Here is a quote By Anthony Braxton that I retrieved from a jazz forum:


"It's like, everybody wanted to use freedom as a context to freak out, and that was not what I was talking about. One of the problems with collective improvisation, as far as I'm concerned, is that people who use anarchy or collective improvisation will interpret that to mean 'Now I can kill you'; and I'm saying, wait a minute! OK, it's true that in a free-thought zone, you can think of anything you want to think, but that was not the optimum state of what I had in mind when I said, let's have freedom. I thought any transformational understanding of so-called freedom would imply that you would be free to find those disciplines that suited you, free to understand your own value systems; but not that you would just freak out because 'the teacher's not there.' The teacher is still there!

It's one thing to talk about the post-Ayler cycle with respect to the events which took place in the first year, the second year. . . but if you look back at the last twenty years, what has freedom meant? For a great many people, so-called freedomis more limiting than bebop, because in bebop you can play a ballad or change the tempo or the key. So-called freedom has not helped us as a family, as a collective, to understand responsibility better. Only the master musicians, the ones who really understand what they were doing and who did their homework, have been able to generate forward motion. So the notion of freedom that was being perpetrated in the sixties might not have been the healthiest notion. I say 'healthiest notion' because I'm not opposed to the state of freedom; I believe that with correct information and an understanding of respect for humanity, human beings can rise to their potential. But fixed and open variables, with the fixed variables functioning from fundamental value systems--that's what freedom means to me."

What are you thoughts & opinions on Mr.Braxton's quote members?

it pretty much sums up my beef with most of the free/improvised music i hear out there. it's like there's a larger focus on a conscious denial of established elements in favor of the concept of 'freedom'. just because everyone in the group is free doesn't mean they have to strive for the most atonal means of 'complimenting' each other.

i REALLY like this part

'freedom would imply that you would be free to find those disciplines that suited you, free to understand your own value systems; but not that you would just freak out because 'the teacher's not there.' The teacher is still there'

I am pretty sure, that is taken from Graham Lock's book on Braxton, called Forces in Motion.

I would like to know, in what context this post was used before commenting.

I believe we have already had this conversation about your problems with Free Jazz/Improv.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.

Yes it was.

The context was simply to create a discussion. Of course Stachmo has made attempts to enlighten those that may have a difficulty comprehending this music, but it was interesting a very interesting quote on Braxton's behalf.

Wow, that's deep. I just don't like the sound of most 'free music', so i'll stick with SOAD's prison song

I find this quote to be pretty interesting, considering that some of the most traditionally unmusical, radical, and difficult music ever made has come from the Braxton catalogue.

In any case, I love Free Jazz. Bring the noise, I say.

yup. and your comments along with cage fanatic's were well appreciated. but i still have a beef with most of the free improv i hear

You know, to all the Free-Jazz artists out there, I have to say that I've always thought it incredibly admirable to devote one's life to the creation of an artform that is despised, ignored, and misunderstood by 99% of the population!

(( although I suppose others would call it stupidity, perhaps! ))