Disorder in Free Jazz

A friend of The Ennobler and I had a chance to see Ornette Coleman in concert this summer. It was an exciting prospect for two huge jazz fans aware of the legendry and prominence of one of the founders of modern free jazz. It was the bewilderment and confusion on our faces as we left Burlington’s Flynn Theater that was the most remarkable event of the evening. “I’m not sure I ever liked his albums that much anyway,” my companion said.

For the less jazz-inclined amongst us, Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come has long been considered, as critic Steve Huey put it, “a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with.” Coleman’s style is more or less shared with Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, late Coltrane and many others who attempted to break free of the constraints of “harder jazz” approaches like bebop. But it’s those constraints and limitations, I feel, that are the essence of music’s connection to ordered existence. As a matter of philosophy, free jazz falls disappointingly short.

I am not inclined to argue against that which moves the listener, for who can discredit phenomenal sensations themselves, no matter how primitive in structure? But comparison is still in order: bebop, an approach that utilizes pace and improvisation just like free jazz does, is based strongly on harmonic structure. It is considered avant-garde to completely discard fixed chord changes and standard time. Modal jazz does not use chord progressions as its harmony, but an ordered series of intervals that help to define the pitch. It is considered avant-garde to break even these loosest of conventions.

Whether we are serious about art or, as the artistic nihilists among us maintain, “we just want to be entertained,” we are constantly making connections between what is represented to us through our senses and what we hold to be meaningful externally. We are attracted to symmetry and balance in most things, and the musical artist or group that can imitate an order that coheres with our phenomenal perspective, structuring complex schemes so that we can recognize some aspect of ourselves within them, should be most appreciated. The night before, the two of us had seen The Dave Brubeck Quartet play around with time signatures and syncopate measures and do so in a more humble and refined way. It didn’t force one’s intellect to pull and strain at itself to gain a slice of the intentionally ugly fatalism Coleman’s music was selling.

Before I give off the impression that I’m writing out of a dislike for Coleman (and less specifically, any other free jazz artists I’ve come across), he has had a wonderful career composing minor jazz standards, performing well into old age and becoming a respectable elder statesman, performing and recording with a wide number of young players. It is a dislike for the radically non-conservative jazz, where there is no unity in accompaniment, no restraint in improvisation, no structure in harmony and little humility in the artist himself.