Chris McGregor recordings??

[ep1str0phy]

As for the Elton Dean stuff--I mainly know of this quartet through a relatively extensive repository of bootlegs, but they did make the truly beautiful and profound They All Be On This Road (on Ogun--sadly out of print). That album has one of the most "correct" versions of "Naima" I've heard outside of the Coltrane circle, and it's because they lean into the mystery and graininess of it without really giving over to bathos. Moholo-Moholo in this period is a miracle of subtlety and shading--for me, it's really just Moholo-Moholo and Paul Motian at this tier for this particular kind of music.

There's also Boundaries on Japo (a quintet side that has Marc Charig added and Marcio Mattos in the bass chair)--that one is sort of a "reduced" version of the Ninesense band, but actually way more explosive than any of the other small group Dean/Moholo sessions. I can only imagine what it must have been like seeing or playing inside of the Tippett/Moholo whirlwind, Jesus.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I'd also add that - of course - 'freedom' is a precious thing for people who go into exile from regimes such as Apartheid SA. Louis (et al.) very much align with an aesthetic (similar to that of the AACM) of 'freedom to' instead of 'freedom from'...so playing tunes/vamps/grooves is no more or less free than the completely open forms, or any other. What is important is inhabiting the 'moment', and genuinely improvising...a type of empirical freedom, more than talking about what music can/can't/should/shouldn't be. I think this idea of the moment is related to the thrilling raggedness of a lot of the music...I mean - listen to their session work, and it's clear these guys can all nail 'orthodox' precision, but this takes you a little close to rules, and rehearsing out the spontaneity. (Cf Theme De Yoyo to show that the funkiest stuff comes just on the brink - whilst all the time it's clear that 'if they wanted' it could all be a lot more 'precise'). I've definitely been in rehearsals with Louis where we've junked a tune because it was all a little clean/polished, and lacking the loose-limbed thing...

And temperamentally, count me in: one of the main things I feel I've learnt from Louis is the value of risking chaos in order to create conditions where the magic might happen, in preference to playing safe with a much higher percentage return of 'satisfactory' results. And that if you go into it with this attitude, you find that the chaotic stuff therefore has its own kick...

Edited August 21, 2014 by Alexander Hawkins

[A Lark Ascending]

Elton Dean has a huge discography, most on small labels. You never know quite what you are getting - something very structured like the Ninesense records or completely free records. I must have 20 or 30 under his name and have never been disappointed. He was also never to proud to play jazz rock right up to the end.

There's a rare performance by Louis Moholo-Moholo and the Dedication Orchestra (dedicated to the musicians of this thread) at this year's London Jazz Festival. I might well get there if I can find something in the evening to intrigue me too:

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/dedication-orchestra-84370

A very rare opportunity to see this joyous rollercoaster of a big band.

They evoke the story of five South African exiles who transformed jazz after finding their way to Europe in the 1960s.

Fired by the whipcrack drumming of the one surviving member of the Blue Notes, Louis Moholo-Moholo, the music of Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza and Johnny Dyani continues to live and breathe in 'a bustling mix of freedom and discipline, of community and individualism' (The Guardian).

The Dedication Orchestra brings together successive generations of musicians who have been inspired by the passionate commitment of this music. They include Steve Beresford, Claude Deppa, Maggie Nicols, Evan Parker, Keith Tippett, Julie Tippetts and Jason Yarde.

Edited August 21, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[mjazzg]

Elton Dean has a huge discography, most on small labels. You never know quite what you are getting - something very structured like the Ninesense records or completely free records. I must have 20 or 30 under his name and have never been disappointed. He was also never to proud to play jazz rock right up to the end.

There's a rare performance by Louis Moholo-Moholo and the Dedication Orchestra (dedicated to the musicians of this thread) at this year's London Jazz Festival. I might well get there if I can find something in the evening to intrigue me too:

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/dedication-orchestra-84370

A very rare opportunity to see this joyous rollercoaster of a big band.

They evoke the story of five South African exiles who transformed jazz after finding their way to Europe in the 1960s.

Fired by the whipcrack drumming of the one surviving member of the Blue Notes, Louis Moholo-Moholo, the music of Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza and Johnny Dyani continues to live and breathe in 'a bustling mix of freedom and discipline, of community and individualism' (The Guardian).

The Dedication Orchestra brings together successive generations of musicians who have been inspired by the passionate commitment of this music. They include Steve Beresford, Claude Deppa, Maggie Nicols, Evan Parker, Keith Tippett, Julie Tippetts and Jason Yarde.

see you there if you make it Bev. My ticket's booked

there's John Surman and Bergen Big Band at Kings Place in the evening. sadly can't do them both but wish I could

Edited August 21, 2014 by mjazzg

[Head Man]

Elton Dean has a huge discography, most on small labels. You never know quite what you are getting - something very structured like the Ninesense records or completely free records. I must have 20 or 30 under his name and have never been disappointed. He was also never to proud to play jazz rock right up to the end.

The one by him that I always come back to is this:

Edited August 21, 2014 by Head Man

[A Lark Ascending]

Elton Dean has a huge discography, most on small labels. You never know quite what you are getting - something very structured like the Ninesense records or completely free records. I must have 20 or 30 under his name and have never been disappointed. He was also never to proud to play jazz rock right up to the end.

The one I always come back by him is this:

I saw that band in Norwich in 1977! Excellent. Very good record too.

My favourite Dean moment is still the quintet on the first side of Keith Tippett's 'Septober Energy'. Only a few minutes but it was one of the first things I heard that made me realise that free music had a logic. A ragged melodic statement exploding to a fiery free section and then returning back inside tonality. Never fails to set the hairs on the back of my neck standing.

mjazzg wrote: see you there if you make it Bev. My ticket's booked. there's John Surman and Bergen Big Band at Kings Place in the evening. sadly can't do them both but wish I could

Yes, that's a strong possibility. Wouldn't travel the distance just for that but to round out the day it would be great fun. By mid-November I'll be more than ready for a little adventure.

Edited August 21, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[ep1str0phy]

I'd also add that - of course - 'freedom' is a precious thing for people who go into exile from regimes such as Apartheid SA. Louis (et al.) very much align with an aesthetic (similar to that of the AACM) of 'freedom to' instead of 'freedom from'...so playing tunes/vamps/grooves is no more or less free than the completely open forms, or any other. What is important is inhabiting the 'moment', and genuinely improvising...a type of empirical freedom, more than talking about what music can/can't/should/shouldn't be. I think this idea of the moment is related to the thrilling raggedness of a lot of the music...I mean - listen to their session work, and it's clear these guys can all nail 'orthodox' precision, but this takes you a little close to rules, and rehearsing out the spontaneity. (Cf Theme De Yoyo to show that the funkiest stuff comes just on the brink - whilst all the time it's clear that 'if they wanted' it could all be a lot more 'precise'). I've definitely been in rehearsals with Louis where we've junked a tune because it was all a little clean/polished, and lacking the loose-limbed thing...

And temperamentally, count me in: one of the main things I feel I've learnt from Louis is the value of risking chaos in order to create conditions where the magic might happen, in preference to playing safe with a much higher percentage return of 'satisfactory' results. And that if you go into it with this attitude, you find that the chaotic stuff therefore has its own kick...

Great to hear the first person perspective. The "freedom to" aesthetic always struck me as a fundamentally post-60's thing. This is why we still need an analytical study of 70's jazz, as the blogosphere has been talking about for something like a decade now--the AACM, BAG, the downtown NY scene, the English free improvisers, the Blue Notes, etc. etc. were playing a very different and much more conceptually complicated music than the early wave free jazz musicians.

It's interesting that the Blue Notes get slotted into free jazz on the one hand and European free improv on the other--the former is in respects the "last part" of the bebop continuum, which is why it's so tethered to bop's conceptual devices (theme-solos-theme, soloist/rhythm section divide, frequent presence of metered improvisation, and so on), and music that is categorized as EFI is often more involved in "total" improvisation than American free jazz. The members of the Blue Notes played some free jazz, played some EFI, but their music together is ultimately something else entirely.

Of the handful of masters I've spent some time with, the musician whose aesthetic comes closest to absolute "freedom to" is Fred Frith. It wasn't until talking to Frith--at a time, incidentally, when I'd been consumed with listening to the Blue Notes and confronting my own issues as a composer--that I came to realize just how many different ideological camps so-called "creative" and/or "free" music encompasses. Part of Frith's pedagogy involves looking at the materials with which we construct an improvisation--why not play something tonal? Why not play something metered? (And any number of opposites thereon--it's a pretty contrarian philosophy, which is kind of fun.)

Playing idiomatic material in a free improvisation still sounds to me like a pretty radical prospect, essentially because idiomatic material forcefully recontextualizes everything around it. The Blue Notes had such a strong shared language that they were able to create music that is simultaneously open to free association and deeply enmeshed in South African culture. I think it's still going to take some time for us to realize just how radical the Blue Notes were, and why we should be evaluating their music in the same hallowed tones we reserve for 60's Don Cherry, the Art Ensemble, and staggeringly few others.

[mjazzg]

I'd also add that - of course - 'freedom' is a precious thing for people who go into exile from regimes such as Apartheid SA. Louis (et al.) very much align with an aesthetic (similar to that of the AACM) of 'freedom to' instead of 'freedom from'...so playing tunes/vamps/grooves is no more or less free than the completely open forms, or any other. What is important is inhabiting the 'moment', and genuinely improvising...a type of empirical freedom, more than talking about what music can/can't/should/shouldn't be. I think this idea of the moment is related to the thrilling raggedness of a lot of the music...I mean - listen to their session work, and it's clear these guys can all nail 'orthodox' precision, but this takes you a little close to rules, and rehearsing out the spontaneity. (Cf Theme De Yoyo to show that the funkiest stuff comes just on the brink - whilst all the time it's clear that 'if they wanted' it could all be a lot more 'precise'). I've definitely been in rehearsals with Louis where we've junked a tune because it was all a little clean/polished, and lacking the loose-limbed thing...

And temperamentally, count me in: one of the main things I feel I've learnt from Louis is the value of risking chaos in order to create conditions where the magic might happen, in preference to playing safe with a much higher percentage return of 'satisfactory' results. And that if you go into it with this attitude, you find that the chaotic stuff therefore has its own kick...

Great to hear the first person perspective. The "freedom to" aesthetic always struck me as a fundamentally post-60's thing. This is why we still need an analytical study of 70's jazz, as the blogosphere has been talking about for something like a decade now--the AACM, BAG, the downtown NY scene, the English free improvisers, the Blue Notes, etc. etc. were playing a very different and much more conceptually complicated music than the early wave free jazz musicians.

It's interesting that the Blue Notes get slotted into free jazz on the one hand and European free improv on the other--the former is in respects the "last part" of the bebop continuum, which is why it's so tethered to bop's conceptual devices (theme-solos-theme, soloist/rhythm section divide, frequent presence of metered improvisation, and so on), and music that is categorized as EFI is often more involved in "total" improvisation than American free jazz. The members of the Blue Notes played some free jazz, played some EFI, but their music together is ultimately something else entirely.

Of the handful of masters I've spent some time with, the musician whose aesthetic comes closest to absolute "freedom to" is Fred Frith. It wasn't until talking to Frith--at a time, incidentally, when I'd been consumed with listening to the Blue Notes and confronting my own issues as a composer--that I came to realize just how many different ideological camps so-called "creative" and/or "free" music encompasses. Part of Frith's pedagogy involves looking at the materials with which we construct an improvisation--why not play something tonal? Why not play something metered? (And any number of opposites thereon--it's a pretty contrarian philosophy, which is kind of fun.)

Playing idiomatic material in a free improvisation still sounds to me like a pretty radical prospect, essentially because idiomatic material forcefully recontextualizes everything around it. The Blue Notes had such a strong shared language that they were able to create music that is simultaneously open to free association and deeply enmeshed in South African culture. I think it's still going to take some time for us to realize just how radical the Blue Notes were, and why we should be evaluating their music in the same hallowed tones we reserve for 60's Don Cherry, the Art Ensemble, and staggeringly few others.

and it's posts like these two that make me glad I hang out around here. Insightful, articulate and thought provoking, thanks both. Keep them coming.

Edited August 21, 2014 by mjazzg

[king ubu]

Very good points indeed, Alex!

[Steve Reynolds]

Love the above posts by Alexander and Karl

Both Very Urgent and the Blue Notes box are showing as shipped!!!!!

[mjazzg]

You're in for a good time with both of those

[Alexander Hawkins]

Great Steve - enjoy!