The Best Things in Life Are Free
Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers - British Jazz, 1960-1975 - Duncan Heining
Duncan Heining [+ ]
Writer
Duncan Heining has been writing about jazz, improvised music and 20th century composition since 1996. He has written for Avant Magazine, Record Collector, The Independent and The Independent On Sunday. His main outlets currently are Jazzwise, Jazz UK and the All About Jazz website. In 2010, Scarecrow Press published his biography of African-American composer and musical theorist George Russell, George Russell - An American Composer.
Description
“Freedom” as a desirable state to be sought in life and in music was the feature that linked American and British jazz. However, what separated British from American jazz is considered more important: a desire to produce a music influenced by but no longer dependent upon African-American forms. Notions of freedom began to influence the social practices of certain sectors of society. Ideas such as communitarianism, sexual libertarianism and the replacement of “work” with “play” came to the fore. Musicians, mainly but not entirely from the world of jazz, began to explore a music without predetermined form or structure, in which spontaneity and responsiveness were its crucial elements.