An old ‘New Thing’: more ex-patriated fire music from Europe*
Many of these mp3s were originally posted at the now secretive church number 9 blog. The blog took its name from this LP from the Frank Wright quartet (Frank Wright: tenor sax, Noah Howard: alto sax, Mohamed Ali; drums & Bobby Few; piano). The LP is 2 sides/2 improvisations. Jazz signifiers (refrains and solos) elevate and tumble. As Val Wilmer’s sleeve notes observe, Coltrane looms large over Wright; something you can also hear in his release as a duo with Mohamed Ali which isn’t a million lght years away from Coltrane & Rashied Ali’s Interstellar Space. That isn’t intended to take anything away from Wright’s playing, especially in the duo recording he blows his saxophone ragged.
Frank Wright Quartet – Church Number 9 part 1 (recorded July 1970) 256k 48mb
Frank Wright & Mohamed Ali – Adieu, Little Man (complete) (recorded April 1974 & issued on Alan Silva’s Paris-based Center of the World label) 192k 61mb
Horns sometimes sit too thick. Listen for Cecil Taylor’s “88 tuned drums” here:
Cecil Taylor Quartet – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght disc3 sideA (recorded 1969) 192k 18mb
The quartet consisted of Cecil Taylor; piano, Andrew Cyrille; drums, Sam Rivers & Jimmy Lyons; horns.
Finally, Anthony Braxton. A piece for 2 soloists and a large orchestral ensemble (in this case the Berlin New Music Group). In this case the soloists being Braxton and George Lewis on trombone. The score/diagram is below. Taken from the Montreux/Berlin Concerts LP (explicated excellently here).
Anthony Braxton – Composition 63 (recorded November 1976) 256k 44mb
*The first three pieces here were all recorded in France and issued by French labels. The Anthony Braxton was recorded in Berlin and issued by an American label (Arista/Freedom). The majority of the players were born in the US (Frank Wright was born in Grenada). How does this sit with notions of jazz as ‘American (or afro-american) music’? (assuming the ‘new music’/'avant garde’ can be called jazz). How important is location? How important is diaspora/nomadism? Writing about Cecil Taylor, Andrew Bartlett quotes Deleuze and Guatarri:
“[Music] has always sent out lines of flight, like so many ‘transformational multiplicities,’ even overturning the very codes that structure or arborify it” (Deleuze & Guattari 1983: 80. Quoted in Bartlett 1995: 277).
He also quotes Cecil Taylor in interview with Nat Hentoff from 1958 as saying:
“Everything I’ve lived I am. I am not afraid of European influences. The point is to use them – as Ellington did – as part of my life as an American Negro” (ibid: 287).
‘Race’ as a prism/discourse isn’t emphasised that heavily in British academia – or rather it’s coded into other discourses such as multiculturalism, post-coloniality, class. So I don’t know… How does race sit with nationhood, diaspora, Europe, the avant-garde? How many monoliths can you fit on the head of a pin?
