Improvisation

A MUSICAL INTRODUCTION

Improvisation is the spontaneous creation of music in real time from a player’s instincts, memory, training, and emotion. In jazz, improvisation has its roots in African American traditions like the blues, work songs, and spirituals. Jazz improvisation began in early 20th-century New Orleans with musicians like Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong. Armstrong, in particular, shifted the spotlight to the soloist, making improvisation a personal, virtuosic act. As jazz moved into the swing era, in the 1930s, improvisation stayed alive inside tight arrangements, only to explode again in the 1940s with bebop’s complex, deft, fast-paced solos. In the 1960s, free jazz constituted players moving beyond chord changes and form. Free jazz did not entail abandoning structure, but instead reimagining it entirely and turning improvisation into a deeper kind of inquiry. 1

John Coltrane with his legendary Quintet featuring Eric Dolphy on flute, Elvin Jones on drums, McCoy Tyner on piano and Reggie Workman on bass, performing one of Coltrane's most beloved interpretations: My Favourite Things

A Socio-Musical Introduction

The history of improvisation is not only musical but also social. From its beginnings, jazz has reflected the realities of Black life in America: struggle, spontaneity, and resilience. Improvisation emerged within the Black community as a way to create meaning from marginalization. Players shaped their sound not solely for expression, but in response to the conditions around them. As Ornette Coleman suggests in the below video, traditional rules in music mirrored social hierarchies like a “caste system.” 2 In rejecting those rules, improvisers also challenged systems of power. Free jazz artists like Coleman pushed the limits of improvisation, breaking down the ideas of harmony, form, and challenging the existing aesthetic expectations in one’s playing.

A short fim featuring Ornette Coleman introducing his theory of Harmolodics

A Political Introduction

“the NOI and BPP systematically recruited from the poorest segments of the Black community […] They also fully recognized the important role that culture played in popular movements […]”

Jeffrey Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity.

The appeal to “improvisation as a way to create conditions for change” 3 (Lewis) is an important part of the musical and political practices of Black communities across the US since the 1960s.  Figures like Duke Ellington paved the way for raising questions about race through their musical practices and the way they organized their fellow musicians into bands. In the sixties, political and musical organization began to converge in explicit ways.  

Free jazz and other musical experiments took place in a charged political context.  Leaders of Black political movements began to call attention to the limits of civil rights movements and integrationist approaches.  Echoing the early twentieth century radical Black nationalist movements such as UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association), founded by Marcus Garvey, new actors began to emerge within Black politics.  The rise to prominence of the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the 1966 formation of the Black Panther Party (BPP), both cited as key players in the Black Power movement, created new forms of politics directly connected to social interventions.  The National Archives and the National Museum of African American History and Culture interpret the BPP as an organization simultaneously “challenging police brutality and promoting social change.” 4

As the historian Robin D. G. Kelley notes, groups like the BPP realized that they had to tackle both the social and cultural issues arising from urban poverty and combat violence against Black communities at the same time 5. Black leaders, from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X and the founders of the Black Panther Party were keenly aware of the power of the arts to galvanize community political activism and to connect civil rights to community welfare.

An excerpt from a video interview with the musician Graham Haynes, reminiscing about the close relationships that his father, the legendary jazz drummer Roy Haynes, had with Malcolm X and on the influence of the BPP in Harlem. Conducted by Sundar Pemmaraju on March 20, 2025.

Musical innovations & tendencies of Free Jazz

Even musically, Free Jazz was born out of the political climate of the 1960s. Free Jazz did abandon (or reimagine) many aspects of Jazz. Fixed chord progressions and standard song forms and rhythms were all subverted by Free Jazz. John Coltrane described improvisation in the genre as “starting in the middle of a sentence and moving both directions at once.” 6 Another hallmark of Free jazz was an increase in the length of the music. Artists would deliberately play longer sets, partly because they were unconstrained by conventional form, but also in order to defy the economic wants of white club owners who profited from shorter, more commercial performances. Some artists began to perform primarily in independent venues as a way to assert economic and creative control over their music 7 Free jazz musicians increasingly used African instruments, polyrhythms, and musical forms. In this way they tried to reclaim their Black heritage and reject Western musical norms. Techniques such as “overblowing” on horns produced raw, intense, almost screaming sounds. These sounds were a way to channel the anger and pain of the time into the music. Song and album titles were often direct references to Black history, like Archie Shepp’s “Malcolm, Malcolm - Semper Malcolm,” from the album “Fire Music.” 8