FMP/FREE MUSIC PRODUCTION - An Edition of Improvised Music 2010

FMP CD 136

Thomas Millroth

 

The international dialogue of the masters.

When I first heard this duo between Peter Brötzmann and Andrew Cyrille its light and jazzy mood struck me. The musicians were obviously enjoying the moment. This was not what I had expected then, because you always listen to music in the context of its time. And those years were different from today. The dramatic times of protest and fight were not far away. But as in all good music you can still enjoy the art – ardent, strong and full of joy - and forget the times – leaving them to history.

The free jazz had been growing in both the USA and Europe during the 60s. In America it had been fighting for cultural recognition and developed a strong consciousness of society, politics and its own tradition. Andrew Cyrille was formed as a musician in one of the few original artistic expressions of the 20th century, jazz, and he learned his heritage from such giants as Philly Joe Jones, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and many others. He knew how to make the drums sing and could masterly measure time and space in polyrhythmic patterns. The strong American heritage was problematic for the European scene, where jazz also played an important role since the 20s. It had in a way to do with the self consciousness of the European players. American jazz musicians visiting Europe were often considered as living correctives of what was going on. Of course there were European players whose music was original contributions to the expressive art of jazz; like baritone saxophonist Helmut Brandt, one of the musicians that the young German artist Peter Brötzmann enjoyed listening to in the late 50s.

In the early 60s the avant-garde jazz in the USA was becoming more and more important. You can talk about a golden generation. In 1964 Andrew Cyrille started to play with pianist Cecil Taylor and eleven important years followed. No need to mention the row of classical free jazz records by this group, Unit Structures, Conquistador, Nuits de la Fondation Maeght 1-3, Akisakila and so on. Cecil Taylor and his musicians focused very much on sound, different sounds being created by the interrelations between the instruments. All compositions were dense textures producing ardent energy fields. Their music was called free jazz but they did not neglect musical order, on the contrary, organic unity was put in the first line. The freedom they reached was due to their abilities to deepen the sounds and widening the space within the tradition of jazz. There were of course different ways to go forward in this direction. Andrew Cyrille did so by listening to West African drummers and working in percussion groups. What came out of this was a melodic quality in the music. This was strengthened by the polyrhythmic patterns and diversity of sounds. These qualities are more than obvious in another classical record, where Andrew Cyrille takes part, the Dialogue of the Drums together with Milford Graves.

In the meantime things changed profoundly in the European art and music scene. New means to play and listen were established, and this was going to change the self confidence of the European improvising musicians in the nearest future. The Fluxus-movement broke up the rules of art. It also touched Peter Brötzmann, then a young artist being tired of the conditions of art, now turning more to music. Fluxus was more a product of an avant-garde musical view than of the visual arts. Different kinds of scores were used and events were created, that basically allowed anyone to interpret and play or perform them. One of its major artists, Nam June Paik, labeled this do it yourself approach. Paik like his partner Charlotte Moorman were both musicians and composers, and I am convinced that this new way of creating, which seemed very much ad hoc, even when planned, was one of the starting points of the European free jazz and improvised music. For a young person like Peter Brötzmann there were many opportunities to take part in this new flow, living in Nordrhein Westfalen. E.g. one of the centers of new art and music was the legendary Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal with important guests as the mentioned Paik and Moorman. Brötzmann was shortly involved in Fluxus. And very soon also forming his own groups. The do it yourself approach did not only give ground to another way of playing jazz music without copying US-style, even if the American players still were heroes. It made Brötzmann creating his own label, BRÖ, where the earliest, ground breaking albums, Machine Gun and For Adolphe Sax, were published. It was a total artistic product because Brötzmann also made the typical design and typography giving the next ten years´ or more of German and European free jazz its visual identity. Just look at the covers of Free Music Production and the posters of Total Music Meeting and you will understand this point of view.

You could of course classify the new European musical freedom as jazz. The energy was the same but the gestures were totally different. I guess this was due to a new self confidence among the young Europeans. They brought their instruments outside normal limits and both the reeds and the percussion were redefined. They took care of history in their own way. A very complex kind of music emerged , even if there were people labelling the new German free jazz ”kaputtspielen”, an expressionist way of tearing things down, breaking old walls and crossing limits. They did this indeed, the force was strong, but something else came out of it. Those days many of the fans of free jazz, like me, wanted to hear this shocking force. Listening to the same music today, though, also reveals a strong feeling of form and references to different traditions. It is obvious how Brötzmann lets glimpses of his own jazz history reach you, from his old Penate Sidney Bechet to marches, the latter being treated with a certain sense of humour. You could call his musical exploration expedition a kind of examination, even in an existential way, which formed new patterns in his music. You could say that while the American musicians had a strong present tradition the Europeans had to look for it and find how diverse and multifold it was, and even invent it. This search for identities was an important matter in the early free jazz and improvised music.

Thus Andrew Cyrille and Peter Brötzmann were two musicians with different backgrounds, even if the jazz tradition was a common ground, both of them working openly with a consciousness of form as strong as their musical self confidences. Cyrille masterly created a polyrhythmic interrelation between the different parts of his drums, exploiting the timbre in a way that invited Brötzmann to play more jazzy than we did expect those years. You can hear echoes of Rollins or Coltrane, if you listen closely, but most of all the jazzman Peter Brötzmann himself with a tremendous tone and flow. He plays with an ardent strength he certainly got from the joy of meeting a master from the American jazz tradition. Together they make a music that sings! On the other hand you can also enjoy Andrew Cyrille making music together with Brötzmann where they leave the jazzy force to join one another in a humoristic do-it-yourself-Fluxus-approach. When I listen to this music today I cannot help smiling happily and also reflect upon the fact that Peter Brötzmann was a key figure in joining music and musicians from Europe and the US in the same band. He was not the only or even the first one in this part of free jazz’ history (cf Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey 1974!). But Brötzmann took the matter further when later forming small combos together with leading American musicians and the way he became an important part of both the European and American scene when he formed the Chicago Octets and Tentets in the 90s. This is how free jazz and improvised music became an international matter.

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