Im November 1966 erschien in Down Beat ein Interview, das Nat Hentoff im Herbst mit Albert und Donald Ayler geführt hatte. Der vollständige Text findet sich hier.
“I went for a long time without work,” Albert said. “Then George Wein asked me to come to Europe with a group of other people for 11 days starting Nov. 3. I hope to be able to add five or six days on my own after I’m there. Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray will be with Don and me. But before I heard from Wein, I’d stopped practicing for three weeks. I was going through a thing. Here I am in Time, in Vogue, in other places. But no work. My spirits were very low.”
[…]
“What is its ideology?” I asked.
“To begin with,” Albert answered, “we are the music we play. And our commitment is to peace, to understanding of life. And we keep trying to purify our music, to purify ourselves, so that we can move ourselves—and those who hear us—to higher levels of peace and understanding. You have to purify and crystallize your sound in order to hypnotize. I’m convinced, you see, that through music, life can be given more meaning. And every kind of music has an influence—either direct or indirect—on the world around it so that after a while the sounds of different types of music go around and bring about psychological changes. And we’re trying to bring about peace. In his way, for example, that’s what Coltrane, too, is trying to do.
“To accomplish this, I must have spiritual men playing with me. Since we are the music we play, our way of life has to be clean or else the music can’t be kept pure.”
This meant, he continued, that he couldn’t work with someone addicted to narcotics or who otherwise is emotionally unstable.
Das passt vielleicht zur Lesart von Ayler, die nail im Eingangspost vorschlägt.
Spannend ist es alleweil.
Auch, dass Ayler Lester Young als Vorbild nennt („The way he connected his phrases. The freedom with which he flowed. And his warm tone.“) und dann auch Sydney Bechet erwähnt… der New Orleans Jazz war ab 1965 ein wichtiger Einfluss für die Musik Aylers – d.h. er war wohl schon zuvor wichtig, aber in den Bands ab 1965 wird er wahrnehmbar in den Arrangements, der Art und Weise des Zusammenspiels, das aus einer Balance von Freiheit und kollektiver Organisation lebt.
“The thing about New Orleans jazz,” Don broke in, “is the feeling it communicated that something was about to happen, and it was going to be good.”
“Yes,” Albert said, “and we’re trying to do for now what people like Louis Armstrong did at the beginning. Their music was a rejoicing. And it was beauty that was going to happen. As it was at the beginning, so will it be at the end.”
„old time religion“!
Sehr schön auch die Antwort auf die Frage, wie sie den Leuten empfehlen würden, an ihre Musik heranzutreten:
“One way not to,” Don said, “is to focus on the notes and stuff like that. Instead, try to move your imagination toward the sound. It’s a matter of following the sound.”
“You have to relate sound to sound inside the music,” Albert said. “I mean you have to try to listen to everything together.”
“Follow the sound,” Don repeated, “the pitches, the colors. You have to watch them move.”
“This music is good for the mind,” Albert continued. “It frees the mind. If you just listen, you find out more about yourself.
“It’s really free, spiritual music, not just free music. And as for playing it, other musicians worry about what they’re playing. But we’re listening to each other. Many of the others are not playing together, and so they produce noise. It’s screaming, it’s neo-avant-garde music. But we are trying to rejuvenate that old New Orleans feeling that music can be played collectively and with free form. Each person finds his own form.”
[…]
[Albert:] “You see, everyone is screaming ‘Freedom,’ but mentally, everyone is under a great strain. But now the truth is marching in, as it once marched back in New Orleans. And that truth is that there must be peace and joy on earth. Music really is the universal language, and that’s why it can be such a force. Words, after all, are only music.”
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba