ihatemusic

This article, "The AACM and American Experimentalism" by George Lewis, appeared recently, an assessment of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), which was formed in 1965 in Chicago:

http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=549&fid=6&sid=17

As well as being an interesting article in its own right (with one or two excellent pictures from the association's heyday), I thought it might prompt a little discussion about the AACM in general or about the article in particular.

The association's goal since 1965 has been to be "a collective of musicians and composers dedicated to nurturing, performing, and recording serious, original music." Lewis maintains that AACM music, whatever it is, is the sum of the music made by its members. So what's your favourite music that forms part of this universe?

Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, AEC.

Roscoe!

I love the Art Ensemble, but probably my favorite record in this world is Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, which includes Braxton.

Yeah, a tenuous connection to AACM, I admit, but the record had a big impact on me.

Faster wrote:I love the Art Ensemble, but probably my favorite record in this world is Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, which includes Braxton.

yes

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre-Forces And Feelings

Love both the Kalaparusha AND the Marion Brown (hard to think of a Marion Brown album I don't love) but I'll take Abrams' Levels and Degrees of Light and Jarman's Song For too!
I still live in hope of Will Guthrie finishing his Roscoe Mitchell interview.. certainly worth bringing my website outta mothballs for that..

two years ago the ars nova workshop, concert promoters here in philadelphia, highlighted the aacm on their concert series. braxton, mitchell, abrams, jarman, jenkins, smith, threadgill, and malachai thompson. everyone's music was still vibrant. collectivizing early had to have a long view positive effect on the music, unlike say say the free jazzers in new york. threadgill gave a talk on his biologically based cell music.
abrams' young at heart, wise in time is a recent favorite. a group side with a young smith and threadgill, lashley, and barker and a beautiful solo piano side.
also the jarman/braxton alone together record. los glissandinos would be proud of the ear massage.
mcintyre's forces and feelings, the guitar player sarnie garrett is great, maybe one of the only earlyish aacm recordings with a guitarist? anyone ever heard anything else sarnie garrett might have done?

interesting topic, obviously a pretty big umbrella. my short answer is that I think generally these guys were/are more convincing live, sadly I never saw the Art Ensemble until the late nineties. has there ever been a more crucial and influential musician as Muhal Richard Abrams with as overall weak of a discography? I felt deeply honored when I was introduced to him a couple of years ago and I told him that (something I've said to only a handful of musicians), but I'd have trouble fully recommending a record of his.

one huge one at the time was of course George Lewis-Homage to Charles Parker, recorded in 1979. with its pretty good distribution on Black Saint and its 'crown' status in every edition of the Penguin Guide, a very successful record in every way at the time, a boundary breaker in the live electronics within free improv lineage, plus the jazz connection in its dedicatee, although I can't say I ever heard much connection in the music itself. a more explicit and direct homage is the Buddy Bolden tribute on Air Lore, probably my favorite Threadgill track ever.

also, obvious but just in case: 'Theme De Yo-Yo' by the Art Ensemble, hear that immediately if you haven't.

jon abbey wrote:interesting topic, obviously a pretty big umbrella. my short answer is that I think generally these guys were/are more convincing live, sadly I never saw the Art Ensemble until the late nineties. has there ever been a more crucial and influential musician as Muhal Richard Abrams with as overall weak of a discography? I felt deeply honored when I was introduced to him a couple of years ago and I told him that (something I've said to only a handful of musicians), but I'd have trouble fully recommending a record of his.

one huge one at the time was of course George Lewis-Homage to Charles Parker, recorded in 1979. with its pretty good distribution on Black Saint and its 'crown' status in every edition of the Penguin Guide, a very successful record in every way at the time, a boundary breaker in the live electronics within free improv lineage, plus the jazz connection in its dedicatee, although I can't say I ever heard much connection in the music itself. a more explicit and direct homage is the Buddy Bolden tribute on Air Lore, probably my favorite Threadgill track ever.

also, obvious but just in case: 'Theme De Yo-Yo' by the Art Ensemble, hear that immediately if you haven't.

Very much in agreement on Muhal. He's been so badly served on record it's a crime.

And Lewis's Homage to Charlie Parker! I forgot about that one.

The wonderful thing about the AACM was their dedication to making MUSIC...The whole NY energy/visionfest thing, well, It always seemed a display of balls ( what did Braxton call it? the "now I can Kill you " syndrome) and faux spirituality ( with exceptions, I'm wrong about so much ) Chicago...they worked together to create beauty.

pretty fantastic name for an initial recorded manifesto. Chuck Nessa's work in the sixties and seventies for Delmark and then his own Nessa was definitely one of many role models for Erstwhile...

jon abbey wrote:pretty fantastic name for an initial recorded manifesto. Chuck Nessa's work in the sixties and seventies for Delmark and then his own Nessa was definitely one of many role models for Erstwhile...

What a great record....

Chuck Nessa....His contribution cannot be underestimated. A lot of stuff wouldn't have reached our ears if chuck hadn't put it out.

i stupidly missed abrams' solo recital last week.

i saw a roscoe mitchell quartet a few years ago and was really really put off. the rhythm section kind of kept up a steady free pulse, and roscoe would play each of his horns for a few minutes at a time, playing the exact same way: a fast continuous stream of a few notes at a time, introducing new notes here and there. i got no feeling from him, and the way he arbitrarily started and stopped seemed to fit with that. his trumpet player was pretty mediocre too, just meandering solos, and i could tell he wanted to stop soloing sometimes but roscoe wouldn't let him.

jon abbey wrote:pretty fantastic name for an initial recorded manifesto. Chuck Nessa's work in the sixties and seventies for Delmark and then his own Nessa was definitely one of many role models for Erstwhile...

Oh yes, I just bought this 2 years or so ago, and it's so modern, so ahead on time. The title track is a wonderful piece of art: the beautiful opening theme, the sad black, black feeling of some moments, the subtle percussion work, and the abstract meandering of Bowie and Mitchell, those empty spaces.

Roscoe Mitchell's "Sound" was one of the first free jazz albums I bought when I was 18 or so. I think I got it with Jarman's "Song For" album which I liked less. But both were really. I still dig "Sound."

I love the Art Ensemble, but probably my favorite record in this world is Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, which includes Braxton

I have actually been trying to hear this for a while. Anybody got it on slsk?

After having taught harmony at the AACM's school for a couple of years in 1969?70, Braxton toured France with a few of the association's other members, Steve McCall, Leo Smith and Leroy Jenkins. This quartet recorded one of my favourites, This Time..., in Paris in 1970.

The line-up is very similar to the quartet record on Delmark, recorded two years earlier, 3 Compositions of New Jazz, which had the same trio but with Muhal Richard Abrams instead of a percussionist. If you read conservative jazz reviews from that time it was the lack of the drummer that really infuriated them most--the sign that this was some hifalutin art music that was ditching jazz's rhythmic backbone. 3 Compositions was the first time I'd heard either Abrams or Jenkins, and while I found the music a bit too anarchic and hard going at first, their presence seemed to energise the whole thing in a way I couldn't quite grasp at the time. Jenkins interested me especially, his defense of the violin and its possibilities in jazz, saying in the notes that "it's an expressive instrument--I can do so many things a horn can't do: double stops, bowing, pizzicato. I'd like to get black students interested in the violin." He also mentioned being interested in carrying on a tradition of violin players from the 1930s like Stuff Smith and Eddie South.

This Time... has a more rigorously worked out series of chamber-music style compositions that looks forward to Braxton's later work; one interesting feature here being that you can track the development of a single composition (titled "Small Composition no. 1, 2, 3," etc.) over time as they rehearse it, replay it, and add new ideas to it each time. There's also a long solo piece that stands up fairly well to Braxton's For Alto. Another great moment has them all piling out into the street, playing on as the traffic builds up around them. Something it shares with other AACM records of the time is the interest in poetry and voice pieces; Braxton closes the record with a piece of cut-up poetry, its phrases separated and fused back together to produce new meanings and odd accidents. There's a similar poem, "The Bird Song," on Abrams's Levels and Degress of Light.

Good call, Mister Fear. This Time is terrific - haven't spun that for a while, will put it in the In Tray forthwith. I love the track where they head outside and record in the street! Braxton was on form during that stay in Paris in 69 and 70 - I love his work on Jacques Coursil's Black Suite too. Both originally on BYG Actuel, both reissued and available (still, I think), both recommended

Is it just me or is Roscoe just growing in stature? I am glad because I have been sleeping on his later recordings for far too long. 'No Side Effects' is quite a release.

I am glad (maybe not so glad) to hear this being said about Abrams. As much as I have tried to dip in, I just never got excited about any of the recordings I heard. Maybe there is a live recording someone could recommend? Just wondering where the excitement comes from.

Ted wrote:I am glad (maybe not so glad) to hear this being said about Abrams. As much as I have tried to dip in, I just never got excited about any of the recordings I heard. Maybe there is a live recording someone could recommend? Just wondering where the excitement comes from.

I've never really gotten too into Abrams either, although his appearance on a couple AEC records adds something fruitful. His main rep seems to be that he was the founder/moral compass of the AACM in its early days, no small accomplishment.