Post on 26-Feb-2023
Change is Where You Make it:
Constructs in Astrophysics and Metaphysics in the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s
BRIAN CASEY, MM Jazz Studies, University of North Texas
Abstract
There are numerous writings focusing on the relationship between free
jazz and the civil rights movement in America. There is little
literature, however, addressing how many American jazz artists
focused their creative endeavors on spiritual or afrofuturist
constructs to present a different solution to the racial turmoil of
the era. This research examines the works of three significant
musicians associated with free jazz – Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton and
John Coltrane - and explores how they incorporate metaphysical and
astrophysical approaches to present to their audiences a new
perspective on how they might better understand the social
instability of their time.
Introduction
Free jazz, avant-garde, experimental music, the New Thing; applied to
the musical revolution engaged in by many jazz musicians in the 1960s
and 1970s, these terms have all commonly been treated as describing
both a major break from the jazz tradition in terms of musical
content and a significant advancement in the social significance of
jazz. The break has often been characterized as a deviation from
music's organizational concepts like tonality and swing, as though it
were a negative departure in the course of jazz history. Furthermore,
this break in musical tradition has been closely tied to the social
turmoil of race relations during this period, implying that the
societal implications of these development in jazz were primarily
concerned with affecting social change with African-Americans
integrating into established culture, in keeping with W.E.B. DuBois'
ideas or through radical and militant factions such as the Black
Panther Party. There is a clear focus in mainstream writings on this
period of free jazz as the music of the 'angry black man'; of the New
Thing in jazz as being inextricably linked to the militant aspect of
the civil rights struggle. Certainly that was a noteworthy factor in
how the music of the time was conceived and perceived. All too often
in the literature on the subject the sociological connections within
free jazz do not go beyond the link to what in the 1960s became
competing movements promoting racial equality through either the
societal integration of the Harlem Renaissance or the more radical
separatist movement codified in the concept of Black Power.
There are, however, many sociological aspects of free jazz1 linked to
prominent concepts in the music that have gone unnoticed, or at least
under-reported in the literature on the music of this period. The
purpose of this paper is to clarify and bring to light with a new
lens another way in which the free jazz of the 1960s and 1970s can
offer perspective and affect change in the struggle of the African
American in a time of turmoil and strife in America. By looking at
the works and writings of major figures in the free jazz movement –
specifically here Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton and John Coltrane– a
connection can be made to other methods of invoking social change
that involved neither integration into white American society nor
creating a separate social milieu associated with the Black Panther
Party and the Nation of Islam. These methods involved presenting to
the thoughtful listener new worlds within which their identity and
self-awareness could be considered, far removed from the oppression
and pain many found in American culture of the 1960's. These worlds
can be segmented into two distinct areas, the often utopian views of
new possibilities for oppressed people of all kinds in the
exploration of a futuristic outer space and the very private and safe
1 For the purposes of this paper, the term 'free jazz' should be considered an encapsulate term to apply equilaterally to the New Thing, avant-garde, and experimental music and its composers who have identified with the jazz traditionin America from the 1960s and 1970s.
world created through meditation and a spiritual journey into the
inner space of the mind – or, as the title of the paper suggests, new
worlds have been explored in the free jazz of the 1960s and 1970s
through astrophysical and metaphysical methods, which I aspire to
elucidate and explain in the paper that follows.
Sun Ra's Astro Black Mythology
A principle voice in the avant-garde jazz scene of the early 1960s,
Sun Ra utilizes a decidedly utopian concept he created and maintained
throughout his career as a unifying theme within all his work. This
concept is embodied in a construct characterized by Graham Lock as
Ra’s “Astro Black Mythology” (Lock 1999). The genesis of this concept
is concisely contained in Ra's own words, as quoted by John Corbett:
“We are told we have no history. Why can't we create our own future?”
(Corbett 1994). Ra was committed to presenting a vision of hope in a
future and otherworldly society where the oppression and despair
among African-Americans was no longer a concern. Having found a new
world in outer space, the human race could begin anew, free of the
trappings of a racially divided society. In keeping with this
concept, Ra himself identified with an extraterrestrial origin,
stating repeatedly that he came from Saturn. Furthermore, he created
a unique mode of presentation for himself and his ‘Arkestras’ – a
name for his various ensembles billed in conjunction with qualifiers
with an astrophysical bent to create band names such as the Myth
Science Arkestra, Solar Myth Arkestra, Astral Infinity and
Intergalactic Arkestras. The thematic content of Ra’s music, too,
was decidedly focused on expressing the concerns of his space-age
philosophy, engaging song titles such as ‘Astro Black’, ‘Love in
Outer Space’ and ‘Pathways to Unknown Worlds’. Because the sheer
volume of Sun Ra’s work, even a representative sample would be hard
to delineate in a paper of limited scope such as this one; those
listed above are but a few of a much wider range of song and ensemble
names that are in keeping with the concept of Afro Black Mythology.
Visually, too, Sun Ra took on a very specific set of costumes for
himself and his musicians that expressed the full range of his
concepts employing futuristic headgear and props combined with
African robes and set dressings that reflected ancient Egyptian
culture.
In a word, these connections can be described in a term coming from
the discipline of literature, afrofuturism, first coined in 1995 by
Mark Dery in his essay Black to the Future which defines the term:
Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and
addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th
century technoculture---and, more generally, African-
American signification that appropriates images of
technology and a prosthetically enhanced future. (Dery 1994)
Sun Ra can be considered a pioneer of afrofuturism. He was promoting
these ideas as early as the mid-1950s in conjunction with creating a
‘black knowledge society’ metaphor, also using historic Egypt as a
symbol of an African technological civilization (Kreiss 2008). This
metaphor has also been described succinctly as “demystifying through
remystyfying” (Corbett 1994). These concepts of creating a futuristic
mythology were also taken on by Nation of Islam leader Elijah
Muhammed, who is known to have frequented the same public events with
philosophical speakers as Sun Ra in mid-1950s Chicago’s Washington
Park. The Nation of Islam, however, used technological metaphors to
create a Black Muslim mythology promoting an apocalyptic future where
Allah would send to the earth a spaceship described as a half-mile
wide wheel in the sky to remove the chosen ones: those affiliated
with the Nation of Islam (Lock).
Tied closely to his utopian creation of another world which could
free African Americans from oppression in the United States, Sun Ra
used these images and concepts within his performance practice
designed to introduce to African-Americans an awareness of the
importance of and accessibility to technology. Ra knew a thorough and
active understanding of technology was going to be a defining factor
in American society and how American subcultures might come to
prominence or be left out. He used technological metaphors relating
to space travel to change consciousness about the relationship
between black America and the coming technological revolution. Again,
there is a similarity here with how the Black Muslim movement chose
to introduce technology within their message and iconography to the
same ends. The more radical Nation of Islam, however, chose to focus
on the iconic use of the gun as a primary artifact that represented
both technology and power in harnessing technology to advance their
cause in decidedly militant and radical methods.
Finally, Ra used technology in his music-making to an extent not yet
seen within the jazz tradition. Being an early adopter of using a
synthesizer in a big band context, Ra was able to emulate sounds from
outer space in conjunction with the more organic sounds his orchestra
was producing. His earliest forays into this style involve an early
Moog synthesizer with which he creates a sonic palette reminiscent of
Morton Subotnick's attempts, and were issued in stark contrast to
other tracks on the same release featuring a percussion ensemble with
log drum and hand drums and other pieces featuring woodwinds (Space
Probe 1969-70). Even the simple and often ridiculed Farfisa,
commomly used in kitchy1960s popular music becomes, in Sun Ra's
hands, a 'space organ', as listed in the liner notes to the 1972
Impulse release Space is the Place. Again, there are sounds created that
can be heard like the electronic music of the classical avant-garde
of the era. These sounds also connote cinematic effects from the sci-
fi genre, and specifically are combined with the organic sounds of
saxophones and voices chanting “Rocket Number Nine, takin' off for
the planet... for the planet... Venus” in the short set-closing
“Rocket Number Nine” (Space is the Place 1972). The sounds created
through technology also bring to mind frequent statements by Ra that
presented his musicians as 'sound scientists' and 'tone artists' who
could affect the thought of their audience through manipulation of
sound (Kriess).
Anthony Braxton's Tri-axium Writings
Beginning in the mid-1960s, Anthony Braxton, a chief exemplar of the
avant-garde and the New Thing in jazz, developed his own sense of
tradition and his relationship to it. While not utilizing overt
references to space travel or other afrofuturist constructs
specifically as Sun Ra is presented as having done above, Braxton’s
intellectual bent leads him to write both music and literature on
music from a highly informed, scientific point of view. Braxton
recorded his thought processes in a literary sense in what he termed
his Tri-axium Writings, which he began working on in 1973 but didn't
publish until 1985, at which point he released a three-volume set
spanning over a decade of production. These writings are a
combination of compositional notes and comments from an artist on the
nature and perception of his own art and that of his chosen field in
general. In the Tri-axium Writings he describes wanting to gather an
“axium of tenets from the past and the present in order to get to the
future” (Lock 1999). Braxton's music and writing in the 1960s and
1970s are not overtly concerned with manifestation of an
astrophysical nature, but he does reference extraterrestrial
influences, characters and potential audiences through his career. In
the composition notes for his 1978 ‘Composition 82 for 4 Orchestras’,
he describes his intent as being one of universality in a physical
sense in that he was looking for the sound of all his compositions
playing throughout the physical universe. Village Voice critic Chip
Stern went so far as to describe the sonic content of Braxton’s music
as ”interstellar background music” and referred to Braxton as the
Buckminster Fuller of jazz ( quoted in Lock 1999).
The concepts Braxton started to explore amid the social upheaval in
the 1960s continued to influence his work, well into the 1970s and
beyond. In a 1978 interview, he describes his music as being more
traditional in relation to 'free jazz', which he sees as heading
toward anarchism, in that he's attempting to initiate “alternate
languages as a means to reconnect to what I call the meta-reality
implications of world culture” (Enstice and Rubin 1992). Part of this
meta-reality involves synaesthesia, utilizing diagrams which combine
a scientific perspective with a futuristic tendency in relation to
his compositions. Again, while not making as direct a connection to
science fiction and concepts of an astrophysical nature, Braxton's
work in these areas employ a methodical, generally algorhythmic
approach frequently overlooked when assigning attributes to avant-
garde jazz of the 1960s and 1970s. These perspectives also earned
Braxton harsh criticism from supporters of the separatist movement,
such as Amiri Baraka and even jazz critic Stanley Crouch, who Braxton
recalls considered him, in effect, not 'black' enough because of the
modes within the jazz idiom with which he chose to express himself
(Lock 1999).
Braxton's later work, into the 1970s and 1980s, which were a natural
development in the concepts he was exploring in the 1960s, did take
on an aspect of science fiction and astrophysical constructs, as
foreshadowed in his earlier work. His 1980-90's opera series
Trillium, each installment an act or set of acts within the series
released individually, invokes characters in the distant future on
earth, extraterrestrials, and even contructs from the distant past,
such as hieroglyphics, an allusion to the same Egyptian forces Sun Ra
focused on through much of his work. Braxton supports these other-
worldly additions to his libretti with synaesthetic models that
invoke 3D geometric shapes, maps, charts and diagrams of the worlds
he has created for the characters of Trillium. The characters also
find themselves navigating the scores of the music being performed as
maps for the compositions, bridging the constructs of distant worlds
and planes of existence with the present time in our own world. All
of these constructs throughout his work are described by Braxton to
present a culture of transformation, prepared by for ritual and
ceremony as seen in his works. The transformation desired, according
to Braxton, is not related to racial considerations, but to value
systems in the Western world that are the core of all racial
conflicts in our society, among other trials. Braxton, like Amiri
Baraka and the Black Nationalists, see black music as having the
power to affect social change, but Braxton uses his music to present
an alternative, much like Sun Ra. Where Sun Ra presents the utopian
distant world in outer space, Braxton presents new worlds from within
his imagination that are more transparently allegorical than Ra's
place in outer space.
In addition to the scientifically-conceived constructs that Braxton
presents as models of transformative progress, he also wrote words
and music of a more metaphysical nature, linking his work to the
inner space that other more spiritual thinkers in free jazz explored.
In the Tri-axium Writings, Braxton qualifies his lexicon with three
categories of 'language music'; concrete/poetic, abstract/mundane and
abstract/metaphysical (Lock 1999). The poetic vocabulary is seen in
his synaesthesia, and the mundane abstractions are those of a
scientific nature described above. The metaphysical language has more
to do with Braxton's stated spiritual aims. These aims are related to
justice in what he refers to as cosmic and vibrational principles,
but have little relationship to the militant struggle for justice in
the form of racial equality seen in the work of the Black Panther
Party and among the Black Marxists and Nation of Islam. Braxton's
transformation is centered around what he considered an ethical
conflict, not a racial conflict, and one that was essentially a
choice in value systems between the spiritual and the materialistic.
He first presented these concepts in his 1968 debut recording with
Leroy Jenkins, Leo Smith and Muhal Richard Abrahms in Chicago
released under his leadership as 3 Compositions of New Jazz. In these
works, Braxton explores new textures, and describes his compositions
and orchestration choices as representing the choices we all can make
within society; that concepts such as unification and an equitable
balance between the individual and the collective can affect the
social change within American society in the late 1960s. Braxton sees
these concepts as essential to the African-American tradition and
states in his Tri-axium Writings that “black music is spiritual
music” (Lock 1999).
The Inner Space of John Coltrane
In the liner notes of John Coltrane's iconic mid-1960s recording A
Love Supreme, Coltrane himself wrote a heartfelt message to those
interested in his music, which begins with the intonation:
Dear Listener:
ALL PRAISE BE TO GOD TO WHOM ALL PRAISE IS DUE.
Let us pursue Him in his righteous path.
Such is the tenor of Coltrane's searching music from 1964 until his
untimely passing in 1967. His important recorded work for the most
part was a pursuit of something spiritual; of a path promoting love
and awareness of others toward an understanding of a better
possibility that he wanted to present to the world. He spent this
period investigating the 'Inner Space' of his own mind and spirit. It
was an exploration of something beyond religion, and more of a search
for a level of spirituality that he had found missing in his life
prior to the mid-1960s; a pursuit of finding a way to live in Western
society with dignity, hope, love, compassion and serenity. In fact,
less than a year after recording A Love Supreme, Coltrane recorded the
music for what became the Impulse release Meditations with selections
titled Compassion, Love, and Serenity, as well as the more dogmatic The Father
and the Son and the Holy Ghost and the cautionary Consequences. Subsequent
recordings with spiritually-derived titles like Ascension, Selflessness,
and Om betray Coltrane's decided focus on spiritual concerns.
Musical statements with little formal harmonic direction, or even
formal guideposts of any kind, that were informed by the free jazz
ethic of exploring jazz with fewer and fewer boundaries were the
theoretical basis of Coltrane's recordings on Impulse Records from
1964-1967. His compositions and performances of this period invoked
the widest possible range of modes of expression within his
ensembles, from solo instruments playing figures in quiet, slow
succession to flurries of sound, with all players exploring the
dynamic and sonic extremes of their instruments. The more lyrical and
serene moments were more accepted by critics and listeners as musical
evidence of Coltrane's spiritual aims. But the louder, more
aggressive points in his music gave critics grist for the mill of
building up Coltrane as a leading exponent of the militant and
radical struggle for racial justice and societal change.
Bob Thiele, Coltane's producer at Impulse records, analyzes
Coltrane's connection to the Black Power movement by positing that
the literary circle led by Amira Baraka, among others, who were
advocating a more militant response to affecting social change
adopted Coltrane's mid-1960s music as an expression of that
militancy. “I mean, Leroi Jones could feel the music was militant,
but Coltrane didn't feel that way” (quoted in Kahn 2006), Coltrane's
concern by this time was in exploring his own concept of spirituality
through his music. While he was certainly aware and concerned about
the increasingly violent episodes of racial tension, he chose to
focus his music on spiritually affirming concepts of love and
compassion. Even so, critics and writers connected Coltrane directly
to the radical element of the civil rights movement. As an example,
Baraka-aligned Frank Kofsky uses Coltrane as a figured head of the
Black Music Revolution, even after Coltrane states in an interview
with Kofsky himself that he doesn't subscribe to labels or concepts
in that manner (Kofsky 1970 and Woidek 1998).
By 1966, the New Thing in jazz, or avant-garde or whatever the writer
or listener cared to call it, was becoming inextricably linked to the
black nationalism and anti-establishment rhetoric. John Coltrane,
because of his significant influence on the jazz record business and
on musicians within the New Thing, was similarly connected to those
political concerns, even though he was decidedly not concerned with
affecting social change through politics or any other means other
than by trying to make the most beautiful, engaging and spirit-
lifting music he could. The irony is that as pacifistic and
apolitical as he may have been, he was adopted by the revolution and
those writing about it as an iconic figure in the movements. No
doubt, the aggressive moments in his searching music had an impact on
this, but he is quoted as saying of his musical emotion, “Maybe it
sounds angry. I'm trying so many things at one time, I haven't
sorted them out” (quoted in Kahn 2006).
Listening to the recorded output of John Coltrane between 1964 and
his death in summer of 1967, it is clear that his concern was an
internal search. He was searching for something new musically, and at
the same time searching for new links to spirituality. Constant among
these recordings were attempts at new modes of expression in jazz,
song titles and concepts having to do with spirituality and self-
communion, and forms created over long periods, which implied a sense
of meditation in the approach to many of his recordings. Many of
these recordings were from live performances, where Coltrane and his
new quintet, augmented frequently with additional musicians, would
explore long distances of time and space in their improvisations.
Starting with A Love Supreme and ending only with his passing, John
Coltrane's last period was dedicated to the pursuit he intoned in his
letter introducing that 1964 landmark recording – to follow God in
his righteous path.
Conclusion
The relationship between jazz music and the social upheaval in
American culture in the 1960s and into the 1970s is a broad, complex
and often controversial subject. There are many angles, approaches
and theories at play addressing how society and jazz as an art form
may have influenced each other. What is rarely in debate is that
there is a connection between free jazz and the racial turmoil in
America. Organizations like the short-lived Black Art Movement led by
Bill Dixon in New York and the Association for the Advancement of
Creative Musicians led by Muhal Richard Abrams in Chicago defined
their missions as giving African American jazz musicians working
outside the mainstream a collective community in which they could
express their thoughts and ideas. Often those ideas were aligned with
or in certain cases linked directly to Black Power organizations. Two
of the subjects I’ve focused on in this essay were early members of
these two organizations – Sun Ra with BAM and Anthony Braxton with
AACM – but broke their ties with those organizations to find their
own paths of expression and their own methods of showing the audience
of such music a different way to consider themselves in a racially
contentious society. John Coltrane is similarly credited with
bringing to mass attention outspoken Black Power advocates Archie
Shepp and Albert Ayler, while through his music and writing, he
proposed a different agenda, less militant and more pacifistic. The
three musicians I’ve profiled above held strong views about the role
of Americans of African descent, but they are three among many others
that chose to present a different solution to the problem black
Americans face. They presented these solutions through spiritual
awareness and an exploration of an inner space, or by using the
metaphor of outer space, and more importantly awareness of the
importance of understanding science and technology, to ensure that
African American culture had the spiritual strength and technological
savvy to minimalize the marginalization the culture has suffered
until the 1960s in America.
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