Negotiating Freedom: Values and Practices in - Amherst College

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Negotiating Freedom: Values and Practices in Contemporary Improvised Music
Author(s): David Borgo
Source: Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2, (Autumn, 2002), pp. 165-188
Published by: Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of
Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1519955
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NEGOTIATINGF REEDOM:V ALUESA ND PRACTICES
IN CONTEMPORARYIM PROVISEDM USIC
DAVIDB ORGO
Freei mprovisationi s not an action resultingf rom freedom;i t is
an action directedto wardfsr eedom.
-Davey Williams( 1984,3 2)
A compromise between order and disorder, improvision is a
negotiationb etween codes and their pleasurabled ismantling.
-John Corbett( 1995,2 37)
During the last half century, an eclectic group of artists with diverse
backgrounds in avant-garde jazz, avant-garde classical, electronic, popu-
lar, and world music traditions have pioneered an approach to improvi-
sation that borrows freely from a panoply of musical styles and traditions
and at times seems unencumbered by any overt idiomatic constraints.
Although a definitive history of this often irreverent and iconoclastic
group would be impossible-or at least potentially misleading-to com-
pile, this article highlights several values and practices that have been,
and continue to be, negotiated within the contemporary improvising
community.
Freedom, in the sense of transcending previous social and structural
constraints, has been an important part of jazz music since its inception.
The syncopated rhythms and exploratory improvisations and composi-
tions of jazz have consistently stretched the structures and forms of
American music. The music has also provided a symbol and a culture of
DAVIDB ORGOre centlyj oined the faculty of the University of California,S an Diego, as an
assistantp rofessori n the CriticalS tudies and ExperimentaPl racticesP rogram.H e received
a Ph.D. in ethnomusicologyf rom the Universityo f CaliforniaL, os Angeles, in 1999a nd pre-
viously taught at JamesM adisonU niversityi n Virginia.B orgoh as been a professionals ax-
ophonist for more than fifteen years and is currentlya t work on a book exploringt he rela-
tionship between the emerging sciences of complexity and contemporaryi mprovised
music.
165
166 BMR Journal
liberation to several generations of musicians and listeners, both at home
and abroad. But when Ornette Coleman offered the jazz community
Something Else in 1958, he galvanized an approach to freedom that has
continued to inspire and inflame many in the jazz community.1
At that time, Coleman and other like-minded musicians began to
explore performance practices that relied less on preconceived musical
models and explicitly defined ensemble roles. For sympathetic musi-
cians, critics, and audiences, the "freedom" implied by these new musi-
cal approaches allowed for creativity unencumbered by the constricting
harmonies, forms, and rigid meters of bebop and swing styles. It evoked
a return to the collective practices and ideals evident in the earliest forms
of jazz and pointed the way toward a more inclusive musical approach
that could draw on insight and inspiration from the world over. To
unsympathetic listeners, "freedom" resulted only in musical mayhem
devoid of the swing, melody, and harmony that made traditional jazz
music so vital and technically demanding.
At approximately the same time that "freedom" was becoming a rally-
ing point and a musical goal for many modern jazz musicians, improvi-
sation resurfaced in the Euro-American "classical" tradition-after a cen-
tury and a half of neglect-in the form of indeterminate, intuitive, and
graphically designed pieces.2 Composers not only expanded the amount
of real-time creative input demanded of performers, but they explored, in
substantial numbers, the potential of improvisation on their own, in a
sense conflating the act of creation and performance by removing the
interpretive step from the accepted musical equation.3
Since these pioneering early years in both North America and Europe,
an approach to improvisation drawing on these and other traditions has
1. The arrival of Ornette Coleman's quartet at the Five Spot in New York City in 1959 and
his subsequent albums for Atlantic Records (The Shape of Jazz to Come and FreeJ azz) further
polarized early support and criticism for the music. See David Ake (2002) for a discussion
of the many issues surrounding Coleman's New York arrival.
2. George Lewis (2003) focused on ways in which terms such as interactivity, indetermina-
cy, intuition, and even happening or action have frequently been employed to mask the
importance of improvisation in the arts.
3. Composers who have experimented with improvisation include Ugo Amendola, Larry
Austin, Klarenz Barlow, Richard Barrett, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Alvin Curran, John
Eaton, Robert Erickson, Jose Evangelista, Lukas Foss, Sofia Gubaidulina, Barry Guy,
Jonathan Harvey, Charles Ives, Luigi Nono, Per Norgard, Pauline Oliveros, Harry Partch,
Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Giacinto Scelsi, Stefano Scodanibbio, Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Morton Subotnik, and Frances-Marie Uitti, as well as the groups FLUXUS, II Gruppo di
Improvisazione da Nuova Consonanza (GINC), KIVA (at University of California, San
Diego), Musica Electronica Viva, New Music Ensemble (at University of California, Davis),
and the Scratch Orchestra. Pioneering work by composers in the American "third stream,"
such as Gunther Schuller, George Russell, Bob Graettinger, John Lewis, and others, could be
mentioned as well.
Borgo * Negotiating Freedom 167
emerged in the contemporary music community. A variety of names have
circulated at various times and in various locales to describe this musical
practice, each with its own group of adherents and each with its own
sematic shortcomings.4 The preferred terms tend to highlight the creative
or progressive stance of the performers and the cutting-edge or inclusive
nature of the music itself, for example, free or free-form, avant-garde, out-
side, ecstatic, fire or energy, contemporary or new, creative, collective,
spontaneous, and so on. Stylistic references (jazz, classical, rock, world, or
electronic) are variously included or excluded, as are cultural or national
identity markers (Great Black Music or British Free Improvisation). The
primary musical bond shared among these diverse performers is a fasci-
nation with sonic possibilities and surprising musical occurences and a
desire to improvise, to a signficiant degree, both the content and the form
of the performance. In other words, free improvisation moves beyond
matters of expressive detail to matters of collective structure; it is not
formless music making but form-making music. Musician Ann Farber
explains: "Our aim is to play together with the greatest possible free-
dom-which, far from meaning without constraint, actually means to
play together with sufficient skill and communication to be able to select
proper constraints in the courseo f the piece, rather than being dependent on
precisely chosen ones" (quoted in Belgrad 1997, 2).
To define free improvisation in strictly musical terms, however, is poten-
tially to miss its most remarkable characteristic-the ability to incorporate
and negotiate disparate perspectives and worldviews. Jason Stanyek (1999,
47) asserts that free improvisation is above all "a fertile space for the enact-
ment and articulation of the divergent narratives of both individuals and cul-
tures." Improvisers have frequently joined together to form artist-run collec-
tives aimed at exploring these divergent narratives and at establishing
creative and financial control over the production and dissemination of their
work.5A lthough the lifetime of these various collectives runs the gamut from
4. One treatment of the problems associated with categorizing such diverse musical
approaches under a single, often misleading, heading is found in Such (1993, 15-29).
5. Important artist-run collectives in the United States have included the Association for
the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago (which has continued to the
present date), the Jazz Composer's Guild (organized by Bill Dixon shortly after his famed
October Revolution in Jazz in 1964) and Collective Black Artists (CBA) in New York City,
the Black Artists' Group (BAG) in St. Louis (the birthplace of the World Saxophone Quartet),
and the Underground Musicians' Association (UGMA) in Los Angeles (formed by Horace
Tapscott). Notable European collectives have included the Spontaneous Music Ensemble
(SME), the Music Improvisation Company (MIC), the Association of Meta-Musicians
(AMM), the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO), the South African-influenced
Brotherhood of Breath, the Jazz Center Society, the Musician's Co-operative, the Musician's
Action Group, and the London Musicians Collective, all in England, as well as the Instant
Composers Pool in Holland, The Globe Unity Orchestra and the Berlin Contemporary Jazz
Orchestra in Germany, and the Instabile Orchestra in Italy.
116688 BBMMRR JJoouurrnnaall
months to decades, the impulse to pool resources and to pursue communal
approaches to creativity remains strong among improvisers.
Defining Freedom
Improvisation has received some scholarly attention, although its
emphasis on in-performance creativity and interaction often defies the
standard musicological tools of the trade and the accepted conservatory
methods for evaluating competency and aesthetic value.6 Authors inter-
ested in free improvisation vary considerably in their approaches to the
subject, producing everything from biographical and formalist work to
in-depth social, cultural, and political analysis. Arguing that the arts are
predominently autonomous or self-referential discourses, some authors
present the "freedom" in the music strictly in terms of varying degrees of
liberation from functional harmony, metered time, and traditionally
accepted performance roles and playing techniques (e.g., Dean 1992; Jost
1994; Westendorf 1994). Other authors have interpreted free jazz and free
improvisation as a social and cultural response to the appropriation and
exploitation of African-American musical styles (e.g., Jones 1963; Kofsky
1970; Wilmer 1977; Hester 1997). They focus considerable attention on the
birth of the practice during the civil rights movement in the United States
and on the music's place within the context of an emerging postcolonial
world. Still other authors have allied themselves with Marxist or neo-
Marxist critiques of hegemonic culture and have focused on free impro-
visation's implied critique of capitalism and its related market- and prop-
erty-based economy (e.g., Attali 1985; Prevost 1995).
The diverse and emergent strands of free improvisation have prob-
lematized, for many, issues of identity and idiom. Not only has dissent
raged within the jazz community since the early "assault" of Ornette
Coleman and others, but the development of a distinctly European
approach to free improvisation and the extreme hybridization of the
music-incorporating avant-garde, electronic, non-Western, and popular
music practices-has further strained issues of idiomatic coherence and
cultural aesthetics. John Litweiler (1984, 257) states that "the precedents
of free improvisation ... are in all kinds of music, and no single kind."
For some, one's approach to energy, virtuosity, and stylistic inclusion
or exclusion can define quite clearly one's idiomatic allegiances. Despite
their many differences, the first generation of African-American free-jazz
musicians all seemed to share an intense approach to energy, momentum,
6. See Ferand (1961) for work on improvisation in the European classical tradition, Nettl
(1998) for a survey of ethnomusicological work on the subject, and Berliner (1994) for a per-
spective on jazz improvisation. See also Ake (2002) for a discussion of the debate surround-
ing the role of avant-garde jazz in the music conservatory.
Borgo * Negotiating Freedom 169
and rhythmic drive; think of Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane,
Pharoah Sanders, Henry Grimes, Archie Shepp, and Sunny Murray,
among many others. The second generation of African-American pio-
neers along with many European contemporaries began to explore other
ways-both more and less dense and more and less structured-of creat-
ing intensity. And for even a later generation of improvisers, this extreme
range of approaches to energy and aesthetics can provide fertile creative
ground, but it also presents a point of considerable contention in the com-
munity. The spectrum of contemporary improvisation appears to be both
strongly linked to the traditions of free jazz and, at the same time, increas-
ingly open to artists with little to no jazz experience. Steve Day (1998, 4)
argues that "jazz always contains improvisation, but improvisation does
not always contain jazz." Nick Couldry (1995, 7) describes free improvi-
sation as "a hybrid of both classical and jazz traditions." Tom Nunn
(1998, 13) elaborates on this often-mentioned connection:
One of the common links that developed between these two traditionsw as
instrumentalv irtuosity, wherein techniques expanding and extending the
sonic possibilities of instruments provided the material of improvisation.
The use of atonality,d ense textures, asymmetricalo r non-metricalr hythm,
and open forms or forms derived from the music rathert han imposed upon
it are other examples of developments common to both jazz and the avant
garde leading up to today's free improvisation.
Despite any sonic similarities between the emerging avant-garde tradi-
tions, many contemporary composers have remained extremely critical
of musical improvisation and reluctant to challenge the implied hierarchy
of composer-performer-listener. For example, Luciano Berio (1985, 81, 85)
dismissed improvisation as "a haven of dilettantes" who "normally act
on the level of instrumental praxis rather than musical thought.... [B]y
musical thought I mean above all the discovery of a coherent discourse
that unfolds and develops simultaneously on different levels."
This passage and other statements by respected twentieth-century
composers frequently betray a belief that musical notation is the only
means to inventing complex musical structures and, by extension, the
only valid measure of musical creativity (see also Boulez 1976, 115). This
tendency to view all modes of musical expression through the formal and
archtectonic perspective of resultant structure is deeply entrenched in the
music academy and derives in great part from a bias toward the study of
Euro-American composed-notated works. A story from African-
American pianist Cecil Taylor, recounted by A. B. Spellman (1966, 70-71),
highlights the issue:
I've had musicologists ask me for a score to see the pedal point in the begin-
170 BMR Journal
ning of that piece ["Nona'sB lues"].T hey wanted to see it down on paper to
figure out its structure,i ts whole, but at that point I had stopped writing my
scores out,... and the musicologistsf ound that hard to believe, since on that
tune one section just flows right into the next. That gives the lie to the idea
that the only structuredm usic that is possible is that music which is written.
Which is the denial of the whole of human expression.
A pronounced dichotomy between notated and improvised forms of
musical creativity appears to be less apparent in the African-American
creative music community. Black composers, including Oily Wilson, T. J.
Anderson, Hale Smith, William Banfield, and Alvin Singleton, have
incorporated improvisation into their work. And many African-
American improvisers-particularly those with close ties to the
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)-inter-
act with and incorporate notation in a variety of performance contexts.
Trumpeter, composer, and AACM member Wadada Leo Smith, for
instance, has devised an open-ended symbolic framework he now calls
"Ankhrasmation," the purpose of which is "to create and invent musical
ideas simultaneously utilizing the fundamental laws of improvisation
and composition" (quoted in Porter 2002, 265). According to George
Lewis (2002, 128), the definition of "composition" among African-
American creative musicians can be a fluid one, "appropriating and
simultaneously challenging and revising various pan-European models,
dialoguing with African, Asian, and Pacific music traditions, and
employing compositional methods that did not necessarily privilege
either conventionally notated scores, or the single, heroic creating figure
so beloved by jazz historiography."
Eric Porter's (2002) recent book focuses on the role that African-
American musicians have played not only as artists but also as social crit-
ics and activists. Through a close reading of texts by Charles Mingus,
Abbey Lincoln, Amiri Baraka, Yusef Lateef, Marion Brown, Wadada Leo
Smith, and Anthony Braxton, Porter raises many important issues about
the relationship between so-called jazz, classical, and popular musics, the
role of improvisation and composition in musical creativity, and the polit-
ical, economic, and spiritual dimensions of the new jazz. He, along with
other recent authors including Ajay Heble (2000), Sherrie Tucker (2004),
and Julie Dawn Smith (2004), also focuses the critical lens of feminist
studies on this music, which has traditionally been viewed as a predom-
inantly masculine pursuit. Many jazz musicians are only now beginning
to realize these embedded inequities. Anthony Braxton, for one, finds it
ironic that many of the politically and spiritually aware musicians of the
1960s could also function as "chauvinist and oppressor" (quoted in Porter
2002, 284).
Borgo * Negotiating Freedom 171
The frequently touted "openness" or inclusive nature of free improvi-
sation does at times obscure the gender sensibilities and the different cul-
tural aesthetics represented by its practitioners. George Lewis (1996) has
made a strong case for a clear distinction between an "Afrological" and
"Eurological" approach to this music. His terms are not ethnically essen-
tial but instead refer to historically emergent social and cultural atti-
tudes.7 Lewis's study focuses on the work of two towering figures of
1950s American experimental music: Charlie Parker and John Cage. Both
artists continually explored spontaneity and uniqueness in their work,
and Lewis argues that each musician was fully aware of the social impli-
cations of his art. The essential contrast that he draws between the two
lies in how they arrived at and chose to express the notion of freedom.
Cage, informed by his studies of Zen and the I Ching, denied the utility of
protest. His notion of freedom is devoid of any kind of struggle that
might be required to achieve it. Parker, on the other hand, was a noncon-
formist in 1950s America simply by virtue of his skin color (Jones 1963,
188). Lewis (1996, 94) argues that for African-American musicians, "new
improvisation and compositional styles are often identified with ideas of
race advancement and, more importantly, as resistive ripostes to per-
ceived opposition to black social expression and economic advancement
by the dominant white American culture." An Afrological perspective
implies an emphasis on personal narrative and the harmonization of
one's musical personality with social environments, both actual and pos-
sible. A Eurological perspective, on the other hand, implies either
absolute freedom from personal narrative, culture, and conventions-an
autonomy of the aesthetic object-or the need for a controlling or struc-
turing force in the person and voice of a "composer."
Contemporary free improvisers often struggle with the issues implied
by Lewis's Afrological/Eurological model. English guitarist Derek Bailey
(1992, 83) betrays a Eurological perspective when he describes his prac-
tice of "non-idiomatic improvisation" as a "search for a styleless uncom-
mitted area in which to work." Gavin Bryars, a celebrated English bass
player and early improvising partner of Bailey, "abandoned" improvisa-
tion after 1966 to focus exclusively on the aesthetic autonomy offered by
a Eurological approach to composition. Bryars argued that "in any
improvising position the person creating the music is identified with the
music.... It's like standing a painter next to his picture so that every time
7. One might also investigate the emerging Asian-American consciousness centered pri-
marily on the improvising community in the San Francisco Bay Area, see, for example, Hou
(1985-88, 1995). Tracy McMullen (2003) offers a cogent critique of the Afrological-
Eurological dyad presented by Lewis (1996).
117722 BBMMRR JJoouurrnnaall
you see the painting you see the painter as well and you can't see it with-
out him" (quoted in Bailey 1992, 115).
Not all European improvisers, however, favor a Eurological approach
to the practice. English saxophonist Evan Parker clearly sees his approach
as part of the African-American jazz tradition:
What'si mportantt o me is that my work is seen in a particularc ontext,c om-
ing out of a particulart radition.I don't really care what people call it but I
would want it to be clear that I was inspired to play by listening to certain
people who continue to be talked about mainly in jazz contexts.P eople like
John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor-these were people that played
music that excited me to the point where I took music seriously myself. That
continues to be the case. That's where what I'm doing has to make sense, if
it makes any sense at all. (Quoted in Lock 1991,3 0)
Contrasting Bailey's and Parker's approaches, British critic Ian Carr
(1973, 70-71) writes: "[W]ith monastic vigilance [Bailey] tries to avoid the
habitual side of playing. Compared with this religious sense of purity,
this sense of keeping an untainted vision, Evan Parker's approach is sec-
ular, agnostic, and robust. He is prepared to rub shoulders and get
involved with all sorts and conditions of musicians, and seems able to do
this without losing his essential identity."
These and other remarks reflect an intriguing tension within the com-
munity of free improvisers between Afrological issues of personal and
cultural identity and Eurological conceptions of music as an autonomous
art. African-American drummer and composer Max Roach stated con-
cisely the issues and his intentions: "Two theories exist, one is that art is
for the sake of art, which is true. The other theory, which is also true, is
that the artist is like a secretary.... He keeps a record of his time so to
speak.... My music tries to say how I really feel, and I hope it mirrors in
some way how black people feel in the United States" (quoted in Taylor
1993, 112).
Roach's comments highlight the fact that African-American jazz and
improvising musicians have frequently sought to celebrate aspects of
black life and culture and, at the same time, cast off the burden of race,
especially when that burden of "racial authenticity" infringes on the mar-
ketability or the creativity of black musicians and their music. This dilem-
ma has played out since the 1960s most clearly in the tension between
black nationalism and universalism evident in the commentary of many
celebrated African-American improvisers. Despite the helpful and often-
illuminating distinctions between Afrological and Eurological perspec-
tives, the continued hybridization in the community of contemporary
free improvisation has made discussions of cultural belonging a very
Borgo * Negotiating Freedom 173
prickly topic.8 As multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton wryly com-
ments: "Why is it so natural for Evan Parker, say, to have an appreciation
of Coltrane, but for me to have an appreciation of Stockhausen is some-
how out of the order of natural human experience? I see it as racist"
(quoted in Day 1998, 35). George Lewis (2002) advances the notion that
experimentalism was becoming "creolized." Where the so-called third-
stream movement (a proposed fusion of jazz and classical styles) had
failed, Lewis argues that "independent black experimentalism chal-
lenged the centrality of pan-Europeanism to the notion of the experi-
mental itself" (126).
AACM members, in particular, frequently rejected the prescriptive
tenets of cultural nationalism and questioned the idea that black music is
a hermetic field. Yet they presented their work as an example of creative
black music and as an homage to black people. As saxophonist Marion
Brown poetically states, "I'm like a man walking into the future back-
wards" (quoted in Porter 2002, 247). Weaving together cultural natural-
ism, pan-Africanism, and universalism offered, to many, the most effec-
tive means to negotiate the constraints put upon their creativity by the
hegemony of Western economic, discursive, and aesthetic ideals.
PerformingF reedom
How do individuals and groups negotiate these diverse ideas of "free-
dom" in musical performance? In what ways do culture and creativity,
memory and muscle factor into improvisation? And how does context
affect the meanings and economics of performing improvised music?
Venues for this music can run the gamut from small, local coffeehous-
es to well-publicized and well-attended international festivals.9 And the
featured ensembles at these venues cover the full spectrum from one-
time meetings between improvisers (the "all-star event") to the many
longer-term associations with essentially unchanging personnel (the
"working group"). The former can provide a sense of immediacy, excite-
ment, novelty, and risk to participants, whereas the latter may offer an
8. See Monson (1996, 200-206) for a related discussion of "colorblind" interpretations of
jazz; see also Harris (2000) for a discussion of issues surrounding the globalization of jazz.
In addition, Atton (1988-89) offers the results of a survey raising important issues of nation-
al and cultural identity in improvised music.
9. Important festivals that feature improvisation and new music include Le Festival
International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Quebec, the Vision Festival in New
York City, the Guelph Jazz Festival near Toronto, and several others in Europe, including
Saalfelden (Austria), Willisau (Switzerland), La Batie (Geneva, Switzerland), and Vilshofen
(Germany).