Free Jazz and the Avant-Garde

Free jazz refers to a historical movement that, despite earlier precedents, first significantly flowered in the late 1950s in the US. Its central focus was a liberation from musical conventions – but from a jazz player’s perspective, since no liberation is ever complete. Initially known simply as the New Thing, it became Free Jazz by borrowing the title of a seminal 1960 album by saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman. It subsequently has had international repercussions which seem set to continue well into the 21 century. Its impact and relations to other developments remain controversial, and a variety of accounts of it are possible: as a culmination of the drive for individual creativity, a radicalization of the scope of musical materials of jazz, a collection of statements by salient individuals and groups, or as a movement shaped by extramusical forces of political, cultural, racial and spiritual liberation, to mention only the most obvious. Here these are all taken as valid viewpoints, in need of reconciliation.