Free jazz, also called free form jazz, is a type of experimental jazz that began in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, musicians tried to change or break away from traditional jazz rules, such as steady rhythms, specific tones, and predictable chord patterns. Many musicians felt that earlier styles like bebop and modal jazz were too restrictive, so they focused on creating new ways to play. The term "free jazz" came from a 1960 recording by Ornette Coleman titled Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. In Europe, people often use the term "free improvisation" instead. Other terms used to describe this style include "modern jazz," "creative music," and "art music."
Free jazz is hard to define clearly. It is usually played by small groups or individuals, but large ensembles, or big bands, have also performed it. Some say it is creative and forward-thinking, but it also uses musical ideas from older jazz styles. It has been described as an effort to return to simple, often spiritual, roots. While jazz originated in the United States, free jazz musicians borrowed heavily from music traditions around the world. They sometimes used African or Asian instruments, unusual tools, or even made their own. They focused on strong emotions and the sound itself, exploring how sounds feel and sound.
Characteristics
Free jazz developed as a response to the complexity of bop. Conductor and jazz writer Loren Schoenberg explained that free jazz "gave up on traditional harmonic structures, instead using a free-flowing, spontaneous approach to creating melodies." This style was greatly influenced by the work of saxophonist Ornette Coleman.
Some jazz musicians avoid being labeled or classified. One reason is that most jazz includes improvisation, or making music on the spot. Many musicians use ideas from free jazz, and free jazz was never completely separate from other jazz styles. However, free jazz has unique features. Musicians like Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane used techniques such as strong breath to create unusual sounds from their instruments. Like other jazz, free jazz focuses on the musician's personal style and sound, rather than the classical tradition, where performers mainly express the composer's ideas.
Earlier jazz styles followed fixed song forms, such as the twelve-bar blues or the 32-bar AABA structure with specific chord progressions. In free jazz, these fixed forms are often removed, and improvisation plays a larger role.
Other jazz styles use regular rhythms, such as 4/4 or 3/4 time. Free jazz keeps a sense of rhythm and sometimes swings, but it does not follow a regular meter. Changes in speed, such as sudden increases or decreases in tempo, create a rhythm that feels like a flowing wave.
Earlier jazz relied on harmonic structures, such as repeated patterns of chords. Improvisation in those styles followed the notes within these chords. Free jazz avoids these structures, but it still uses elements from earlier jazz, such as diatonic scales, altered dominant chords, and blues phrases.
Guitarist Marc Ribot noted that Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler "freed jazz from strict bebop rules but created new ways to compose music." Some forms of jazz use written melodies as a base for performance and improvisation. Free jazz sometimes uses similar methods, but other structures are also used, some of which are detailed and complex.
The removal of traditional forms and rhythms in free jazz has been linked to jazz musicians' use of music from non-Western cultures, such as African, Arabic, and Indian traditions. The lack of traditional musical scales in free jazz is often connected to the use of non-tonal music from the 19th century, including field hollers, street cries, and jubilees. This suggests that free jazz's move away from traditional scales was not a deliberate effort to create a formal atonal system, but a reflection of its broader musical ideas. Jazz became "free" by moving away from chord progressions and using multiple rhythms and tempos.
The rejection of bop's style was paired with an interest in older jazz styles, like dixieland, which used group improvisation, and African music. This interest in different cultures led to the use of instruments from around the world, such as Ed Blackwell's West African talking drum and Leon Thomas's use of pygmy yodeling. Ideas also came from musicians like John Cage, Musica Elettronica Viva, and the Fluxus movement.
At first, many critics thought that free jazz's lack of traditional elements showed a lack of skill among musicians. By 1974, these views were less common, and the music had gained more critical attention.
Many critics have linked the term "free jazz" to the social changes in the United States during the late 1950s and 1960s, especially the struggles for racial equality and the civil rights movement. Events like the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the 1961 Freedom Riders, the 1963 Freedom Summer, and the creation of Freedom Schools are seen as connected to the meaning of "free" in free jazz. For this reason, many believe free jazz was not only a rejection of certain musical ideas but also a response to the experiences of Black Americans facing oppression.
History
Free jazz is often said to have started in the late 1950s, but some earlier music from the 1940s shows ideas that later became part of free jazz. For example, Lennie Tristano’s works from the late 1940s, such as Intuition, Digression, and Descent into the Maelstrom, used techniques like group improvisation without fixed chord progressions. Other early examples include City of Glass (1948) by Bob Graettinger for the Stan Kenton band and Jimmy Giuffre’s Fugue (1953). These pieces may be better described as part of the "third stream" jazz style, which blends classical music techniques like serialism with jazz.
Keith Johnson of AllMusic describes a "Modern Creative" genre where musicians mix free improvisation with structured music. This group includes artists like John Zorn, Henry Kaiser, and Cecil Taylor, who continued the free-jazz traditions started in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ornette Coleman rejected using written chord progressions, instead using freely improvised melodies to shape harmony. His early recordings for Contemporary Records, such as Tomorrow Is the Question! and Something Else!!!! (1958), avoided the typical 32-bar structure and used sudden changes in tempo and mood.
Coleman’s move to New York City and his contract with Atlantic Records helped free jazz grow. Albums like The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century showed a shift from traditional jazz to more atonal improvisation. His most important free-jazz recording, Free Jazz (1960), used two quartets playing separately in left and right channels, creating a chaotic and aggressive sound. This album gave the movement its name.
Pianist Cecil Taylor explored free jazz after studying classical piano. Influenced by Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver, his early work like Jazz Advance (1956) had traditional jazz elements but expanded harmonic ideas. By the 1960s, Taylor’s collaborations with saxophonist Jimmy Lyons and drummer Sunny Murray led him to free jazz. His 1966 album Unit Structures used unstructured compositions, no traditional rhythm, and unconventional harmonic progressions. Taylor also used prepared pianos, inspired by John Cage.
Albert Ayler was a key figure in free jazz. Starting as a bebop saxophonist, he pushed jazz and blues to their limits. His collaborations with Cecil Taylor and others led to compositions that used microtonal improvisation and unusual saxophone techniques, like creating sounds resembling squawks or honks. Despite his experimental style, Ayler often used simple, folk-like melodies. His 1965 album Spiritual Unity includes Ghosts, a piece that transforms a simple spiritual melody through improvisation.
John Coltrane acknowledged Ornette Coleman’s influence in a 1963 interview. While Coltrane’s work like A Love Supreme reflected modal jazz, his 1965 album Ascension showed his embrace of free jazz. This recording featured a large group of musicians, including Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, and included free-form improvisation. Coltrane later explored avant-garde styles in albums like Om and Meditations.
Sun Ra’s music, especially from the 1960s, is often linked to free jazz, though he claimed his music was carefully composed. His 1965 album The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra used unconventional instruments like the electric celeste and Hammond B-3 organ, focusing on timbre and texture rather than traditional harmony. His earlier work, like Sounds of Joy (1956), followed bebop styles, but pieces like A Call for All Demons (1955–57) combined atonal improvisation with Latin rhythms.
Charles Mingus contributed to free jazz through his use of collective improvisation. His album Pithecanthropus Erectus included one section of free improvisation that did not follow the song’s melody or chords. Mingus helped revive group improvisation in a scene dominated by solo performances.
Outside New York City, other musicians also shaped free jazz, though their contributions are not detailed in this text.
Other media
Canadian artist Stan Douglas created a video installation called Hors-champs ("off-screen") for an art show in 1992. This work explores how free jazz, a type of African-American music from the 1960s, reflected political ideas related to black identity. It is one of Douglas’s few pieces that directly discuss race. In the video, four American musicians—George E. Lewis (trombone), Douglas Ewart (saxophone), Kent Carter (bass), and Oliver Johnson (drums)—who lived in France during the 1960s, play Albert Ayler’s 1965 song Spirits Rejoice in an improvised style.
In 1964, Canadian artist Michael Snow made a film titled New York Eye and Ear Control. The film’s soundtrack features improvised music by a group that included members of Albert Ayler’s band. This music was later released as an album with the same name. Some critics have compared this album to two important free jazz recordings: Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation and John Coltrane’s Ascension. John Litweiler praised the album for its changing tempo, the way musicians joined and left the music freely, and the way melodies moved. Ekkehard Jost noted the strong interaction between musicians and the wide range of musical styles in the recording.
French artist Jean-Max Albert played trumpet in Henri Texier’s first quintet in the 1960s, one of the earliest examples of free jazz in France. As a painter, he later tried to create visual art that reflected Ornette Coleman’s musical ideas. His painting Free Jazz (1973) used architectural shapes to represent traditional musical harmonies, which were contrasted with colorful, spontaneous brushstrokes. Jean-Max Albert continues to use lessons from free jazz in his work, including collaborations with pianist François Tusques in experimental films such as Birth of Free Jazz and Don Cherry. These works explore their themes in a creative and poetic way.
In the world
Founded in 1967, the Quatuor de Jazz Libre du Québec was Canada's most well-known early group of free jazz musicians. Outside of North America, free jazz scenes developed in Europe and Japan. Alongside Joe Harriott, saxophonists Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker, trombonist Conny Bauer, guitarist Derek Bailey, pianists François Tusques, Fred Van Hove, Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, saxophonist and bass clarinetist Willem Breuker were among the most famous early European free jazz musicians. European free jazz often focuses on free improvisation, with less connection to traditional jazz styles. Specifically, Peter Brötzmann has greatly influenced free jazz musicians in the United States.
In Japan, early free jazz musicians included drummer Masahiko Togashi, guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, pianists Yosuke Yamashita and Masahiko Satoh, saxophonist Kaoru Abe, bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa, and trumpeter Itaru Oki. A free jazz scene behind the Iron Curtain produced musicians such as Janusz Muniak, Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Seifert, Vyacheslav Ganelin, and Vladimir Tarasov. Some international jazz musicians traveled to North America and became involved in free jazz, including Ivo Perelman from Brazil and Gato Barbieri from Argentina (this influence is more visible in Barbieri's early work).
South African artists, including early Dollar Brand, Zim Ngqawana, Chris McGregor, Louis Moholo, and Dudu Pukwana, explored free jazz by blending experimental improvisation with African rhythms and melodies. American musicians like Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Milford Graves, and Pharoah Sanders included elements from African, Indian, and Middle Eastern music to create world-influenced free jazz.