When I first got into experimental jazz, expert friends pointed me to three books: Ekkehard Jost’s
Free Jazz, Val Wilmer’s
As Serious as Your Life: The Story of New Jazz, and John Litweiler’s
The Freedom Principle. Jost offers a thorough technical analysis, complete with graphs and notation; Wilmer focuses more on stories about the movement’s pioneers; Litweiler falls somewhere in between, folding the careers of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler into a historical arc that traces how free jazz both broke from tradition and formed its own.
That mix makes The Freedom Principle the perfect book for novices. Litweiler’s fluid survey—from Coltrane’s melding into the mainstream, to Sun Ra’s underground travels, to the rich Chicago scene, to the European adoption of free jazz—remains relevant 30 years after it was originally published. In particular, the opening to his chapter on Ayler remains the most concise, poetic description of that man’s particular talents. “Every one of the noisy horrors the first Free wave was accused of, he gladly embraced,” Litweiler writes. “He bypassed the entire history of jazz to go back to attitudes about music that predated the art’s conception.” If that gets your heart beating at all, this book just might fascinate you. –Marc Masters
Ornette Coleman's discovery some thirty years ago that his band's music was indeed a "free thing" marked the beginning of a revolution in jazz. From the early free-form experiments, Coleman's dancing blues, and John Coltrane's saxophone cries and sheets of sound, to the brittle, melancholy modes of Miles Davis, vibrant, sophisticated new jazz idioms proliferated. In this critical and historical survey of today's jazz, noted critic John Litweiler traces the evolution of the new music through such artists as Coleman, Coltrane, Davis, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and others. He also addresses questions such as: Is Free jazz a rejection of the jazz tradition? Are European folk classical musics altering this essentially Afro-American art? Do the principles of Free jazz provide real emotional liberation for the creative musician? This is a solid, informed guide—for new jazz fans and serious listeners alike—to what has, in many ways, been the most productive and most controversial period in the history of jazz.
