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Shit I know I'm writing a lot in this thread but...
Well, I think that Derek Bailey was never really free jazz, although he certainly came from a jazz background. He was always trying to throw off the baggage of jazz and blues (and classical and country, etc), and in reaction spearheaded a "non-idiomatic free improv" that, in theory, had no basis in anything at all. One can argue, like Eugene Chadbourne has, how "non-idiomatic" music can truly exist without simply being another musical straight jacket, but that's another topic altogether
Evan Parker has always had a basis in jazz (among other things), especially later Coltrane, and has never fully abandoned it (curiously, one can hear it more in his later work than his earlier stuff). However, his take on jazz has always been radically sifted through a post-war european avant garde filter. There's definitely very little blues in Parker. It's interesting though, Parker can sound pretty jazz based when he wants to, particularly when he plays with the more free jazz based musicians like Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Joe McPhee.
John Stevens, one of the stalwarts of the Euro free improv scenes, had a viscious free jazz back bone, as well. While he was plumbing the depths of minutely detailed free improv in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble he was still thrashing away in free-bop bands like Amalgam with Trevor Watts.
Han Bennink, Peter Brotzmann, and Willem Breuker (among others) all started playing straight ahead jazz and largely haven't really diverged from free jazz over the years. Brotzmann makes no bones about his love and admiration for Albert Ayler. His music is pure gut churning Ayler-worship ground up in a dadaist stew.
On the other hand, the current improv scene, at least in London, seems divided but weighed heavily on the free improv side of things. There are guys like Tony Bevan, Alan Wilkinson and Paul Dunmall that are still very free jazz oriented but the majority of the new free musicians like John Butcher, Mark Wastell, Phil Durrant and Rhodri Davies are not based in jazz at all and have far more affinity for Morton Feldman or Xenakis than Albert Alyer. This may be because they are simply younger than the first generation free improvers like Parker, Stevens and Bailey. Their influences come not necessarily from jazz and free jazz as they do from the innovations of the first generation and adding a even more Euro bend to them.
Frankly, I think there's tons of good stuff coming out in Europe. I think I probably listen to more European free improv than Euro or American free jazz. Free improv and it's off shoots (reductionist improv, electro acoustic improv, blah blah blah) have become part of a avant garde tradition in Europe that has never really caught on in the US as jazz and thus free jazz has. There's certainly a ton of great stuff coming out at the moment. It's hard to tell when it will simply become stale and what new trend will take over. But it seems to be moving faster in Europe and Japan than the US at the moment. |
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