Roscoe Mitchell – Sound (1966)

Italian Composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866 -1924) said that “music is sonorous air”. A vibration that we experience without being seen with the human eye. John Lyndon, “Some ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it”.

The Roscoe Mitchell Sextet starts a fire on Sound (1966).  Integrity rating avant-garde jazz with world music, funk, rock, soul and classical. Creating a righteous and important revolution in music and culture that continues to push boundaries today.

Often I imagine the creation of innovative, highly avant-garde music as a massive, rebellious beast – an almost physical entity that is struggling to penetrate through the ether of sound. Kicking and clawing to transform into the visual realm. Wanting so desperately to show the entirety of its gift, its grace and its beauty. With each step, the beast inches its way forward.    
In many ways, Free Jazz is really not so dissimilar to a Richard Wagner symphony or one of Cole Porter’s songs. All are seemingly made up of the same mixture of noise, vibration and silence, which is true enough. But that description is intentionally misleading. To appreciate its beauty, we must listen in new ways. 

On Roscoe Mitchell’s Sound, we are given an opportunity to listen to the unique power and struggle of that musical beast in action. A glimpse of the future waiting on the other side of that divide between Busoni’s “sonorous air” and the physical world. This is music struggling to be free of the limitations of those unseen vibrations. Attempting to describe and define those vibrations has become somewhat of an obsession. Trying to use my rather limited capacity with language to describe the evolution and transformation of sound is both a joy and a frustration- maybe that’s what we call a passion.

On this 1966 avant-garde masterpiece, the listener is privy to a record that captures the struggle and the creation of a new language for music. That should not be understated. Sound is an electrifying document of musicians that are seeking the “new” without consideration of its mass appeal (commercial and otherwise). These are artists risking everything in their effort. Fuck the agenda’s of the corporations and record companies.   Something pure and beautiful should remind us that real humans once populated this planet. The music itself is unlike anything we have been offered before, with wave after wave of orchestrated sound, noise, and volume leaping out of the speakers. Reckless improvisation mixing with the most intelligent and well-thought through forms. Melody, harmony, and structure – those pillars of conventional Western music are being replaced. And a new vocabulary of blues, jazz, rock and funk takes a decidedly more universal view.  

Each shriek of noise is blending… molding… and changing the very definition of music. Red hot textures of sound bring the music closer to us, closer than it ever has been before. Improvised changes in structure spinning the music against a vast sound scape, coloring the sound palette. Tempos race forward until all characteristics reach equilibrium. Soothing and smooth. Rhythmic and balanced. But always challenging, intelligent and emotional. Hints of smoothing evening blues surround the heat of those sharp, hot textures. A new beauty is being formed. The beauty that doesn’t separate the intellectual and the spiritual. 
Unlike most music we hear, much is expected from the listener. The havoc of the music blurs the melodic aspects, and we are left with a new language that describes music that can be visual and physical.   

The Mitchell Sextet starts a fire on Sound. Exposing the environment to the raw essence of noise, texture and color. Serious listeners will experience sound that pulsates with rhythm and the creation of life, unafraid of the new dialogue being born. All the previous assumptions about music, tone and organization have been (nearly) discarded. Struggle with that definition, but there is no other way to describe the revolution of sound within these molten grooves.   

Sound is the beginning for anyone interested in adventurous music.  The fact that this was also the first time that members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians appeared on a record together makes it worthwhile. The AACM influence is everywhere in the development of experimental music and the mixing of avant-garde, classical, and world music in the most adventurous way. As a non-profit dedicated to the development, performance, and documentation of vital avant-garde music, the AACM helped struggling musicians before potential commercial success was possible. That’s a legacy that deserves acknowledgment.

The record is also an important demonstration of the abilities of future Art Ensemble of Chicago members Mitchell, Lester Bowie, and Malachi Favors. The AEC operated with the slogan “Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future”.  And carried the Revolutionary spirit of Sound into the future, and to even greater recognition and influence.  

Risk everything. Listen with your ears, your eyes and your soul.

by Shawn Ciavattone