The Future of Free Jazz

Abstract

The enormous potential for freely improvised music has only begun to be explored. The conditions for growth will remain vague. One problem might be the very term free jazz. If the term implies a performance practice complete with a priori audience expectations, then the terms itself is problematic. On the other hand, if the term free jazz can be neutralized to mean “freely improvised music,” of any sort, then it still can be used without being a hindrance for future development. There is no “the sound” of free jazz, and the music of the great masters of the past and present only represent a very small fraction of what this music could be. It is not our business to say what free jazz should become, especially in precise terms, but we can certainly learn enough from history to know what it should not become; the strong hands of improvisers are also capable of creating conceptual dams that close down open-ended potential instead of facilitating the flow of ideas. Indeed, there are already many musicians who, with the best intentions, still fall back on the types of sounds developed by the great pioneers of free jazz. Their music conforms to a certain sonic expectation, and becomes stylistically bounded in a very similar way to music based on streamlined bar structures and chord changes. New connections cease to be made, fluidity is covertly replaced by rusty gears and cogs, the music grows stale and loses its vital strength; it is all too easy to excavate an inescapable trench. Can you dig it?