Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation

Book Description

This brilliant biography of the cult guitar player makes you forget everything you think you know about jazz improvisation, post punk and the avant-garde Derek Bailey was at the top of his profession as a dance-band and record-session guitarist when, in the early 1960s, he began playing an uncompromisingly abstract music. As the Joseph Holbrooke Trio, with bassist Gavin Bryars and drummer Tony Oxley, Bailey forged a musical syntax which has since operated as an international counter to the banality of commercialism. Refusing to be labeled a "jazz" guitarist, Bailey has collaborated with performance artists, electronic experimentalists, classical musicians, Zen dancers, tap dancers, rock stars, jazzers, poets, weirdos and an endless stream of fiercely individual musicians. Today his anti-idiom of "Free Improvisation" has become the lingua franca of the "avant" scene, with Pat Metheny, John Zorn, David Sylvian and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore amongst his admirers.

Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation lifts the lid on an artistic ferment which has defied every known law of the music business. Telling the story via taped interviews with Bailey and his cohorts, gig reports and album reviews (including an exhaustive discography of Bailey's vast and hard-to-track output), Ben Watson's spiky, partisan and often very funny biography argues that anyone who thought the avant-garde was dead simply forgot to listen.

Customer Reviews:

No darlings killed.......2006-06-16

My view of this book differs from the other reviews. Maybe it's wrong of me towrite a review, because I have finished the book, but not read it all. Still, this proves my point in a way; The book is too long.

The way this book is written, it reminds me of a method I used in school, and had to deliver a paper on a subject. Often, I chose special subjects where references were scarce, so I ended up having very few sources, just a sentence here and a sentence there. But just by writing around it, adding descriptions etc, I could make it look like this was some serious stuff that I had dug up, that I had done a lot of research on the matter, and I could usually present a long (though probably shallow) paper to the teacher.

In a way, this is what Ben Watson has done. He writes in extreme detail about small events. Only the difference is that he doesn't have few sources, like I had in school. He has an extreme amount of information, and nothing is left out. Like other reviews mentions, this includes his own analysis on certain concerts and recordings. This is to me not very interesting, much because Watson tries to write in a very intelligent way, and pushing his own views on the philosophical aspects of free improvisation. This might not be a problem for you. To me, it makes the book way too long.

There are, however, good sides. There are a lot of long excerpts from interviews with Bailey, and these are the most useful and interesting bits, I find. Bailey explains his views much better than Watson can analyze his way to. Unfortunately, there is less and less of this moving towards the end of the book, and more and more descriptions of events (like who played on this and that Company Week, and if Watson thinks it was successfull or not).

I am an improvising musician myself, I love biographies, as well as conceptual thinking about music. This book still was a boring read - way too detailed, unless you're a Bailey-freak.

Surpised when i spotted this one...........2005-04-04

What? Derek Bailey? Verso?

Picked this one up in a flash let me tell you. I have good things to say about this book and one or two not so good things, gave it four out of five after all...

I ve known of but only been sort of listening to Derek Bailey for about five years. Im impressed that a publisher went so far as to put this book out--not only a biographical book about a fairly obscure musician but also a healthy left-wing analysis of a relatively obscure music scene, improvisation. Creative and well written.

The information on Bailey is fantastic, the information about who he played with is even more special--sends you looking in new places. The book functions a bit like a catalog of improvising musicians, giving you info that is not that easy to come by. The tone is quite frank, Watson is not afraid to point out some of the less positive points of Baileys musical partners.

This is one of the problems with the book. Bailey is in the spotlight and can do no wrong. Classically trained musicians bear the worst of Watsons critiques. Im not sure how you can accurately critique improvising musicians, the whole point of this music is exploration. Maybe a few of Baileys muckups would have been good, he is from Yorkshire after all and his humour makes the tone of the book.

The other problem I thought about after finishing this book was the detail Watson goes into explaining the performances, it reads like a long concert review at times. I would have preferred to read about what happened after the show, before, maybe a bit more history on some of the artists and so on.
The part about ECM being bedwetting music for yuppies (sorry if i misquoted but i think im right) pissed me off at first but I came round after a while, look at some of the stuff they have put out in the last ten years.....

So i focused on what I didnt like in this review and hope that someone finds it useful. Its a unique book, even those marginally interested should give it a read.

Wow, I'm the first to review this book- It's Unique!!.......2005-02-13

Finally, a book that focuses the spotlight on one of the great musical innovators of our time: Derek Bailey. This book mixes interviews, (past& present), with peer commentary, and a detailed personal history of Derek's upbringing and musical influences. Sadly, though the author bothers to present his personal interpretation of Derek's musical output, I think we can all agree on the futility of such attempts. Luckily this banter is limited to scattered slivers from the whole of the book; he's a fan and couldn't help it!

But aside from my bias, I can completly recommend this book for its content & rich historical perspective on one of the most cherished musical figures of free music. DB

best. jb

Beyond Time and Changes: A Musician's Guide to Free Jazz Improvisation

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Beyond Time and Changes: A Musician's Guide to Free Jazz Improvisation
Hal Crook
Manufacturer: Advance Music
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5DBVC

Product Description

by Hal Crook. In Beyond Time and Changes, acclaimed jazz trombonist, pianist, composer, arranger, teacher and author Hal Crook offers a methodology to guide the advancing improviser through the un-chartered musical territory known as free jazz. Beyond Time and Changes shows improvisers how to prepare for soloing and comping in free settings by exploring the issues of musical accuracy, musicality and continuity (motive development) on form, and then reveals how to create structure and order within free settings by using the known to navigate the unknown. With the aid of lucid explanations, concise musical examples, practical exercises, solo transcriptions and a compelling demonstration CD featuring 17 performances by the author and a stellar rhythm section, Beyond Time and Changes solves the mystery long associated with how to make free improvisation make sensewithout losing your freedom in the process. Hal Crook is perhaps the freest and most technically adept and imaginative trombonist we have, and Beyond Time and Changes is a sure winner. Highly recommended. (Bob Brookmeyer) Beyond Time and Changes says it all. Go for it, Hal! I only have a few idols, and you are all of them! (George Garzone - Saxophonist with The Fringe) Beyond Time and Changes is the ultimate literature on improvisation. The demo CD is proof positive; Hal Crook is the chief of improvisation. (Frank Mobus - Guitarist and leader of Der Rote Bereich)

This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture (The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America)

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This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture (The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America)
Iain Anderson
Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0812239806

Book Description

This Is Our Music, declared saxophonist Ornette Coleman's 1960 album title. But whose music was it? At various times during the 1950s and 1960s, musicians, critics, fans, politicians, and entrepreneurs claimed jazz as a national art form, an Afrocentric race music, an extension of modernist innovation in other genres, a music of mass consciousness, and the preserve of a cultural elite. This original and provocative book explores who makes decisions about the value of a cultural form and on what basis, taking as its example the impact of 1960s free improvisation on the changing status of jazz.

By examining the production, presentation, and reception of experimental music by Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, and others, Iain Anderson traces the strange, unexpected, and at times deeply ironic intersections between free jazz, avant-garde artistic movements, Sixties politics, and patronage networks. Anderson emphasizes free improvisation's enormous impact on jazz music's institutional standing, despite ongoing resistance from some of its biggest beneficiaries. He concludes that attempts by African American artists and intellectuals to define a place for themselves in American life, structural changes in the music industry, and the rise of nonprofit sponsorship portended a significant transformation of established cultural standards. At the same time, free improvisation's growing prestige depended in part upon traditional highbrow criteria: increasingly esoteric styles, changing venues and audience behavior, European sanction, withdrawal from the marketplace, and the professionalization of criticism. Thus jazz music's performers and supporters--and potentially those in other arts--have both challenged and accommodated themselves to an ongoing process of cultural stratification.

Free Jazz and Free Improvisation [Two Volumes]: An Encyclopedia

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Free Jazz and Free Improvisation [Two Volumes]: An Encyclopedia
Todd S. Jenkins
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0313298815

Book Description

The free jazz revolution that began in the mid-1950s represented an artistic and sociopolitical response to the economic, racial, and musical climate of jazz and the nation. In parallel with the American civil rights movement, free jazz exemplified an escape from the restrictive rules of musical performance with an emphasis on individual expression and musical democracy. A handful of major individual artists opened the gateway to intense personalization of performances through astonishing new techniques, and inner-city collectives were formed to support artistic experimentation and community education. Reviled by most critics and jazz fans in its nascence, and still highly misunderstood today, free jazz eventually had a profound influence on subsequent developments in jazz and rock, forever changing the musical landscape. Todd S. Jenkins' handy encyclopedia of free music reflects upon the personalities, styles, organizations, philosophy and politics of a musical form to which too little prior attention has been devoted. Directing readers to outstanding recorded performances, it serves as an essential introduction to this difficult but rewarding music, offering a scholarly historical and cultural overview that provides a critical assessment of one of the most misunderstood periods in American music. Filling many gaps left in previously published literature on the subject, Jenkins's work is a necessary addition to the shelves of music libraries and the collections of jazz aficionados alike.

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Informative and vintage technical text
Nice, Concise, and Worth the Price
Great analysis of a misunderstood genre

Free Jazz (The Roots of Jazz)
Ekkehard Jost
Manufacturer: Da Capo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0306805561

Customer Reviews:

Informative and vintage technical text.......2004-02-18

This book covers the music of Coltrane, Mingus, Ornette, Cecil Taylor, late period Coltrane, Shepp, Ayler, Cherry, AACM, and Sun Ra. It is valuable as an historical text, since Jost gives good outlines of each musician's career (up to 1974, when the book was published). The German author Jost gives in depth descriptions of formal aspects of each musician's work, which is most interesting in the case of the composers whose work extensively involves the working out of musical structures. It is a very rational approach to a very complex subject. At times, I felt that the absence of discussion of political or spiritual aspects of the music was not a good thing, but it seems like Jost's goal was to discuss history and form for the most part. It's a view of Free Music from a Western point of view.

Nice, Concise, and Worth the Price.......2001-07-23

This is a great book, but, thankfully, it differs from other books on the same topic. This is a fairly in-depth analysis of the musicians' MUSIC. Don't expect long anecdotes about Cecil Taylor's life or John Coltrane's spirituality or about revolutionary politics or whatever. Jost feels that this stuff is abundant in others' books and accounts of the "free" movement, and that it has distracted us from the music itself. That's what I love about this book; the author isn't afraid to dig deep into the music. Also, most of his recorded examples are easy to find (or at least available somewhere). There isn't any of that "one time in 61' I saw Ornette play the harmonica in this pub in sweden and....". This book makes this seemingly difficult music more accessible...check it out.

Great analysis of a misunderstood genre.......2000-01-18

This book serves as an excellent survey of free jazz in the 60's. Jost uses plenty of examples and a lots of objectivity to write a book that celebrates the many virtues of this multifaceted genre, while maintaining a realistic perspective. He doesn't hesitate, however, to criticize free musicians where it is due, giving his more frequent positive comments more weight. A must for any student of the avante-garde.

Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music In A Complex Age

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Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music In A Complex Age
David Borgo
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0826417299

Book Description

Improvising music involves a leap into the uncharted, but its success relies on abilities honed through experience and on an unwavering commitment to the moment and context of performance. Improvisers synchronize their intentions and actions, all the while maintaining a keen sensitivity to and connection with the evolving group dynamic. At times, performance can evoke a swarmlike quality in which the individual parts are moving in very different ways, yet the musical whole evolves with a collective purpose.

Sync or Swarm provides a fascinating study of musical improvisation, using theories from cultural and cognitive studies and the emerging science of chaos and complexity. David Borgo explores his topic with a systems approach, as individual chapters expand outward in scope: from the perspective of a solo improviser (English saxophonist Evan Parker); to that of a group interacting in performance and over time (the Sam Rivers trio); to the network dynamics that bind together performers, listeners, educators, and promoters into a musical community. Each chapter is paired with a different aspect of the emerging sciences, including perspectives from the study of embodied cognition, nonlinear dynamics, self-organizing systems, social networks, and situated and distributed learning.

Sync or Swarm looks through the lens of contemporary science to illuminate the process and practice of improvising music and explores the ability of improvisation to offer a visceral engagement with these emerging scientific notions, ultimately offering us new ways of engaging with and shaping the discourse that surrounds music in general.

Book Description

Singer, composer, actress, lover, wife, writer, pleasure seeker, drug addict, icon, commodity, myth and mystery: Billie Holiday is still one of the most famous jazz vocalists of all time. But Holiday's image -- the gifted torch singer with insatiable appetites for food, sex, alcohol and drugs -- is not the full story. Farah Jasmine Griffin's enchanting investigation of Holiday, her world and how she is remembered, at last fully liberates Lady Day from the tragic songstress myth.

Griffin argues that the stereotype of a black woman who can always take center stage to command an audience because of her incredible ability to feel, but not to think, continues to hide the real Holiday from public view. Instead of a mindless "natural" with incredible talent but no discipline, Griffin's Holiday is a jazz virtuoso whose passion and technique made every song she sang forever hers. Instead of being helpless against the racism, sexism and poverty that dominated her life, Holiday is an artist, willing to pay a tremendous price to change the sound of jazz forever. And far from being a victim of overwhelming obstacles, Lady Day is an independent spirit whose greatest legacy is that all hurdles can be overcome, whatever the odds.

Holiday's voice has permeated American music from Frank Sinatra to Macy Gray. But, until now, Holiday's influence has never been reconciled with her image. Farah Jasmine Griffin unravels the threads that make up the Holiday mystique and weaves together a new, true Lady Day that jazz fans will both love and respect.

Customer Reviews:

A brilliant work.......2004-08-02

This is a brilliant analysis, rumination, meditation, on Billie Holiday. I believe the previous reviewers who did not agree with me missed Professor Griffin's use of jazz phrasing within the prose of her work, the reworking and repetition of themes to provide new insight. It is a technique that perhaps would only be understandable to a jazz lover, but it is part of the creative wisdom of this piece. This is the best work on Billie Holiday that I have ever read and I highly recommend it. And incidentally, Dr. Griffin is one of the most respected scholars of African American and American Studies, so she should never be compared to a first year graduate student. I suggest readers check out her other work as well.

Had Promise.......2002-10-16

Griffin's opening chapter is interesting and effectively presented, and by itself would make an adequate article on Holiday's life. There's not enough content here to warrant a book, and, in fact, it reads more like a first-year graduate student's paper than a text polished for publication. It seems that Griffin favored the copy and paste method here, repeating herself, literally, at times, in subsequent chapters, word for word, from previous chapters. This was not done to lend the text a wondeful insularity or elipticalness...I think she was just confused as to what to say and where to go. That Griffin adores Holiday is clear, but her worship of this Jazz Diva doesn't translate well into postmodern theory, and the pomo buzzwords Griffin sprinkles throughout the text seem to hinder her own understanding of and relationship with Holiday and to her music...Ultimately, the author ends up sounding disingenous and uncertain and not quite cognizant of the social politics she purports to examine and explain. Still, the glimpses we do get of Holiday stand out and shine marvelously.

Interesting but flawed.......2002-06-15

This book promises much but delivers little....which is a great pity since it could have been a much better book than it is. Part of the problem lies in the fact that it is not well written and is in severe need of editing. The book is repetitive in the extreme (see p. 181 for a glaring example - where we are told in two CONSECUTIVE sentences that Abbey Lincoln was under consideration to play Billie Holiday in a filmed version of Lady Sings The Blues). Other examples involve being told something, and then two or three pages later the same information is repeated. This is sloppy and shows that the author (or her editors) did not bother to proofread the manuscript in any meaningful way.

The other problem with the book is that it offers little in the way of insight. Sure the author has some ideas - but they are not enough to stretch out over the length of a book. It might have made an interesting presentation at a conference where it could have been presented as a 20 minute talk, but over the length of a book it becomes tiresome. Billie Holiday deserves better than this. Sorry to be so negative, but i bought this book with a great sense of anticipation and felt really let down by it. A real case of the critic not being up to the level of her subject.

Thank you for the insight.......2001-07-21

I'm a graduate social work student and I recently wrote a paper about Billie for a class on counseling creative clients. From a strengths perspective, Billie's life was a creative success. She lived true to herself and she lived for herself. Given the enormous odds she faced, as a black woman in that time period, she overcame much. Ms. Griffin has done her justice and I highly recommend her book.

Something to do Billie Holiday a little Justice.......2001-06-11

This book serves to show yet another side of Lady Day. Despite a tendancy to repeat herself, Farah Jasmine Griffith gets her point across eloquently. She peals away layers created by media, stereotypes, and the politics of her time that hide a complex, intelligent and more human Holiday. Fans of the Lady will enjoy this newest edition to the collection of writings about her.

Book Description

Analysts today routinely look toward the media and popular culture as a way of understanding global security. Although only a decade ago, such a focus would have seemed out of place, the proliferation of digital technologies in the twenty-first century has transformed our knowledge of near and distant events so that it has become impossible to separate the politics of war, suffering, terrorism, and security from the practices and processes of the media.

In Rethinking Global Security, Andrew Martin and Patrice Petro bring together ten path-breaking essays that explore the ways that our notions of fear, insecurity, and danger are fostered by intermediary sources such as television, radio, film, satellite imaging, and the Internet. The contributors, who represent a wide variety of disciplines, including communications, art history, media studies, women's studies, and literature, show how both fictional and fact-based threats to global security have helped to create and sustain a culture that is deeply distrustful—of images, stories, reports, and policy decisions. Topics range from the Patriot Act, to the censorship of media personalities such as Howard Stern, to the role that Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other television programming play as an interpretative frame for current events.

Designed to promote strategic thinking about the relationships between media, popular culture, and global security, this book is essential reading for scholars of international relations, technology, and media studies.

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