Three decades ago, when audiences across America seemed to be turning their backs on jazz, a dramatic and unexpected turn of events on the South Side of Chicago helped give the music a future.
Unable to find decent paying jazz gigs and uninterested in playing the pop tunes of the day, a group of Chicago’s more daring jazz virtuosos decided to go into business for themselves.
If no one was going to hire them to play jazz, they would hire each other, put on their own concerts, develop their own audiences and–most important–invent new ways of creating music. By forging novel sounds and techniques, they reasoned, they might revivify the language of jazz and, perhaps, win a few new listeners in the bargain.
Thus was born the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a pioneering South Side organization that now is known around the world simply as the AACM.
When several AACM alumni from all corners of the globe converge on Chicago next weekend to celebrate the 30th anniversary in concert, their emotions likely will be mixed.
“We have survived the odds,” says Mwata Bowden, chairman of the AACM since 1989. “We’ve had hard times, families have broken up, love affairs have fallen apart, but we have persevered, we have continued to look forward, we have moved the music all the way around the world.”
No doubt the past three decades have brought equal measures of triumph and heartbreak, with each artistic advance seemingly counterbalanced by a financial setback, each musical breakthrough tinged with its own personal cost. Yet not even the radicals who conceived the organization in 1965 could have imagined the ways in which the AACM would change the world.
“Muhal Richard Abrams and I sort of dreamed up the idea one night at some West Side bar,” tenor saxophonist and AACM founding father Fred Anderson recalled in a 1990 Tribune interview.
“It was really tough at first. Anytime you’re breaking new ground and playing original music, you can expect resistance. But that was no problem, because the Chicago guys were used to that.”
As early as 1962 several up-and-coming Chicago musicians began tinkering with new sounds in the aptly named Experimental Band. Here were musicians daring to build on the then-outlandish musical ideas of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra.
Harmonic structures that transcended or ignored traditional Western rules, rhythms that defied conventional meter, solos that sometimes screamed in hysterical tones–these were just some of the tools that were forged on the South Side. The players (including such now-celebrated artists as Anderson, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Jack DeJohnette and Muhal Richard Abrams) would teach themselves how to improvise collectively, how to use ancient instruments and how to invent new ones.
By the time the AACM officially came into existence, in ’65, the concept had inspired six distinct bands: Phil Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Jodie Christian’s quintet; and ensembles led by Abrams, Jarman, Mitchell and altoist Troy Robinson. A year later, Anthony Braxton, Lester Bowie, Phillip Wilson and others had joined the fray.
All were formidable instrumentalists, yet the going was not easy.
“In the early days, we had maybe four people sitting in the audience,” recalls singer-bandleader Rita Warford. “And then, when the music would start, two of those people would get up and run out of there, because they thought it sounded so bad.”
If American ears weren’t yet ready for the kinds of incendiary solos and startling dissonances at which the AACM bands excelled, Europeans were. In 1969, the Art Ensemble of Chicago (with Jarman, Mitchell, Bowie and Malachi Favors) created a sensation among European listeners and came home as conquering heroes. Braxton’s trio (with Leroy Jenkins and Leo Smith) followed shortly thereafter, with similar results.
“I remember when the Art Ensemble came back from Europe and the guys started to become real, real successful,” remembers Warford. “And I told them, `I’d like to be successful, like you.’
“To this day I remember what Joseph Jarman said to me: `Success is being successful in the moment, with what you’re doing right now, what you’re practicing, what you’re studying, what you’re performing in front of an audience right now.’
“That’s the kind of integrity those guys had.”
And therein lies the essence of the AACM, and one of the reasons it has commanded the respect of musicians and jazz fans around the world. This was an organization that did not merely produce its own concerts but did so with a set of inviolable principles, all under the “Great Black Music, Ancient to Future.”
By largely avoiding raucous clubs in favor of better listening rooms, for instance, the musicians were demanding that jazz musicians be taken as seriously as their classical counterparts. By wearing ceremonial African garb and borrowing improvisational techniques from ancient Africa, they were paying homage to their heritage.
“When I was a teenager, just seeing people like the AACM founders was inspiring,” says Kahil El’Zabar, today a well-known Chicago percussionist-bandleader in his own right. “Watching them and listening to them, you could tell it wasn’t about monetary gain, it was about human potential.”
Combine this ennobling way of presenting art with the visionary nature of the music itself, and you had the makings of a revolution. Thus the Far Eastern experiments of Henry Threadgill, the unusual instrumentation of Roscoe Mitchell, the heaven-storming solos of Anderson and the theatrics of Lester Bowie helped rewrite the rules for improvising jazz. In time, all of these players, and others, would become stars of the international avant-garde.
If the success of the AACM meant that some of its key players eventually would move on (Threadgill now lives in India, Abrams in New York, Mitchell in Wisconsin), the organization never lost its fire. A second generation of Chicagoans took up the torch, with virtuosos such as percussionist El’Zabar, tenor saxophonist Edward Wilkerson Jr., alto saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, multi-reed player Bowden and others starting remarkable bands of their own.
Certainly El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio and Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Wilkerson’s 8 Bold Souls and Shadow Vignettes, Bowden’s Sound Spectrum and Dawkins’ New Horizons Ensemble today stand at the forefront of new music in America.
Equally important, these groups have left an indelible imprint on bands coast to coast and beyond. When the German avant-garde bands in the FMP Festival played Chicago’s HotHouse last weekend, for instance, their debt to the pioneers of the AACM was evident in every phrase they played.
Even mainstream musicians today often use once-radical techniques created and developed by the AACM.
For all the triumphs, though, there have been unrelenting hardships. Financing for the not-for-profit organization always has been hand to mouth, with ticket sales and an occasional foundation grant paying the bills (barely).
And the South Side building where the AACM had its headquarters and school was destroyed four years ago when a chimney caved in through the roof.
To this day, the AACM lacks a single full-time administrator, with the musicians themselves still doubling up to book concerts, plan tours, write grant proposals and sell tickets.
“In the early days, we could throw on a concert practically anywhere–churches, schools, wherever there was a good open space,” says Wilkerson. “We’d put up a few posters, and people would come.
“Today that won’t do anymore. You need media attention, advertising, grants, foundation support; you need to network with different organizations to have a success.
“So we’re at a crossroads now. We’ve got to move to the next level.”
Even in this regard, however, the AACM seems to be pressing ahead with ingenuity. By creating a home page on the Internet earlier this year, Wilkerson, Bowden and friends have been able to inform fans around the world about their upcoming festival.
More important, new blood has been flowing into the organization, in the form of young, creative artists such as drummer Reggie Nicholson, guitarist Jeff Parker, bassists Thaddeus Expose and Gerald Lindsey, singer Maia and the Samana ensemble.
“The public ear is becoming accustomed to our music, you can tell from all the people who come to our concerts now,” says Bowden. “Yet we’re still strapped for cash. In Europe, they consider us the music of today, not tomorrow. In America, we value our artists only after they’re dead.
“Still, we do not give up.”
AACM’S ANNIVERARY SCHEDULE
Here is the complete schedule for the AACM 30th Anniversary Festival:
Thursday
12:15 p.m., Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.–“Bridging Generations” concert, featuring Chicago’s All City High School Band performing music by AACM members Douglas Ewart, Lester Bowie, Leroy Jenkins and Joseph Jarman.
5:30 p.m., Chicago Cultural Center–AACM Large Ensemble performs.
Friday
8 p.m., Getz Theater, 72 E. 11th St.–8 Bold Souls; Ari Brown/Vandy Harris Unit; Clarinet Choir; Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Saturday
8 p.m., Getz Theater–Ethnic Heritage Ensemble; The Colson Band; New Horizons Ensemble; Anthony Braxton/George Lewis Duet.
Dec. 3
7 p.m., Getz Theater–Samana; Leroy Jenkins with Adada Leo Smith Ensemble; Kelan Phil Cohran Group; Chico Freeman/Rita Warford Group.
Dec. 7
8 p.m., Goodspeed Hall, 1010 E. 59th St. Jazz Ensemble of the University of Chicago will play music of AACM members.
For details, phone 312-752-2212.
