texts

Free improvisation as a social act

Jack Wright, 1986



The following document, written in 1986, reflects conditions that, by the end of the century, had radically changed. It is reprinted in the interest of discovering the roots of current free improvisation. It is not to be assumed that the views here were shared by many other musicians.



       I. 1 uu p84/z nieys ,wifzbt4l * Is aie wor dswordswordswo rds words word swords grey into black on white, symbols out of gestures, thought (Ha!) grabbed out of electric impulses. waiting for meaning to coalesce, to let it flow past the hazards of the dam, the knife trying to cut water. Open and close, blood that won't reverse in our veins even if we tell it

       II. What does spontaneity have to do with this social order, with any social order, with the order of our self-socialized minds. There is not a word we cannot say, and reverse our saying (but not time, as the original mistake.) Our mind moves by regret, shame, erasure, over its landscape. The contingent drifts into gray abstraction as we look towards the Model for guidance.

     III. An axiom we know so well that we can't experience it at all: everything is free only at the moment of creation, born free, then repeated, but never re-experienced. The memory of the moment is always a new moment, but it in no way approaches the original because its impetus is tragic, nostalgic, covering up. Attempting to recapture, it is captured by the attempting, it can only seek to perfect, that is, to socialize, improve. The recycled experience cannot strike out with the fault of boldness; it is falsified, stylized boldness that is found in the Art World, that outnumbers and ridicules the original. The copy cannot explore what is unknown because it doesn’t know even where to look; it can only follow a map and discover more of what is already known.

      IV. Free improvisation is, in its idea of itself, the only music that is not tragic in this way, not searching for the end, not seeking its perfection, not repeated, not corrected. It stands at the center of music because it is the insecure void between past and future, the void of choice. It puts the immediate human at the center, and that is frightening. It is neither perfect nor purposely imperfect because both of these have the Model at the center. Years ago art criticism snooped its way into the artists' studio behind the finished work, as an elaboration in time of the dead thing in the gallery. Free improvisation goes one step better; it says there is only the working, it is begun and finished at the same moment, it is whatever is actually happening, activity not even proclaiming its nakedness. There could be nothing more ambiguous, and resistant to consistency.

      V. In Western cultural history, free improvisation is the rebel child of perfection, born in that world that intertwines so nicely the dream of freedom and the life of slavery. A society’s culture is repetition, mimesis, spiraling forward, eating and shedding skins. The solid meaning possible for us, what makes communication easiest and smoothest is created in repetition, and perfectibility through development. This resounds through the culture industry, from creator to consumer and back again through market feedback, passing thru corporation and government agency. Careers are built on perfection of' the product and guarantee of reproduction, and they form a synthetic, symbiotic unit with spectators. What artist can withstand the lure of feedback--acceptance, recognition, supportive community? But individua1ity, the supposed prize of our Western Civilization for which we are asked to suffer, does not integrate us socially, it alienates. So there is a strong tendency for free improv to call a halt to its moment and slice off a piece for consumption, that is, create an identity (language) and insert people into the moment. Improv can then become merely the childhood sandbox of the mature artist. "Improviser" thus becomes a reputation, a harmless label of past (alienating) experience, for those who have “moved beyond” experimentation, a symbol of paid dues. [This was frequently the case in the eighties, in contrast to today; improvisers were lured with the prospect of being upgraded to composer status.]

      VI. To the extent that free improv is seen as Art (for some, the broad umbrella of the spiritually homeless), its fate is tied up with conclusions raised about it by Criticism. It must pass through the eye of this needle to be accepted; it must be understood, given its place in the schema of the given before it can be heard and seen. Within the Art-Critical World, things are judged pseudo-historically, a never-ending Hegelian succession of triumphs, each transcending the former. In this schema free improv, by the late eighties, appears as anachronism, an island of earlier freedom which never seemed to find its nostalgia buffs, with its links to the continent of culture now washed away except for a handful of stranded devotees.

Taken from (and more writings at):
http://www.springgardenmusic.com