商品簡介
The Free Musics goes into previously unexplored territory in the study of music. Instead of treating a titled music as the result of specific named performers it views all musicians of a genre together as a body. Some play the part of representative figures, some are ranked beneath them, and others are unranked and invisible, a hierarchy with corresponding access to livelihood support—paying gigs. Specifically treated is free jazz from its originary period in the sixties, when it was a movement, to today. The study follows its social and musical development over time, and its effect on what music gets performed and recorded and what is suppressed. It examines the relation of these musicians to their specific period, the changing meaning and motivation of their music, and its function in the social order. Secondly, the book focuses on free improvisation in North America as unique compared to all other approaches to playing and the way musician relations take shape. The title is often used indiscriminately, but for those specifically calling their music by that name it refers to a distinct approach, herein traced from its beginnings in the mid-1970s to today. Socially this approach, here given the name of free playing, is the practice of a small number of musicians who form a network rather than a hierarchy. Their understanding is that no code is to be learned and none will be followed, and so anyone can potentially benefit from playing with anyone else. Ad hoc groupings are balanced by choices based on individual interest rather than to meet performance and career needs. Lacking a hierarchy, the names of its players are culturally insignificant. The network does not appear in the roster of musics, nor do the results of playing, given the lack of a defining code. Free playing is unique in putting the artists as a collectivity ahead of the results of their activity. The author is a saxophonist, exclusively playing free improvisation since the late 70s and continuously organizing, touring, and expanding his musical horizon. For more information see springgardenmusic.com
