European Free Jazz - American Influence

American Influence

The free jazz movement, also known as Avant-Garde jazz began in the United States of America in the 1960s as a reaction to the popular subgenres of Jazz music such as Bebop, Swing and Big Band arranged music. Although the roots of free jazz music are based in the United States, it did not receive mainstream popularity nor did it achieve significant commercial success until much later. Rather it was viewed as a musical, political and social backlash to the structure of jazz music and of American society at the time. "For some performers the style was loosely linked to the Black Power movement in the USA, partly because of the radical political outlook of some of its practitioners and advocates (e.g., Archie Shepp and LeRoi Jones – later known as Amiri Baraka) and partly owing to the explosive, expressionistic nature of the music itself". Due to the lack of commercial success of the free jazz music as well as the racial issues, like the Civil Rights movement in America, many American free jazz musicians began touring the European continent, playing and spreading their new avant-garde style throughout Europe. Jazz musicians like Ornette Colman, Albert Aylar, Don Cherry, Bud Powell, Don Byas amongst others traveled and performed extensively throughout Europe. In contrast to the lack of commercial success in America, many American free jazz musicians experienced both commercial success as well as societal acceptance amongst the European community. This acceptance led many of the innovators of this genre of music to travel extensively throughout Europe, and in some cases, to stay in various European countries for extended periods of time. "A number of jazz musicians migrated to other parts of the world, where they received an opposite response, being considered the ultimate expression of high culture. Thus, many of them remained in exile, and they enjoyed unparalleled success in France, Germany, Japan, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands after the world wars".

While much of the general public in America believed this style of music to be structure-less, provocative and ridiculous, many European listeners enjoyed the "dissonant and seemingly chaotic music". Many Europeans viewed "'Free Jazz' as the descriptor most used by the media on both sides of the Atlantic for a musical movement that ignited like a flare in the African-American… and Western European…jazz communities. The social context in both cases included a reaction by musicians against a mainstream jazz culture they felt to be colluding with an oppressive Western hegemony that was intrinsically racist, historically imperialistic and exploitive, venally decadent and vicious as its power was challenged". Due in part to the provocative nature of the music as well as the freedom it granted both the musician and the listener, many Europeans associated the backlash toward American society conveyed in free jazz with the counter-culture and anti-imperialist movements in Europe during the late 1960s.