As Serious As Your Life

Valerie Wilmer's As Serious As Your Life is a must-read for all interested in the history of the new thing in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on her own involvement and extensive interviews with the musicians themselves who championed their art, it resolves all doubts of free jazz's roots in the Black community and earlier forms of jazz (as well as African music, since free jazz represented a return to the percussive nature of African music). As as they struggled to survive in a world hostile to their music, the artists came together in cooperatives, ensembles, the loft scene, and related artistic endeavors in the Black Arts Movement to pursue creative music reflecting their cultural, social, musical, and intellectual environments. By letting the musicians speak for themselves, they are further humanized as we learn of their shortcomings, desires, personal lives, and aspirations. 

One cannot speak of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, the AACM, or Andrew Cyrille as disconnected from larger currents of their era, particularly as the opportunities for profit in jazz were dwindling and the new music artists sought to define themselves and leave a legacy for future generations. Outside of academia, grants, and a few organizations like the AACM, it does seem like this spirit of jazz is long gone, but one can see in it perhaps the last great creative surge in jazz that existed in tandem with popular Black music of the era, despite its arduous path to reach the masses of African Americans. Black cultural nationalism, socialism, and mystical notions had a certain attraction to these artists, and shaped their music and their self-conception as artists beyond the confines imposed on jazz music in the past. The concert hall, rather than the nightclub, was their ideal performance venue, but they also wanted to reach a large audience and retain links with communities outside of their artistic circles. 

A democratizing impulse in the music can also be found in the period. Wilmer was likely one of the first to seriously consider the question of women in the new music. Besides Alice Coltrane, Amina Claudine Myers, Carla Bley or Linda Sharrock, women artists in the new music were scarce, yet without their finncial, emotional, and artistic contributions, the jazz avant-garde would not have survived. Working women provided the necessary income to support musicians who struggled to find work as the jazz nightclubs were disappearing and the music was not supported by most of the large record labels (with the possible exceptions of Impulse and Atlantic). There was also a push for greater inclusion of women as instrumentalists in the music, not just vocalists. In a sense, jazz was democratizing itself further as women fought for their space. The sidemen versus leader dichotomy was also challenged in this democratizing push, since creative ensembles in which leadership was equally shared were perceived as better for the spirit of musical collaboration and cooperatively-run labels or associations. Jazz, like other forms of music, continue to struggle with these questions, but undoubtedly the free jazz scene paved a way forward for the music.