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Chapter 8: A Radical Departure: The 1960s and 1970s
Music with a Message: 1960s
Jazz as Social Expression
From the beginning, jazz had social and political significance. Listening to
melting-pot-early-jazz from New Orleans, sweet-Depression-antidote-jazz from
the 1930s, or wake-up-bebop from the 1940s, it’s easy to see how each type of
music reflected those times in America. In the 1960s, jazz’s social messages
screamed with blatancy, especially in the music of African-American musicians
for whom the music became a direct expression of new ideas about
being black in America. In the following sections, I discuss how musicians
explored their heritage and expressed their struggle.
Connecting with world cultures
African music was a primary building block of jazz. In the 1950s, jazz musicians
such as drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach began reconnecting with
the music’s origins by utilizing authentic African elements in their music.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, jazz musicians from many ethnic backgrounds
broadened the music by bringing in a variety of international influences at a
time when the U.S. was at war in Vietnam and racial tensions were on the rise
at home. Here are some examples of those influences:
� John Coltrane used the mournful drone typical of an Indian sitar
(a stringed instrument) in his saxophone playing. Albums with this
influence include Africa/Brass, Brazilia, India, and Olé.
� Chick Corea, jazz pianist, collaborated with Brazilian percussionist Airto
and his wife, vocalist Flora Purim, to make jazz with the lush bird cries
and rushing rhythms one associates with a rain forest, as on his album
Light as a Feather (Polygram).
� Yusef Lateef, flutist, brought minor-key Asian melodies to his 1961
recording Eastern Sounds (OJC).
� Charles Lloyd used Latin rhythms and tropical wind instrument sounds
through his saxophone and flute on his 1966 album Forest Flower
(Atlantic). This record became extremely popular with young ’60s jazz
fans and sold more than one million copies. The album showed Lloyd’s
growing fascination with Islamic Sufi music, Indian singer Nusrat Fateh
Ali Khan, and fado (Portuguese folk music) vocalist Amalia Rodrigues.
� John McLaughlin explored religion and music, two forces that turn up
in the introspective, moody music, through his electric jazz guitarist.
Check out these sounds on albums such as The Inner Mounting Flame
(Sony) with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
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