Free Jazz (The Roots of Jazz) [Paperback] Review

This is a great book, but, thankfully, it differs from other books on the same topic.This is a fairly in-depth analysis of the musicians' MUSIC.Don't expect long anecdotes about Cecil Taylor's life or John Coltrane's spirituality or about revolutionary politics or whatever.Jost feels that this stuff is abundant in others' books and accounts of the "free" movement, and that it has distracted us from the music itself.That's what I love about this book; the author isn't afraid to dig deep into the music.Also, most of his recorded examples are easy to find (or at least available somewhere).There isn't any of that "one time in 61' I saw Ornette play the harmonica in this pub in sweden and....".This book makes this seemingly difficult music more accessible...check it out.

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Product Description:
When originally published in 1974, Ekkehard Jost's Free Jazz was the first examination of the new music of such innovators as Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Jost studied the music (not the lives) of a selection of musicians-black jazz artists who pioneered a new form of African American music-to arrive at the most in-depth look so far at the phenomenon of free jazz. Free jazz is not absolutely free, as Jost is at pains to point out. As each convention of the old music was abrogated, new conventions arose, whether they were rhythmic, melodic, tonal, or compositional, Coltrane's move into modal music was governed by different principles than Coleman's melodic excursions; Sun Ra's attention to texture and rhythm created an entirely different big bang sound then had Mingus's attention to form.In Free Jazz, Jost paints a group of ten "style portraits"-musical images of the styles and techniques of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, the Chicago-based AACM (which included Richard Abrams, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Anthony Braxton, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago), and Sun Ra and his Arkestra. As a composite picture of some of the most compelling music of the 1960s and '70s, Free Jazz is unequalled for the depth and clarity of its analysis and its even handed approach.

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