A Love Supreme

During a recent e-mail exchange I had with the Smithsonian Institution's Reuben Jackson, an archivist with its Ellington collection, he referred to jazz music as "moribund." I didn't argue with him. Sales of jazz CDs--including smooth jazz--represent less than 3 percent of all CD sales, this despite the success of Ken Burns's documentary on the subject.

The decline of jazz has been linked with the rise of rock and hip-hop, the end of music education in schools, and the lack of serious attention from the media. Radio play outside of public stations is really the bland leading the bland; Kenny G is not, and will never be, Charlie Parker.

But I wonder if the biggest rock weighing down jazz is the seemingly endless war between traditionalist and free jazz aesthetes.

The modern roots of the war go back to, at least, 1981. Ronald Reagan left California for the White House and Wynton Marsalis bolted from the studios of Juilliard to Art Blakey's band.

That year, Wynton was interviewed in Down Beat magazine along with his brother Branford, and though Branford kept an open mind, Wynton was already developing his well-known traditionalist chatter. It made sense, too: As Reagan was taking the country back to traditional values, so was Marsalis, the new jazz savior.

The same year Wynton Marsalis was born, 1961, Texas saxophonist Ornette Coleman released a controversial album called Free Jazz. It was a seminal moment, giving rise to a movement.

"In Free Jazz, the soloist is free to explore any area in his improvisation that his musical aesthetic takes him to; he is not bound by a harmonic, tonal, or rhythmic framework to which he must adhere rigidly," according Down Beat's review. "The performance (and his role in it) is completely fluid: rhythm usually follows the soloist's lead (though he may occasionally take his cue from it), and the remaining three horns contribute as they see fit--from complex contrapuntal patterns arrived at spontaneously and independently to accidental `harmonic' riffs of a sort."

Coleman's composition would open an era in jazz's modern history that could be the subject of its own documentary. His new wave first hit the saxophonists. John Coltrane embraced aspects of the free jazz movement, and countless other artists took their turns at deconstructing Charlie Parker's sacred bebop scripture.

Some of the musicians were Simply extraordinary, such as the late saxophonist Albert Ayler. Originally from Cleveland, Ayler recorded some of the most innovative and thought-provoking jazz albums of the 1960s. Coltrane was especially challenged by the directions Ayler took during this period, answering Ayler's call with his own remarkable work. Ayler's tragic death by drowning in 1970 was a bigger loss artistically than many critics have ever acknowledged.

Others, like Archie Shepp, were not only exceptional musicians, but were also intellectual giants. Shepp is often linked ideologically with Black Arts Movement writer Amiri Baraka. Like Baraka, Shepp wrote plays and poetry and called for black self-determination in America. Shepp has consistently recorded and performed strong music since the 1960s.

West Coast-based saxophonist David Murray came to New York City in the mid-1970s, and the free jazz/loft period flourished in the city. Murray hit town with Stanley Crouch, then a militant poet and drummer, but now known as Wynton Marsalis's intellectual svengali and the preeminent jazz critic.

Many of the artists of the period moved with the people and the streets. This wasn't necessarily new, but unlike their predecessors, they attempted to speak it and live it. And they were the antithesis of the media's notions of the jazz musician: well dressed, binge drinking, heroin abusers. Some adopted Muslim names or studied Eastern religions and took up yoga.

Free jazz unchained the drummer from the cymbal-dominated sensibilities of bop. Conga players appeared, as well; bass players were told they could improvise along with everyone else. Flutes and Third World rhythms were used, some incorporated poetry into their offerings, and others even allowed their music to appear as part of theatrical productions.

Jazz was a citizen of the world again just as it had been way back in the days of Congo Square, Buddy Bolden, and Storyville. In the December 1965 issue of Down Beat, Shepp declared, "I am an anti-fascist artist." It was a powerful moment--jazz musician as revolutionary, so to speak.

In a famous interview included in the liner notes to his album, Three for Shepp, alto saxophonist Marion Brown stated that the music was "part of what's going on in the black revolution in America." And in his book, Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest, Eric Nisenson refers to free jazz as the "soundtrack to a race riot."

It has been suggested that the musicians wanted to free the music from all European influences by eliminating melody and incorporating styles from oppressed cultures. However, this theory is extremely hard to prove on a large scale. If anything, as was the dominant theme in Black America at the time, the musicians most of all wanted to be free, or express the idea of freedom in their art.