The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 (Da Capo Paperback) [Paperback]

John Litweiler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Da Capo Paperback | Publication Date: March 21, 1990

Ornette Coleman's discovery some thirty years ago that his band's music was indeed a "free thing" marked the beginning of a revolution in jazz. From the early free-form experiments, Coleman's dancing blues, and John Coltrane's saxophone cries and sheets of sound, to the brittle, melancholy modes of Miles Davis, vibrant, sophisticated new jazz idioms proliferated. In this critical and historical survey of today's jazz, noted critic John Litweiler traces the evolution of the new music through such artists as Coleman, Coltrane, Davis, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and others. He also addresses questions such as: Is Free jazz a rejection of the jazz tradition? Are European folk classical musics altering this essentially Afro-American art? Do the principles of Free jazz provide real emotional liberation for the creative musician? This is a solid, informed guide—for new jazz fans and serious listeners alike—to what has, in many ways, been the most productive and most controversial period in the history of jazz.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The quest for freedom with a small f," writes John Litweiler, "appears at the very beginning of jazz and reappears at every growing point in the music's history." But Litweiler's book is about the upper-case variety of freedom--the Free jazz pioneered in the late 1950s by the likes of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and Eric Dolphy. The author, who has also written a fine biography of Coleman, traces the rise and multiple ramifications of this firebreathing music. His judgements have held up superbly since the book's original 1985 publication, and his thumbnail portraits and fine-tuned analyses make this an essential volume.

About the Author

John Litweiler is a director of the Jazz Instistute of Chicago, and has been a Down Beat staff reviewer since 1968.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (March 21, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306803771
• ISBN-13: 978-0306803772
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Decent Book; Now Out-Dated. Perhaps an Introduction., November 21, 2001

By 

x (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 (Da Capo Paperback) (Paperback)

Litweiler's "Freedom Principle" is a pretty good book if you know nothing about "free jazz" (a terrible label, by the way) and want to learn about the dominant performers in the music. He provides some interesting commentary on Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, AACM members, and the European performers. Considering when the book was published, it is somewhat out-dated, since many of the artists he mentions (that are still living, of course) have gone on to develop their creativity far beyond the point where Litweiler begins and ends his analysis of it.

Litweiler also develops some perspectives that seem rather off to me. For example, he says that "Among the great jazz musicians, Ayler's emotional range may be the most limited" (p.151). Ayler's music, in my opinion, is quite the opposite. When discussing Miles Davis' fusion period, he states "the content of his music declined to a search for the new idea or effect, and innovation became valueless" (p.224). Considering how many artists have been inspired by Miles' late 60s-mid 70s period (e.g., there have been a flood of reissues documenting this period of his career, and new people are discovering and loving his music from this period every day), this statement seems to be a little too bold, if not totally erroneous. Miles made the most challenging and innovative fusion music of the 70s, and his creativity inspired and influenced not only jazz musicians of the period but also funk and rock musicians. The textures he explored on those early 70s albums are as artful and challenging as anything before or since. He also claims that Sun Ra's love for popular music is a weakness: "Sun Ra's most impenetrable music, as composer and improviser, has been influenced by the most flabby kinds of popular musics. He is the only jazz musician who ever recorded a version of 'Holiday for Strings'" (p.143). Maybe it is just me, but I find the implied tone of the last sentence a little insulting to Sun Ra and his magnificent legacy. Such commentary smacks of elitist arrogance.

This aside, I must say that Litweiler's book about Ornette Coleman is excellent. Compared with "The Freedom Principle," it is like day and night--I almost wonder if they were written by the same person.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bad Jazz Journalism, August 31, 2002

By 

Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 (Da Capo Paperback) (Paperback)

Litweiler has been a jazz critic for many years and has written a fine book about Ornette Coleman. But this book is really a disappointment. A good scholarly book about the free jazz movement is long overdue, at least in this country, but Litweiler isn't the person to do it. This book reads more like the opinions of a fan rather than thoughtful and considered ideas.

Litweiler often makes statements of opinions and masquerades them as fact. And he For example, he castigates Keith Jarrett mercilessly, questioning Jarrett's originality on spurious grounds. He makes statements to the effect that what Jarrett does is the same as any college music student does when they sit in a practice room and improvise in the style of Bach or Chopin. I have news for him, I never heard anyone do this in any of the music schools that I attended. Classical musicians never improvise, no matter how good it would be for them to learn. So, far from being something that "every student does" this is a pretty rare skill.

And again, Litweiler castigates Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders for interest in popular music and tonal music respectively. In this, Litweiler shows his own bias, which is definately for the New York Energy school as opposed to the more modal school of Sanders, or the interest that Ra had in situating himself within the jazz canon.

I think the worst thing, though, is that Litweiler completely misses the spiritual side of the music. Free jazz is mostly a spiritual thing for the performers, and for the open listener. Ascension wasn't a raw expression of anger, it was a "rasing of the spirits" in the old Yoruba sense. Litweiler's interest in so much in the "advanced" ideas of free jazz that he misses the point.

A better introduction to this music might be Eberhardt Jost's classic, Free Jazz. It is much more rational and scholarly, though like this book, it's a bit out of date. David Such also wrote a wonderful book on the subject, Avante-Gard Music and Musicians. Such is both an ethnomusicologist and an avant-garde performer, and knows what he's talking about from the inside.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, if occasionally didactic, January 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 (Da Capo Paperback) (Paperback)

Freedom Principle definitely suffers from the author's avocation as music critic--the prose is choppy, and the big thematic ideas occasionally get lost in the minutiae. Chapter 1 "Steps in Search of Freedom" is especially desultory and poorly focused. The chapters on individual players are better.

That said, the book is an excellent introduction to the free jazz movement, and covers the major players well, with very insightful discussions of individual works and solos.

Litweiler is at his worst when his own opinions come blazing through; he loves free jazz and despises rock. It's an opinion shared by others, to be sure, but he belabors his point, and, in the final chapters, all but bludgeons his reader with it. It's a fairly ironic twist in a book dedicated to the unbridled freedom of musical expression.