed by Dizzy Gillespie, tions in the midst of an interplay between cultur‐ Louis Armstrong, and other performers. Designed al, economic, and political forces. to celebrate jazz as "America's artform," these The author posits this interplay at the core of tours strived to tell a progressive story of racial free improvisation's threat to the freshly formed integration in America. They equated jazz with jazz canon. The question of who controlled the American freedom and individualism. Not sur‐ jazz tradition, he insists, underwrote this dispute. prisingly, the tours created controversy. While Free improvisers questioned the liberal assump‐ some black performers and critics lined up be‐ tions of the jazz establishment from which they hind this depiction, seeing it as a way to improve felt increasingly marginalized, both musically and race relations and the livelihood of black musi‐ economically. Some of these musicians linked cians, others chafed at what they saw as the Unit‐ their lack of commercial opportunities with the ed States' racial hypocrisy and the unequal treat‐ economic and racial structures of the music in‐ ment of black artists in the music business. dustry. Their dissatisfaction in turn influenced an Besides outlining the debates engendered by aesthetic debate among critics, musicians, and the State Department tours, Anderson investigates black nationalists regarding whether jazz should how jazz gained national prestige in the 1950s. Be‐ be considered a modernist artform or an intrinsi‐ bop musicians faced accusations of criminality cally black cultural expression. Anderson thus and depravity during the previous decade. Ander‐ identifies a conflict not only between critics and son contends that new technologies, new venues, supporters of free jazz, but also between devotees and expanded audiences accounted for the new who disagreed about what the music should rep‐ credibility, as did the rise of an innovative "cool" resent. Jazz performers in the 1940s and 1950s sound developed by Miles Davis and other pur‐ frequently represented their work in a language veyors that contrasted with the more frenetic be‐ of modernism, "including the integration of intel‐ bop. Jazz promoters began moving the music out lect and emotion and an emphasis on continuous of nightclubs and into concert halls. This change reinvention." Anderson points out that the ft was lent greater artistic credibility to the music and not perfect, as other types of artists drew upon enabled record companies to record live perfor‐ jazz as a "primitivist inspiration" (p. 55). Regard‐ mance cleanly. The long playing record (LP) al‐ less, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, many jazz lowed artists to create more thematic albums in critics--Nat Hentoff, Martin William, and Gunther high fdelity. Promoters' creation of jazz festivals, Schuller among them--employed a modernist dis‐ despite their sometimes mixed commercial suc‐ course in order to aid the respectability of jazz. cess, helped cement jazz in Americans' minds as a 2 H-Net Reviews Anderson states that this focus unintentionally as‐ tails, by forming organizations like the Jazz Com‐ sisted in obscuring the music's black roots. posers Guild and Chicago's Association for the Ad‐ The book's third chapter, "Free Jazz and Black vancement of Creative Musicians. Nationalism," investigates the reaction of many In his fnal chapter, "Jazz Outside the Market‐ musicians and critics against invoking free jazz as place," Anderson discusses the institutionalization a modernist expression. Anderson relies heavily of free improvisation by universities and philan‐ upon Amiri Baraka, the noted black nationalist thropic organizations. This development begin‐ poet, essayist, and music critic. Anderson skillfully ning in the late 1960s allowed free jazz artists to describes Baraka's attempts to position free im‐ remain true to the black nationalist vision of the provisation as part of a nonwestern, Afrocentric music "as a repository of community values" tradition devoid of western culture's capitalist while also fnding a much-needed audience and drives. In focusing on Baraka's desire to "put the monetary sustenance outside of an indifferent culture" back into jazz the author builds on music industry (p. 152). Anderson does an excel‐ William L. Van Deburg's conception of Black Pow‐ lent job of explaining free improvisation's entry er as a largely cultural movement.[2] Baraka into the world of high culture. Nonprofit organi‐ could not overcome the fact, Anderson explains, zations, corporations, the federal government, that despite the adoption of nonwestern influ‐ and institutions of higher learning considered ences by John Coltrane and other free improvis‐ free jazz's lack of commercial achievement ap‐ ers, their music did indeed bear a strong resem‐ pealing. Their commitment to a fringe artform op‐ blance to avant-garde Euro-American aesthetic erated within a paradox, Anderson writes. Univer‐ forms. Anderson stresses, though, that by incorpo‐ sities and donors identified with free jazz's con‐ rating free improvisation into the Black Arts nection to European avant-garde aesthetics, and Movement "[c]ultural nationalists took free jazz, a they also valued the racial pluralism seemingly travesty of accepted norms of musical discipline, embodied in the music. Thus, the conflict between and turned it into a symbol of racial distinction" modernism and racial consciousness so important (p. 119). to earlier considerations of free jazz now helped Despite the influence of black nationalism, the music, serving not as an obstacle but as a the black audience for jazz continued to dwindle strength. The music's new supporters, Anderson throughout the 1960s. Anderson is particularly at‐ clarifies, did share two main goals with the critics tuned to this point. The question is why the jazz of free jazz: placing free improvisation at the mar‐ fan base among both blacks and whites declined gins of the jazz tradition and jettisoning its rela‐ so precipitously. The author's explanation helps to tionship with racial nationalism. Anderson points support his argument about the continued pull of to other structural factors in the rebirth of free a cultural hierarchy in post-World War II Ameri‐ improvisation. Higher education expanded in the ca. He explains that the challenging nature of free postwar era and encouraged students to take improvisation surely alienated many traditional more courses in artistic disciplines.
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