The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the (Aural) Arts After Jazz
The A A C M in the Present and Future
As a result, a strange phantom standard is applied to determine what gets discussed. Not the proclivities and quirks of the individual writers, given the apparent seriousness with which journalistic norms are maintained. Not even what's avoided in rival publications. Both would serve as fine criteria. They could even limit themselves in the standard fashion of newspapers: geographically. That is, as a British magazine, cover artists that fellow Britons are likely to encounter or, based upon links being established by said artists, should encounter in the near future. In fact, all three of these potential criteria are at work, but rarely acknowledged. The only music excluded is that which the editors at the moment consider too traditionalist, not "challenging" enough. No broad editorial perspective is given that would make all the parts add up to a cohesive whole. As the Wire's cover claimed in the past, they only offer accounts of varied "adventures in modern music," and few of these adventures, philosophically speaking, serve as the equivalent of anything other than vacations arranged by a travel agency. Granted, these publications did not formulate the rigid categories that make simplistic understandings of experimental music possible; they often serve as nothing more than mouthpieces for record labels, festival organizers and performance venues, promotional companies, and of course other writers (forming a feedback loop of writing that, even when negative in tone, is innocuous because it lacks deep critical engagement - flowing seamlessly into advertising copy). In short, musical journalism of the present day does not effectively fulfill its limited role.
Returning to concerns raised in Lewis's book, only the rarely-issued Halana presents Jazz and Improvised artists, black or white, as inseparable parts of an avant-garde lineage. Avant, like the Wire, includes Jazz and Improvised musics - indeed, both magazines have at times made them their principal focus - but rely upon commonly-accepted categories when it comes to conceptualization and contextualization, such as the acceptance in recent years of "EAI" (that is, "electroacoustic improvisation"); this acronymed version of a broader concept threatens to subsume all Improvised Electroacoustic into a genre made up of a tiny number of artists, and as such encourages a widening gulf between Improvised music that is electroacoustic and that which is not. In the U S, Signal to Noise emerged as a Jazz/ Improvised magazine with Rock cross-over readership but has also perversely imitated the Wire, even copying aspects of the latter's design and formats. Two Jazz magazines, Coda and Cadence, that give Free/ modern Jazz its rightful place keep themselves confined to the broad Jazz realm.
From the diffuse base of knowledge these sources offer, experimental-music listeners, and artists, of the present day would learn a lot not just by delving into the vast phonographical record left by Jazz music, but also by focusing on A A C M as the ultimate victorious end of Jazz: the achieved goal of creating a unique "American" approach to music. But a difficult task awaits those who try to listen to Jazz closely, to conceive of its products as art, like a Paul Klee painting or a Bill Knott poem. Amid the cultural "dumbing down" of the past three decades that has accompanied the ascendency of reactionary crony conservatism, the tasks proposed by the Marsalis contingent find favor over those demanded by the likes of Coleman, Steve Lacy, or the A A C M. One can listen to "Classicist" Jazz and assume that what's heard is a faithful recreation or reflection of past masters. Then, when one hears, say, Fletcher Henderson or Thelonious Monk, or any Jazz artist, especially from the 1950's, when technology reached a point where the recordings sonically resemble those of the present day, one thinks he knows what he hears. It's just "jazz": the proscribed genre recognized by every record label and retail outlet, every magazine and book-publishing company - for that matter, perhaps every human being alive. We don't hear a Count Basie or Horace Silver record as a work of art created by a few individuals at a specific time and place, making its unique contribution to a larger body of artistic knowledge and cultural history. We hear "jazz" - and, sadly, for many Americans the nauseating image of Marsalis giving a moronic lecture on how "Jazz is like the Constitution" comes to mind.
Generally, those who appreciate Free/ modern Jazz place the earlier New York Free Jazz of Coleman, Taylor, Ayler et al. as the significant end point, with the A A C M and European Improvised scenes as secondary off-shoots. In contrast, the Marsalis-prescribed mainstream view talks a little about Free Jazz (peculiarly giving Coleman his due, but few else) but ends with Fusion, from which the likes of Marsalis had to rescue pure true Bebop, to be preserved in all its sanctity and fragility. The earlier Free Jazz attains this centrality partially from its foundational position. But, as I suggest above, the A A C M could just as well achieve the same centrality by way of its position as a logical conclusion, liberating Jazz from the burden of its rich history by way of an extended creative peak that lasted throughout the heady 1970's. After all, since the 1970's, few artists have established themselves as equals in cultural significance to the likes of Braxton or Mitchell while remaining "jazz" arists - with the possible exception of Ken Vandermark, the leader of the post-A A C M Chicago scene. Indeed, in the new century, with The Territory Band, The Frame Quartet, and The Resonance Ensemble, Vandermark has explored non-Jazz possibilities more thoroughly than he had previously.
Another crucial factor counters the A A C M's contemporary relevance: listeners can trace the lineage of many artists who came of age in the 1990's [Matthew Shipp, Satoko Fuji, Joe Morris, Blaise Siwula, Chris Speed, Dave Douglas, Vattel Cherry, Greg Cohen, Chris Corsano, Susie Ibarra, Jim Black] back to the New York Free Jazz scene that flourished (creatively, not commercially) for nearly two decades beginning in the late 1950's (and in which, as described above, A A C M - and B A G and U G M A A - artists played a major role from the middle 1970's into the '90's; though one does not see in these younger artists the same willingness to challenge "jazz" barriers that Association artists had). Meanwhile, new A A C M artists since the late 1970's have been overshadowed by their predecessors [an aspect that Lewis addresses indirectly at least, in relating the divergent histories, and ensuing tensions, of the Association's Chicago and New York chapters, which in the 1980's formally went their separate ways] even as they rarely work with the older members or fail to pursue the implications of the radical experiments said older members engaged in. In short, the effective collective action engendered by the A A C M, conducive as it was to the aesthetics and careers of early Association members, began to fade and only the organizational apparatus itself remained. In a ironic twist of fate, Fred Anderson, one of the oldest Association members, and always quite independent from the organization, has served as the mentor/ model par excellence for young Chicagoans, including Vandermark and Hamid Drake. Alas, the Association's historical fate, not good for its members new or old, is good for the rest of us, who are forced to look elsewhere when pondering which artists follow the models offered by the A A C M, at least in part.
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Seth Tisue - Fred Anderson, 2005
Lewis's tone certainly does at times turn caustic, but the claim made in the Wire review that the book is "polemical" is grossly unfair, at best suggesting that the critic in question has not come across many true polemical works in his reading. More likely, the book - and A A C M music - makes the present-day follower of experimental musics uncomfortable, but not necessarily because of the racial issue discussed above. These listeners, besides the Wire, might also read Avant, Music Works, and the Leonardo Music Journal. Perhaps too they read smaller, less-professional (and often short-lived) magazines like the Sound Projector, Muckraker, Halana, or aMAZEzine, all of which are more considerate in their opinions and more holistic in their perspectives. All of these readings, though, encourage these listeners to embrace or ponder those music artists who push "boundaries" or reject standard practices. Or, if they don't, they praise a seemingly-random selection of popular artists who have caught their attention with some gesture or tactic of incorporating the avant garde into mass culture.
