Free jazz

Free jazz is a movement of jazz music characterized by diminished dependence on formal constraints. Developed in the 1950s and 1960s, it was pioneered by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. Some of the best known examples are the later works of John Coltrane.

Definition

There is no universally accepted definition of free jazz, and any proposed definition is complicated by many musicians in other styles drawing on free jazz, or free jazz sometimes blending with other genres. Many musicians also tend to reject efforts at classification, regarding them as useless or unduly limiting.

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Free jazz uses jazz idioms but generally considerably less compositional material than in most earlier styles -- improvisation is essential, and whereas in earlier styles of jazz the improvised solos were always built according to a template provided by composed material (chord changes and melody), in free jazz the performers often range much more widely. Free jazz as a style has grown considerably since its inception, and the ability to improvise freely is a common skill. But, as guitarist Marc Ribot has remarked, free jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, "although they were freeing up certain strictures of bebop, were in fact each developing new structures of composition."http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=1165

Related Topics:
Jazz - Composition - Improvisation - Chord - Melody - Marc Ribot - Ornette Coleman - Albert Ayler

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Typically this kind of music is played by small groups of musicians. In popular perception, free jazz is loud, aggressive, dissonant and in general full of sound and fury. Many critics, particularly at the music's inception, suspected that the abandonment of familiar elements of jazz pointed to a lack of technique on the part of the musicians. Most free jazz musicians use overblowing techniques or otherwise elicit unconventional sounds from their instruments. Today such views are more marginal, and the music has built up a tradition and a body of accompanying critical writing. It remains less commercially popular than most other forms of jazz.

Related Topics:
Critic - Musician - Tradition - Critical writing - Popular

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Beyond this, free jazz is most easily characterised in contrast with what we refer to here as "other forms of jazz", an umbrella which covers ragtime, dixieland, swing, bebop, cool jazz, jazz fusion and other styles, as in the following paragraphs.

Related Topics:
Ragtime - Dixieland - Swing - Bebop - Cool jazz - Jazz fusion

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"Other forms of jazz" use clear regular meters and strongly-pulsed rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4, all swung. Free jazz normally retains a general pulsation and often swings but without regular metre, and often with frequent accelerando and ritardando, giving an impression of the rhythm moving in waves. Often players in an ensemble adopt different tempi. Despite all of this, it is still very often possible to tap one's foot to a free jazz performance; rhythm is more freely variable but has not disappeared entirely.

Related Topics:
Meter - Rhythm - Swung - Accelerando - Ritardando - Wave - Ensemble - Tempi - Performance

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Other forms used harmonic structures (usually cycles of diatonic chords). Improvisors played solos using notes based on the notes in the chords. Free jazz almost by definition dispenses with such structures, but also by definition (it is, after all, "jazz" as much as it is "free") it retains much of the language of earlier jazz playing. It is therefore very common to hear diatonic, altered dominant and blues phrases in this music. It is also fairly common for a drone or single chord to underpin a performance (see modal jazz), but the absence of such rudimentary devices is typical as well.

Related Topics:
Harmonic - Diatonic - Chord - Altered dominant - Blues - Modal jazz

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Finally, other forms use composed melodies as the basis for group performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use such material, and sometimes do not. In some music which is called "free jazz", other compositional structures are employed, some of them very detailed and complex; the music of Anthony Braxton furnishes many examples. It would perhaps be best to call this modern or avant-garde jazz, reserving the term "free jazz" for music with few or no pre-composed elements.

Related Topics:
Composed - Melodies - Performance - Improvisation - Anthony Braxton - Modern - Avant-garde jazz

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