Listening now to the tape of a 1986 performance at the large dance space of Links Hall in Chicago. Dennis Palmer of Chattanooga is playing his keyboard synth with (probably) Michael Zerang, one of many sets that night . Similar to other events at the time, it was a collective event with improvisers living there. I would call the groups, usually duos and trios, and often everyone came together at the end for a finale; we all got roughly an equal chance to play. The groupings were called “ad hoc,” familiar to improvisation at the time.
The idea was that anyone who wanted to improvise freely could play with anyone else who wants to play freely, from anywhere in the world, as if this was the first universal language. This was a new concept; it originated in the UK in the sixties and came naturally to the fresh, egalitarian spirit then, a radical step away from every form of music and musician up to that time. It would have been considered an innovation if the music world had recognized its existence, but by the mid-eighties it was underground—known only by word of mouth.
That was fine, though we didn’t know why the culture was closing its doors. The institutions of the music world were by then committed to postmodernism and neoliberalism–the suppression of anything outside the marketplace and the building of careers. Our raucous, fun-loving stuff was both brand new and out of date.
The playing itself could not be mistaken for jazz or sixties Free Jazz; those footsteps set the pace, but our step was into the void–the next step. We abandoned the jazz form, a tune to get things off the ground; also we weren’t professional musicians, expecting to be judged as to our musical worth and with hopes of a career from it.
Performances of this sort depended on the fact that few were bold enough to do it, and so we could all fit in a performance. It was a situation where you had no idea or direction what to do, just join in the melee. People would come up after a show and say “This is what I want to do,” and then maybe we’d play privately a bit, and they’d be in the next show. No one was showing their stuff or judging, since there was nowhere to go “higher” than this, no one to impress.
This was not a “headliner” and “locals” arrangement; it was a solidarity of music-makers with no need to compromise with the entertainment format. Without being advertised as a genre, it attracted a small audience of curiosity-seekers and committed adventurers, people for whom the sixties spirit still lived.
The musician enthusiasm for improv died out, but there was something of a resurgence from the late 90s to the mid-00s. A flood of new people began doing this, many outside traditional musician training via electronics. As before, if you came to a show you might get the urge to do it yourself. The collective performance of the eighties was gone, replaced by sets of different musicians, yet things were informal enough for on-the-spot collaborations.
One of my efforts at the time was to organize a series of large group ensembles, 2000-2006, leading to No Net in Philly, weekend workshops that ended in a public performance.
What we had in Chicago back in the day is what I experienced briefly in Jackson MS last summer, where I was on tour with Wrest. It was older musicians, veterans of that world when free improv was living the dream of a world very different from the present. Neither that kind of audience for free improv nor that musician relationship exists today. But the great thing about free playing in this country is that it has no known existence, no history, no baggage, so it can be anyone’s fresh discovery at any time.
By the way, this post is a taste of what you’ll find in The Free Musics; my new book, Shaky Ground, might interest you as well, both to be found at Spring Garden Editions.
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