Editing Free jazz (section)

== Characteristics ==
Free jazz was a reaction to the convolution of bop. Conductor and jazz writer Loren Schoenberg wrote that free jazz "gave up on functional harmony altogether, relying instead on a far ranging, stream-of-consciousness approach to melodic variation". The style was largely inspired by the work of jazz saxophonist [[Ornette Coleman]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schoenberg |first1=Loren |title=The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz |date=2002 |publisher=Perigee Books |page=56 }}</ref> 

Some jazz musicians resist any attempt at classification. One difficulty is that most jazz has an element of improvisation. Many musicians draw on free jazz concepts and idioms, and free jazz was never entirely distinct from other genres, but free jazz does have some unique characteristics. [[Pharoah Sanders]] and [[John Coltrane]] used harsh overblowing or other extended techniques to elicit unconventional sounds from their instruments. Like other forms of jazz it places an aesthetic premium on expressing the "voice" or "sound" of the musician, as opposed to the classical tradition in which the performer is seen more as expressing the thoughts of the composer.

Earlier jazz styles typically were built on a framework of song forms, such as [[twelve-bar blues]] or the [[thirty-two-bar form|32-bar AABA popular song form]] with chord changes. In free jazz, however, the dependence on a fixed and pre-established form is often eliminated, and the role of [[improvisation]] is correspondingly increased.<ref>{{Citation |last=Pressing |first=Jeff |title=Free jazz and the avant-garde |date=2003 |work=The Cambridge Companion to Jazz |pages=202–216 |editor-last=Horn |editor-first=David |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-jazz/free-jazz-and-the-avantgarde/579E09E0CC38E887D273791CE5C53D42 |access-date=2025-02-11 |series=Cambridge Companions to Music |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-66320-5 |editor2-last=Cooke |editor2-first=Mervyn}}</ref>

Other forms of jazz use regular [[metre (music)|meter]]s and pulsed rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz retains pulsation and sometimes [[Swing music|swing]]s but without regular meter. Frequent [[wikt:accelerando|accelerando]] and [[ritardando]] give an impression of rhythm that moves like a wave.<ref name="Litweiler">{{cite book |last1=Litweiler |first1=John |title=The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 |date=1984 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=0-306-80377-1 |page=158}}</ref>

Previous jazz forms used [[harmonic]] structures, usually cycles of [[diatonic]] chords. When improvisation occurred, it was founded on the notes in the chords. Free jazz almost by definition is free of such structures, but also by definition (it is, after all, "jazz" as much as it is "free") it retains much of the language of earlier jazz playing. It is therefore very common to hear diatonic, [[altered dominant]] and [[blues]] phrases in this music.[[File:Pharoah Sanders photo.jpg|thumb|right|Pharoah Sanders]]

Guitarist [[Marc Ribot]] commented that [[Ornette Coleman]] and [[Albert Ayler]] "although they were freeing up certain strictures of bebop, were in fact each developing new structures of composition."<ref name="Ribot">{{cite web |title=A Fireside Chat with Marc Ribot |url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/a-fireside-chat-with-marc-ribot-marc-ribot-by-aaj-staff.php?page=1 |website=All About Jazz |access-date=18 December 2018 |date=21 February 2004}}</ref> Some forms use composed melodies as the basis for group performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use such material. Other compositional structures are employed, some detailed and complex.<ref name="Litweiler" />{{rp|276}}

The breakdown of form and rhythmic structure has been seen by some critics to coincide with jazz musicians' exposure to and use of elements from non-Western music, especially African, Arabic, and Indian. The atonality of free jazz is often credited by historians and jazz performers to a return to non-tonal music of the nineteenth century, including [[field holler]]s, street cries, and jubilees (part of the "return to the roots" element of free jazz). This suggests that perhaps the movement away from tonality was not a conscious effort to devise a formal atonal system, but rather a reflection of the concepts surrounding free jazz. Jazz became "free" by removing dependence on chord progressions and instead using [[polytempic]] and [[polyrhythmic]] structures.<ref name="Southern">{{cite book |last1=Southern |first1=Ellen |title=The Music of Black Americans |date=1997 |publisher=Norton |location=New York |isbn=0-393-97141-4 |pages=494–497 |edition=3rd}}</ref>

Rejection of the bop aesthetic was combined with a fascination with earlier styles of jazz, such as [[dixieland]] with its collective improvisation, as well as African music. Interest in ethnic music resulted in the use of instruments from around the world, such as [[Ed Blackwell]]'s West African [[talking drum]], and [[Leon Thomas]]'s interpretation of pygmy yodeling.<ref name="Robinson">{{cite book |last1=Robinson |first1=J. Bradford |editor1-last=Kernfeld |editor1-first=Barry |title=The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz |date=2002 |publisher=Grove's Dictionaries |location=New York |isbn=1-56159-284-6 |pages=848–849 |volume=1 |edition=2nd }}</ref> Ideas and inspiration were found in the music of [[John Cage]], [[Musica Elettronica Viva]], and the [[Fluxus]] movement.<ref name="Cambridge">{{cite book |editor1-last=Cooke |editor1-first=Mervyn |editor2-last=Horn |editor2-first=David |title=The Cambridge companion to jazz |date=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=New York |isbn=9780521663885 |page=207}}</ref>

Many critics, particularly at the music's inception, suspected that abandonment of familiar elements of jazz pointed to a lack of technique on the part of the musicians. By 1974, such views were more marginal, and the music had built a body of critical writing.<ref name="Jost">{{cite book |last1=Jost |first1=Ekkehard |title=Free Jazz |date=1974 |publisher=Universal Edition |isbn=9783702400132}}</ref>

Many critics have drawn connections between the term "free jazz" and the American social setting during the late 1950s and 1960s, especially the emerging social tensions of racial integration and the [[civil rights movement]]. Many argue those recent phenomena such as the landmark ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' decision in 1954, the emergence of the [[Freedom Riders]] in 1961, the 1963 [[Freedom Summer]] of activist-supported black voter registration, and the free alternative black [[Freedom Schools]] demonstrate the political implications of the word "free" in context of free jazz. Thus many consider free jazz to be not only a rejection of certain musical credos and ideas, but a musical reaction to the oppression and experience of [[black Americans]].<ref name="Gioia">{{cite book |last1=Gioia |first1=Ted |title=The History of Jazz |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofjazz00gioia |url-access=registration |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford, England |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofjazz00gioia/page/309 309–311]|isbn=978-0-19-539970-7 }}</ref>