A Peoples Music

“I’ve seen black musicians when they’d be jamming at a jam session… that black musician, he picks up his horn and starts blowing some sounds that he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates, it comes from within. It’s his soul, it’s that soul music. It’s the only area on the American scene where the black man has been free to create. And he has mastered it. He has shown that he can come up with something that nobody ever thought of on his horn.”   Malcolm X

During and after the civil rights movement, free jazz improvisation became associated with political and cultural liberation in the collective imagination of the United States. Let’s go on a journey through the musical communities that nurtured the dreams and struggles of Black Americans through free jazz improvisation