Free jazz is a type of modern music that doesn’t follow the usual rules of tonal organization, bluesy chord progression, and swing rhythms.
The free jazz style was established by pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist Ornette Coleman in the second part of the 1950s. It was also influenced by San Ra, Archie Shepp, Arthur Doyle, Barton Green, and the late John Coltrane.
Free jazz is seen as inventive and adventurous. Nonetheless, some music theorists see it as an effort to reconnect with the ethnic and religious foundations of traditional jazz.
In English, free jazz is called “abstract,” “new phenomenon,” and “avant-garde,” though the latter is a much broader term that differs from free jazz in its compositional ideas. The term “free jazz” was coined in 1960 by Ornette Coleman for his album of the same name.
Free Jazz Definitions
The great majority of contemporary jazz forms use the performer’s voice as their central element. Classical jazz, meanwhile, is based on compositional intentions.
Similar to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, Barban believes exaltation, spontaneity, affect, and mental preoccupation to be the most important artistic elements of free jazz.
Free jazz has never attempted to conceal its ideological foundation, social protest, or radical nature. Because of this, it is very hard to come up with a single cultural philosophy for free jazz and organize it.
Free jazz is plainly centered on the self-awareness and authenticity of black people, yet despite this, the style is vulnerable to symbiotic fusion with other cultures, often those with whom it is in conflict. These crossings may reflect the desire to assimilate the spiritual and aesthetic characteristics of a different ethnicity.
Therefore, Indian culture, with its rich rhythm and Buddhist ideals, attracted free jazz. And Arabian designs made their way into it because many artists became Muslims.
Religion in general became a source of inspiration for free-jazz musicians, and you can hear it in the music and see it in the song titles, album names, and CD artwork.
You just need to be creative in digesting it and incorporating it into your improvisation. Modern academic avant-gardists use a similar strategy, making these two approaches comparable.
