Jazz, as a genre, gets slapped around a lot nowadays. True, musicians from Robert Glasper to Esperanza Spaulding to José James (three of the most high profile young jazz artists) are working diligently to show the possibilities and relevance of the music in the 21st century, tapping history to bring the form into the present, aiming toward the future. The reality is, jazz is a long way from both the working-class blackness for which it once provided the soundtrack (and from which it drew energy and inspiration,) and the heady experimentation of yesteryear that made it thrillingly unpredictable for devotees and often near incomprehensible for the uninitiated. Folks unschooled in the form’s deep history, dismayed at its cultural marginalization (and the web of elitism that blankets it,) or whose taste buds simply can’t process it, ignore it, push it to the sidelines, or break it out for hip cred, but don’t realize it’s music you’re meant to live with.
Jamal Cyrus, “The Dowling Street Martyr Brigade Towards A Walk in the Sun”. Courtesy Jamal Cyrus and Inman Gallery Houston.
The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through November 22, is a corrective to the multi-layered disconnect. Named after a 1984 book by Chicago jazz critic John Litweiler, it’s a celebration of when the music, the arts, culture, and the people living in it were shot through with the crackling energy of black resistance and black innovation – so, from 1965 to right now.
Artists shown range from celebrated figures in Chicago’s avant-garde of the 1960s to contemporary visual artists like Cauleen Smith, Stan Douglas, Terry Adkins, Nick Cave, Renée Green, Rashid Johnson, and Lili Reynaud-Dewar. It’s especially powerful to see work that captures the organic marriage of cerebral, demanding art and the political activism of the streets, all of it pushing forth notions and imaginings of blackness that shatter preconception.
Nick Cave. Speak Louder (2011) Mixed Media. Photo courtesy James Prinz Photography.
From the museum website:
Working together across multiple platforms, Catherine Sullivan, George Lewis, Charles Gaines, and Sean Griffin are collaborating on an opera, to be presented on the MCA Stage, and on a related installation within the exhibition.
A listening station and an online microsite accompany the exhibition, as does a fully illustrated catalogue that includes essays by exhibition curators Naomi Beckwith and Dieter Roelstraete, as well as by leading musicians, composers, artists, and scholars.
More info here.
