A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

By George E. Lewis
University of Chicago Press

Home from his studies at Yale University in 1971, trombonist George Lewis was walking to his parents’ home on Chicago’s South Side when he heard unusual sounds coming from a nearby brick building. Peering inside he saw a group practicing what he calls “fascinating” music. Asking if he could attend future rehearsals, Lewis was grudgingly welcomed into what he soon found out was the disciplined but inventive milieu of the Association of the Advancement Musicians (AACM).

Shortly afterwards he became a member, and subsequently an official of the organization, founded by a group of Chicago’s most accomplished, jazz-directed improvisers in 1965. Forty-three years later the AACM – which one European critic describes as “a guarantee of quality” for improvised music – is recognized world-wide as “the first [successful] avant-garde co-operative in the United States”. A music professor at New York’s Columbia University, Lewis uses his insider’s perspective to write this comprehensive history of the organization. Knitting together 92 interviews and extensive research, A Power Stronger Than Itself stands out as exemplary jazz scholarship that also appeals to the non-academic.

Basically, the reason why the AACM has managed to survive into its fifth decade, while similar organizations have disappeared, is because as Lewis writes, “the collective conception that dominated the AACM both institutionally and artistically challenged the commodification of individuality itself – the ‘star system’ with its sharp division between ‘leader’ and ‘sideman’ that has been authoratively written into the discursive cannon of jazz”.

That doesn’t mean that some AACM members aren’t internationally renowned – reedists Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams come to mind. It’s just that the association’s growth has always been predicated on its collegial connection with the working class Black community of Chicago’s south side where it spawned. AACM members still promote its original nine-point program from 1965 that promises to stimulate cultural tradition, increase employment opportunities for creative musicians, provide composers’ workshops, like the one that impressed Lewis, and operate a school for aspiring musicians. AACM bands such as reedist Ed Wilkerson’s 8 Bold Souls and flautist Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble are still a constant Chicago presence.

However Lewis also notes that as significant for the ACCM’s survival, and its influence – which has gone past jazz’s boundaries to affect what he calls “whiteness-based” musics such as rock and so-called classical – is the decision from the beginning to emphasis the primacy of original music and the composer. Many first-generation AACMers – including, Lewis, Abrams, Braxton, violinist Leroy Jenkins, reedists Henry Threadgill, Joseph Jarman and others who left Chicago and formed a New York chapter in 1982 – deal with idioms that move across genres. Involved with theatre, poetry, sound collage and multi-media, the post-modern art music composed by these individuals is as likely to include references to minimalism and neo-classicism as the jazz tradition. As Lewis writes: “AACM musicians felt that experimentation in music need not be bound to particular ideologies, methods or slogans.” Musically, the AACM’s paramount contribution to experimental improvised music is a sense of dynamics. Unlike the New York-based New Thing of the 1960s, “the Chicago people got intense, but they also got soft and they were also incorporating other sounds into their music,” Lewis quotes Mitchell saying.

Describing the parallel development between the self-described “more conservative” Chicago-based AACM and the experimental New York wing is another way in which this volume supersedes earlier studies of the association. Lewis does situate the AACM in relation to other avant-garde collectives such as New York’s Jazz Composers Guild, St. Louis’ Black Artists Group and Los Angeles’ Underground Musicians Association (see Musicworks #96). He outlines how a supportive group of writers, music presenters and record labels allowed the collective to become better know. Braxton, Jenkins and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEOC) – which included Jarman and Mitchell – gained greater recognition during a two-year, late-1960s relocation to France.

However the French romanticizing a link between the association and radical Black Nationalism was discursive. These players’ intra-musical experiences plus resentment from Chicagoans, who felt that the AEOC was monopolizing the AACM, necessitated a separate New York chapter.

A Power Stronger Than Itself is also universal enough to deal with topics usually ignored by others. Lewis’ penultimate chapter itemizes how the ACCM has finally evolved from being a literal “old boy’s club” into addressing its gender imbalance. From first-hand accounts, he doesn’t sugar-coat the situation that initially any female musician had a hard time being accepted into the AACM, and that it wasn’t until 1992 that Samia, become the association’s first all-woman band. Even today female AACM members are more the exception than the rule, although Nicole Mitchell is the association’s co-chair

Recalling his experience and those of his AACM peers such as Braxton he also exposes the barriers that Black composers like themselves face when they write music outside the codified jazz tradition. Neither fish nor fowl, their creations are rejected by jazz purists for not swinging or being blues based, and by the classical establishment for being African-American, even he says, in the so-called downtown New music world. Such aids to experimental composers as university professorships, endowed chairs, performance ensembles and electronic music studios are monopolized by musicians hostile to improvisation and African American music.

Although he was only one of three African American composers affiliated with important experimental efforts such as 1992’s New Music, New York, since then the subsidy situation has improved, with several AACM composers are beneficiaries of major fellowships. Slightly beyond this volume’s purview, grant politics should be examined in the context of post-modern music in 21st Century. However readers of A Power Stronger Than Itself discover how the AACM, a grass roots association, evolved to participate in these discussions.

Considering that an AACM-organized, 50-member ensemble was available to play Abrams’ orchestral composition as part of the association’s 40th anniversary celebrations in Chicago, composers and performers from the ACCM will sure to be involved in whatever constitutes modern music for decades to come.

-- Ken Waxman

In MusicWorks Issue #101

July 2, 2008

Ken Waxman’s Top CDs for 2007

[In alphabetical order]
For CODA Issue 337

1. Muhal Richard Abrams, Vision Towards Essence Pi Recordings Pi23

2. Johannes Bauer/Thomas Lehn/Jon Rose, Futch Jazzwerkstatt JW 010

3. Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet, Inner Constellation Volume One. Nemu 007

4. Exploding Customer, At Your Service Ayler aylCD-063

5. Scott Fields Ensemble, Beckett Clean Feed CFO69 CD

6. Frank Gratkowski/Misha Mengelberg, Vis-à-vis Leo CD LR 476

7. François Houle, Evan Parker, Benoît Delbecq La Lumière de Pierres psi 07.02

8. Lucas Niggli Big Zoom, Celebrate Diversity Intakt CD 118

9. Quartestski Does Prokofiev, Visions Fugitives OP. 22 Ambiances Magnétiques AM 171 CD

10. Elliott Sharp & Reinhold Friedl, Feuchtify EMANEM 4133

Plus Two reissues:

• Charles Mingus, Music Written for Monterey, 1965 Not Heard … Played Live in Its Entirety at UCLA Sue Mingus Music/Sunnyside SSC 3041

• Andrea Centazzo Mitteleuropa Orchestra, The Complete Recordings Collection 1980-1981; The Complete Recordings Collection 1982-1983 Ictus Records Special Collection Vol. 1-3, Vol. 4-6

January 15, 2008

Muhal Richard Abrams

Vision Towards Essence
Pi Recordings Pi23

Recorded at 1998’s Guelph Jazz Festival Vision Towards Essence captures New York-based pianist Muhal Richard Abrams’ triumphant solo concert there. A composer and orchestrator as well as a pianist, Abrams invests the nearly 40-minute, three-part recital with enough sonic excursions and augmentations to challenge any notated composition.

Along the way he alludes to practically the entire history of piano music. At various junctions he touches on the airy coloring of rococo recapitulation; andante classical-styled patterning plus staccato interpolations; the double-paced rhythmic gait and ringing bass notes of Swing and boogie woogie; plus the dynamic pulse and rubato inventiveness of free-form jazz.

Initially exploring those polyphonic patterns that can be raised from cascading pulsations – which utilize the soundboard and brass lugs as much as the keyboard – he slides into gentle key fluffing with configurations that, as call-and-response vamping is exposed, also become more fortissimo and harder-edged. Eventually, portamento note cluster sluices transform into rippling timbres that are as descriptively ornamental as Hard Bop comping and as out-and-out swinging as Stride piano patterns. Succeeding a penultimate variation that unites string-friction stops with a waterfall of ringing allegro patterns, Abrams end the recital with double-handed key smacks and echoes melding higher and lower pitches into unexpected rhythmic resonation. This climax-cum-resolution confirms his talents.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 13 #4

December 1, 2007

MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS

Things To Come From Those Now Gone
Delmark DD-430

Co-founder and first president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Muhal Richard Abrams spent his Chicago years (up to 1977) formulating and organizing new and unique ways to approach music. This 1972 reissue highlights many of them.

Although recorded over a two-day period, there's a different grouping on each track, with the sound ranging from romantic semi-classical to out-and-out freebop. At the same time, since THINGS TO COME is a peek into Abrams sonic lab, some experiments arrive stillborn.

Especially grating is Ella Jackson's piercing soprano on "How Are You", where her "classical" vocal stylings seem to torture every sign of life out of simple phrases. "Ballad For New Souls" is merely pleasant, resembling one of Erik Satie's dainty miniatures more than anything else. Meanwhile "1 and 4" works much better at the beginning, with Abrams at the piano, then later on when his synthesizer tinkering suggests a skating rink rather than a concert hall or club. Only Steve McCall's subtle percussion coloring preserves the mood.

It's future sound partisans like McCall -- glimpsed in their early years -- who are responsible for the excellence of the rest of the disk. (Parenthetically, Abrams' synthesizer work has also soared in the 28 years since then). Powerful drummer Wilbur Campbell helps turn the two tracks on which he's featured into bluesy, post bop showcases, while Wallace McMillan and Edwin Daugherty show that out-of-Chicago fame doesn't necessarily come to all fine saxophonists.

Tenorman Ari Brown -- now in his prime as part of the Ritual Trio -- proves on "In Retrospect" that his supply of ideas and go-for-broke tone were in perfect working order back in 1972. Moreover bassist Rufus Reid, who seems to have been the epitome of tasteful mainstreamer forever, reveals his avant-garde past and turns in an expectedly impeccable performance whenever he's featured.

In short, anyone interested in Abrams' concepts over the years will probably want this album. Even "How Are You" can be ignored by pre-programming the CD.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Ballad For New Souls 2. Things To Come From Those Now Gone 3. How Are You? 4. In Retrospect 5. Ballad For The Old Souls 6. 1 and 4 Plus 2 and 7. March Of The Transients Personnel: Wallace McMillan (flute or alto saxophone); Edwin Daugherty (alto saxophone); Ari Brown (tenor saxophone); Muhal Richard Abrams (piano and synthesizer); Emmanuel Cranshaw (vibes); Reggie Willis or Rufus Reid (bass); Steve McCall or Wilber Campbell (bass); Ella Jackson (voice)

September 11, 2000