The pinnacle of that view of freedom, of course, is avant-garde jazz, which I find by and large a dead loss. It operates on the assumption that if you remove all constraints from people, they will behave in some especially inspired manner. This doesn’t seem to me to be true in any sense at all — not socially, and certainly not artistically. The point is that the typical jazz or even rock concept of improvisation is based on the theory of the individual breaking loose of something. The African version is based on the idea of the individual making an important, timely contribution to a social event. Talking Heads is an ideal example of that kind of communion: their whole style involves sociorhythmic interconnectedness
Brian Eno, 1981, via
Like a lot of Enoisms, it's superficially profound but kind of falls apart on closer inspection - large portions of avant-garde jazz are rigorously structured in a way Eno would find familiar (e.g. Anthony Braxton) or about sociorhythmic interconnectedness of exactly the type he describes (e.g. the Art Ensemble of Chicago, especially in their percussion only breaks). And especially since I'm reading the massive new Joe Boyd book (which carries an Eno blurb, I should mention), it's also easy to go 'well, which African version?'
ReplyDeleteThis also points to a central Eno tenet that I think has done him more harm than good - his fundamental mistrust of mavericks and 'breaking loose of something'. At the beginning of his career, he seemed to have an eerie knack for getting both what he needed and what the musician(s) he was working with wanted to do, but as that got harder, he slowly shifted to one-to-one collaborations (Bowie*, Byrne, Cale, etc.), production jobs, and for his own work, deterministic software.
ReplyDeleteIt also comes through in his 'Scenius' pet theory, which sounds egalitarian until you realize that it's not so much about incomplete individuals/partial genius finding fruitful completion in each other and in a broader scene/movement, but something like Dawkins's Blind Watchmaker theory - a mindless, agentless, dehumanized process that somehow makes the appearance of order and harmony, a God for the Godless.
*Although Bowie, a jazz-freedom romantic to the end, apparently tested this - Eno left Outside particularly annoyed at the power given over to wild cards like Gabrels and Garson - who it's quite possible 1974 him would've loved
More of my thoughts about this (and some repetition) in a Bluesky thread of mine from a few months ago
Deletehttps://bsky.app/profile/electriceden92.bsky.social/post/3kyomq7crkt27
I doubt if he's thinking of Braxton or Art Ensemble here - he probably has in mind Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler, that kind of thing.
ReplyDelete(Possibly all the Derek Bailey end of things too - non-idiomatic improv).
Of course I like the comment because it ratifies my own non-enjoyment of out-jazz, makes it seem astute and apt rather than a failure of sophistication!
There are some passages in Deleuze & Guattari about music that also serve for me as a co-sign or rubber stamp to my own non-attraction to That Kind of Thing.
With That Kind of Thing, I always think, "well, it's freeing for the musicians, I guess - but what's in it for listeners?".
Of course, Eno is missing here the political context for that tendency in jazz - freedom as breaking loose from unbearable constraints. The music equivalent of an uprising or prison riot.
(There are of course other motivations and meanings of That Kind of Thing too - cosmic abstraction, spiritual ascension etc).
The breaking-free / howl of rage / burn baby burn side of free jazz is one reason why it really resonated in Communist Eastern Europe. I remember going to Poland in '87 and being informed about how important Ayler et al were there, there were still musicians there following in that sheets-of-sound lineage.
I have teased out my non-attraction to That Kind of Thing before on the blog, in this post https://blissout.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-got-most-peculiar-sensation-reading.html and its follow up https://blissout.blogspot.com/2008/05/connecting-few-recents-dots-if-im-not.html
I believe Mark Wastell was in the audience at this thing I attended at London's Barbican the other week:
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Plenty of That Kind of Thing, but I think you would've loved it Simon.
Ah that does look like a lot of fun.
DeleteEno's idealistic talk about Talking Heads' "communion" and "sociorhythmic interconnectedness" contrasts pretty sharply with what we know about the experience of being in that band, from Chris Frantz in his memoir and others. Especially on 'Remain in Light', the individual contributions from Frantz, Weymouth and Harrison were used in ways entirely determined by Byrne and Eno, who had control of the final mix. And there were ugly disputes over credits, too. As Mikal Gilmore says in that (excellent) interview, it was widely suggested that "you and Byrne have more or less taken over the band for your own ends."
ReplyDeleteOf course, the results were amazing. One of the greatest albums ever recorded. Maybe Eno's implicit point is that even the most communal collective enterprise needs one or two autocrats at the top, calling the shots.
Bit like how communes tend to end up with dominant figures anyway, despite no defined hierarchical roles as such.
DeleteLate to this, but Eno likes to present himself as a parameter-setting, benevolently non-judgmental initiator of processes who's cited Zappa as the anti-example he was consciously doing the opposite of - but in fact, he's not ultimately that different to him. They're both not-entirely-benign despots who are perfectly happy for the people they're working with to do what they want, just so long as it's also what he wants - Eno's just more 'soft power' in going about it
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