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Sounds of Dissent: Sonic Representations of Resistance in 1960s Free Jazz

Aldridge, James
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1668690740358549

Abstract Details

, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Musicology.
Jazz historians and scholars interested in the resistive practices of disadvantaged communities have mined the 1960s Free Jazz movement time and again for anti-institutional, counterhegemonic acts committed by canonic jazz figures. Generally speaking, these acts fall into two categories: (1) overt political “speech” – e.g. published social critique, programmatic music with distinct political messages, musicians’ manifestos, etc.; and (2) covert “political” music – i.e., experimental music that seems or sounds as though it is inspired by political interests, attitudes, or agendas. Recently, jazz scholars – among them Ingrid Monson (2007, 160) and Clay Downham (2018, 6) – have cautioned against category two because it involves conjecture. At its best, they argue, it is inferential and speculative; and at its worst, it is essentialist and based on the harmful assumption that experimental music is necessarily political if it comes from a disenfranchised community of performers. Absent from this critique, I argue, is the acknowledgment that it is possible to identify resistance, defiant intentionality, and countercultural purpose in jazz’s sounding content, provided there is evidence that it exploits weaknesses, loopholes, and ambiguities in the genre’s organizing paradigms and traditions. In this dissertation, I identify strategies, stratagems, and procedures used by 1960s jazz musicians to overcome these burdensome, and in some cases oppressive, aesthetic traditions (e.g. “acceptable” sound palettes, “tolerable” instrumentations, and “respectable” styles). Moreover, I argue that key avant-gardists – among them Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy – engaged in resistive musical practices rooted in clever, cautious repurposings and defiant misreadings of core jazz concepts in order to secure new aesthetic freedoms and expand the genre’s body of tolerated sounds.
Daniel Goldmark (Advisor)
Susan McClary (Committee Member)
Francesca Brittan (Committee Member)
Mark Turner (Committee Member)
African American Studies; African Americans; American History; Black History; Black Studies; Fine Arts; Music; Performing Arts
jazz; jazz studies; Free Jazz; resistance; musicology; cognitive musicology; infrapolitics; counterculture; Ornette Coleman; John Coltrane; Eric Dolphy

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Aldridge, J. (2023). Sounds of Dissent: Sonic Representations of Resistance in 1960s Free Jazz [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1668690740358549

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Aldridge, James. Sounds of Dissent: Sonic Representations of Resistance in 1960s Free Jazz. 2023. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1668690740358549.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Aldridge, James. "Sounds of Dissent: Sonic Representations of Resistance in 1960s Free Jazz." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1668690740358549

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1668690740358549
280
© 2023, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12