Listen

Listen

Richard Walls

Avant-garde jazz has been surrounded by controversy the last eight years or so, most of it ridiculous. The central question tossing back and forth on this sea of controversy (what?) is usually “Is it music?” Very basic. Predictably one side says yes and the other side says no. (One longs for someone to reflect the ambiguity of the times by taking a firm stand with -a resounding “maybe!”). The yes-people I’m not concerned with — they’re generally cool. The idea here is to develop another argument against the no-people. Actually, I don’t give a large s for the validity of aesthetic theories applied to living music and have not intention of developing one. Just a few casual observations and a conclusion I haven’t heard anyone say yet.

The no-people are usually distressed over the lack of form in avant-garde jazz (referred to from now on, for brevity’s sake, as new jazz). It seems that they believe that making an intelligent origianl within self-imposed forms is what constitutes art. Without the form or structure, the ensuing freedom is artless since it is the manmade form that makes it art and not the chaos contained within. They assume that artistic value is derived only after the solo is held against the structure within which it is created. Thus someone like Albert Ayler, whose solos are not stated within any perceivable structure, is not making music.' It is noise, meaningless. They argue that since he has “freed” himself from conventional structures and has placed himself in a position where he could play “anything within a single solo, he is in the same position as a ten-year-old kid who picks up a horn and simply blows what he wishes, having no knowledge of melody, horizontal and vertical improvizations, etc. And, of course, they conclude, this ten-year-old kid is not producting art. Or music. This is all hypothetical nonsense — I cannot think of a single new jazz artist that doesn’t have a strength and perseverance that would be lacking in a ten-year-old kid.

Now, if you can get to all this, which is really simple shit and not at all academic, then you will realize that what this argument really reflects is not a limitation on the part of the musician but rather on the part of the listener. If the fulfillment and resolution of a structure and a personal creative statement in spite of or because of a form are not to be perceived by the listener of new jazz then it does not necessarily follow that nothing is to be perceived. The thing, the important thing, that these no-people do not seem to grasp is that listenting subjectively to free form music is in itself a creative art. Recognition of form by the listener has been replaced by the creation of imagery and response (feeling). So Leroi Jones hears Cosmic Black Art where John Sinclair hears a Cosmic High Energy Blast. And both men’s vision is value since both men are responding creatively to the music (it should also be mentioned that it is possible for the imagery to be unspeakable and does in fact usually border on the unspeakable, which, of course, is also perfectly “valid”). And I have my own, an everchanging combination of everyone’s vision as well as a rejection of any vision I do not naturally find within myself. A creative listener listening to a music of total involvement (ideally, anyway).

Conventional jazz also involves creativity on the listener’s part but not nearly as much as new jazz since there are always conventional forms to perceive if your vision fails. Is it music? Go away.