Description
"Most American music grew out of the Great Migration, the movement of millions of African Americans from the South to the North between the world wars. This physical movement and the subsequent cultural developments resulted in the emergence of the bedrock musical forms of Blues, Jazz, and Gospel as national musical forms, and led to the invention of rhythm and blues, Soul, Motown, rock and roll, Black creative music, and funk. Working backwards from a form of Black creative music - Free Jazz - I Hear Freedom by Francis (Cisco) Bradley has as its origin the question - where does a musician like Albert Ayler come from? What elements from his parents and community contributed to the formation of his unique musical aesthetic? Is it possible to find traces of influence going back deep into the history of American music and, if so, along what trajectories? And what did he and his contemporaries do with these inherited pieces of cultural matter in forming their own revolutionary approach to music? Based largely on oral histories collected by Bradley, I Hear Freedom is a history of the emergence of Free Jazz and its connection to long-distance social networks connected to the greater Ohio valley region and the Black communities of Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo, which enabled musicians to create their work in these sites and beyond. It is comprised of three parts. The first focuses on networks and lineages, and the movement of people and cultural production from the Antebellum period to the early 20th century. The second considers the unique jazz scenes of Cleveland and Detroit in the 1960s and 70s and their key figures, including the enigmatic Faruq Z. Bey, the Detroit collective Tribe, and the Coltrane influenced Charles Gayle in Buffalo. The third see the music expand and go global through Albert Ayler from Cleveland to New York, Charles Taylor from Cleveland to LA, Oakland, and the New York loft scene, and Frank Wright and Bobby Few, who exported to Paris. In sum, Bradley shows how Free Jazz is a uniquely Black American art form rooted in the movement of people and the reflexivity of that movement's role in the foment of creative culture"-- Provided by publisher.
