European Free Jazz - European Acceptance

European Acceptance

Contrary to the societal reaction free jazz music received in the United States, many Europeans (musicians, critics and young people alike) identified with this style of music. While many African-Americans associated this avant-garde style with the Civil Rights movement in America, many Europeans in the 1960s, especially college-aged students, associated this style of music with anti-colonialist movements occurring throughout Europe at the same time.

The music under the "free-jazz" rubric – that of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Sun Ra and their bands, to name the major pioneers with the most impact in Europe – ignited the jazz scenes there in the mid-to-late 1960s. The subsequent free-jazz movement in their countries was linked to the events and spirit of the 1968 student protests and riots in Paris and Berlin (the " '68ers") as it was to new assertions of black identity in America. The racial conflict specific to the United States translated in Europe to a international radical leftism – one with a youthful white more than an angry black face – hostile to Western imperialistic capitalism and faux-culture.

As American free jazz musicians continued to play throughout Europe, the free jazz genre and the cultural movements in Europe associated with it began to spread as well, influencing many European jazz musicians to imitate the avant-garde style of playing as well as adopting its techniques to create their own individual sound. "Reflecting their diverse backgrounds, these musicians often blend personal narrative reminiscent of an Afrological perspective with some sonic imagery characteristic of European forms spanning several centuries".