The Avant-garde and the Nature of Change

In the context of discussions about the so-called avant-garde of improvisational music, the issue of change is often at the heart of the matter without being explicitly defined or discussed. To decide who is truly avant-garde, or cutting edge, we have to quantify change, define the boundary that is being pushed, and decide how far it has been pushed. The same questions arise when we get into discussions about so-called free music, and when we refer to playing as in or out, when we applaud someone for balancing the inside/outside line, or when we denigrate a musician for being so out that our sense of it being music is lost.

If the avant-garde represents the pushing of boundaries, then all of the pivotal figures in the history of art and music can be seen as avant-garde. They forged some kind of new ground, and then many of them continued to explore that boundary area and new ground, creating an identity and unity in their work in the process that makes their art identifiable as their own. In my view there is a process of honing and essentializing that goes on, and a point is reached when the focus is less on accomplishing something new once again, but instead to do that new thing even better. Even when seemingly new areas are approached, there are often processual similarities in the work's emergence that are hidden from the consumer of art that reveal the new as consanguineous with the old.

If we accept as a basic premise that music is a communicative medium, then one way to view the renegotiation of boundaries is not as saying something new, but instead as saying the same thing in a new way. If we take this premise further and believe that music can communicate truth, and that there is a quintessence  that is distilled throughout all music of all genres when played at a high level, then the the question of how that is communicated and whether this purported boundary is being pushed seems less important than if the communication occurs.

This is of course assuming that there is an ends other than enjoyment of the means. Indulge me if you will.

If the goal is communication (no matter what the message), then should we place the means above the ends? This seems to be a fundamental flaw in the insistence placed upon innovation by some people in the audience for free, experimental, or avant-garde music. Only if we believe art is a purely aesthetic experience with no function can we possibly accept the idea that art is inherently better because it does something "new" aesthetically while ignoring whether or not its purported superiority relates to whether or not its communicative potential is realized.

In this sense, there is no progressive and no conservative. There are no boundaries to be pushed. If the process of improvisation and composition in the context of a musician's life relates to reaching towards an individualized voice, an often cited goal of musical practice, each individuals inherent uniqueness will lead to an individual expression that stands on its own, even if it shares qualities of past masters.

There's a whole group of musicians who represented the avant-garde in jazz during the late 1960s through the present, who accurately fit the description of masters who have and continue to hone their music. Some people would have you believe that since they are no longer pushing the so-called boundaries of music, they are no longer relevant to the so-called avant-garde. If anything, I would say that they are more relevant than ever: have fun pushing boundaries for the rest of your life, but you'll never reach the edge of the net, because it stretches forever in every direction.

In other words: welcome home, you've already arrived.

More later.