Free Jazz Music

I forget how I found out about this extraordinary document, but the blurb you can read from Jon Pareles in the photograph clinched it for me. I simply had to have it.
Now that I do, I recommend that regardless of whether you are a fan of this band or not, snap this one up before it's gone.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago was one of the greatest small jazz groups of the last half of the XXth Century. Comprised of trumpeter Lester Bowie, wind players Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, bassist Malachi Favors Maghostus, and percussionist Famoudou Don Moye, this band absolutely tore the roof off the sucker from the late 60's on.

This film, made in '81, captures them at the peak of their artistic majesty. Visually, they are something to behold as they dress and paint their faces like African deities (although Bowie prefers a doctor's lab coat) and move about the stage in ritualistic, theatrical fashion. Nothing I can say about the sounds they produce from a forest of instruments can possibly do it justice.

Now that Bowie and Favors are no longer with us, a film like this is the only way to see the band as it was in all its glory. Do not hesitate, or you are lost.

Long before anyone had ever heard of John Zorn, there was an avant garde jazz band using duck calls, squeaky toys, and all manner of experimentation. This is a reissue of a 1970 Art Ensemble of Chicago album. 1969-70 was a period of extreme fertility for this band, and I'll go out on a limb and proclaim it: the Art Ensemble's late Sixties/early 70's albums were second only to Miles Davis' albums in quality and importance to the jazz of the time.

Fontella Bass was an R&B singer in the 60's before she married Lester Bowie (the Art Ensemble's trumpeter) and started laying down some landmark jazz/funk.

This album consists of two long-form compositions: "How Strange/Old Jed" and "Horn Web".

"How strange, Old Jed fell into the well. Well, I just never thought that it would end this way, but it did. Never knew Jed to be wearing a loose head. How strange, I'm just saying, how strange." That is the totality of the lyric sheet that Bass sings.

My interpretation is that it is a variant on Billy Holiday's "Strange Fruit", and the lament for "Old Jed" is, in reality, a not so fond farewell for "Uncle Tom". As Bass breaks into laughter at one point, reacting to the lyric, a male voice starts doing what can best be described as a 'chain gang holler.' It's pretty hard to miss the point.

The Art Ensemble uses a plethora of instruments on these compositions, demonstrating complete mastery. They shift from bop improvisation to New Orleans to African to classical waltz effortlessly. These compositions are rich tapestries of sound.

The Art Ensemble expressed a lot of moods within their music. The combination of sardonic humor, macabre theatre, and ghetto feeling made a lot of people a bit uncomfortable.

These reissues should help revive interest and remind people how amazing this group could be.

I'm sure these are highly skilled musicians here, and what they do sounds difficult, but what they have produced here amounts to over an hour straight of annoying (though interesting) noise.

Often people will discredit a song as "nothing but noise" if they strongly dislike it. When I call this "noise," however, I do not mean that I strongly dislike it (although, of course, I do strongly dislike it), I mean that it truly does sound more like noise than music - random tooting of horns and banging of drums and plucking of strings. As noise, it really isn't that bad I suppose, but as music I found it difficult to enjoy.

My recommendation is that you listen to the one minute sample provided by Amazon. If you don't like it you probably won't enjoy the other 75 minutes either.

A wonderful AEC set. It has cacophany, humor and absolute spiritual radience. I remember I used to love to listen to the lp, laughing and singing along with the first side and floating and dreaming to the second. (I didn't tend to listen to the second lp as much.)

the Art Ensemle of Chicago walked on stage and transported the assembled audience. Outside it was minus 25 degrees. Cars were frozen to the streets, the batteries stone cold. In Mandel Hall at the University of Chicago those who ventured out were invited to participate in a journey to the origin of music and back. Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell would move from sax to percussive instuments. As the Ensemble members colaborated on gongs, bells, gourds and marimbas Malachi Favors and Don Moye would bring up the tempo. Lester Bowie dressed in a white doctor's coat turned on the heat. A great live recording.