Reddit reviews Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde (Studies in Jazz)

Hey OP, I've written a very comparable paper during my years so I am happy to write a bit about it here. I play improvised music that is often times very harsh and has been called Avant Garde by both myself (although I don't really say it anymore) and critics when reviewing some of the music I've put out. I wouldn't personally call my music "experimental" per say but I do understand what people mean when they use the term.

First off I think using a generic reference point such as Pop, Jazz, Classical, or anything is really in reference to the product, and terms like this are used by marketing companies to signify a shared sound that they can sell you. For example what I mean is Black Sabbath didn't really call themselves a "Heavy Metal" band until a press personal called them that and they adopted the label, but other bands of the same ilk were also described as heavy metal afterwards in direct reference to Black Sabbath because the thought was, if you like them, you might like this new band too. I think the label Avant Garde can by applied in the same way and isn't really used to describe a sound of the product but that it falls outside of normal parameters at the time it was made, not in relation necessarily to the impact that it had to the art produced after it was made.

Something I think of as I am writing this is Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71iR0kECPMU&list=PLF592AEB662C84871
which came out in 1959, the same as the famous album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfF3_VlZ2Fg
In retrospect its pretty easy to look at The Shape of Jazz to Come as one of the most game changing albums in the history of Jazz that would go on to be described as Avant Garde. The idea of the phrase "avant garde" would be used to describe secondary characteristics of the music and not it's inherent impact on art down the road. The Ornette album is huge and if you talk to any hardcore Jazz fan, they will have it. If you check out a little bit more of an obscure cut called The Painter from a really underrated and unsung saxophonist Julius Hemphill -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC0X0V1KI38
It doesn't make the music any less impactful because less people are listening to it and it arguably had less impact on art down the road than Ornette's album, but it still challenges musical norms of the time and so that secondary characteristic of an Avant Garde approach is still there. I guess the way I see it the Advanced Guard can only attempt to advance the present, not be measured by its contribution in the future.

To me the big distinction between Avande Garde and Experimental would be Experimental is an attempt to describe the process of making the music and not the product. If you as musician experiment, its solely based off of what you know already, that is obviously informed by what you've listened to and learned but as a process of making music its relatively meaningless. It doesn't attempt to describe the product at all, which is cool because "experimental music" as a whole is trans-idiomatic and has no sound, only a clear process. My dislike of the term comes from the improvising guitarist Joe Morris (here is a fucking nutty set with Nate Wooley)-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqukROECrQo
who said once when he plays he might experiment to the same degree any other musician does but he consistently knows what he wants something to sound like even when he is improvising.

If you want any further reading I can throw some stuff down here-

https://www.amazon.com/Perpetual-Frontier-Properties-Free-Music/dp/0985981008/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543301973&sr=8-2&keywords=joe+morris+improvisation

http://www.tzadik.com/index.php?catalog=B008 (click Arcana 1 on the side)

Anthony Braxton's Tri Axium Writings (although they are super expensive)

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Creative-Spirit-Innovators-Improvisation/dp/0810852845/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543302170&sr=1-6&keywords=avant+garde+music+books

https://www.amazon.com/Improvisation-Its-Nature-Practice-Music/dp/0306805286/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543302221&sr=1-1&keywords=derek+bailey+improvisation

Anyways, I don't think my opinion is worth more than anyone else's, I know this is a decisive topic and I'm not even trying to change anyone mind, just throw in my two cents since I've spent tons of time thing about this. It's just sound anyways so its all good. Sorry for the rambling its 2am.