As Serious As Your Life: John Coltrane and Beyond (Five Star)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting relatively early book on this topic
Review: I was thrilled to find this book. It was originally published in 1977. Articles on Free Jazz from the Sixties cover the original explosion and controversy, but this book was written after the flourishing of many resulting waves. It was interesting to read a book written at this time, since the 1970's was the decade in which free jazz really flourished into its own. The foundation had been laid by Coltrane, Ornette, Ayler, Sun Ra, Abrams, Cecil Taylor etc. This book covers all those people and more, and deals with their music as well as their influence on and positions in relation to the dominant culture.
I give it five stars just because it is a vintage document that is very in-depth and covers the spiritual and personal aspects of the music.
For a more musicological text (musical examples and all), see Ekkhart Jost's "Free Jazz."

Rating:
Summary: Arrogant and self-righteous
Review: Look, don't get me wrong. I love the music Wilmer talks about in this book as much as she does. My gripe is NOT with the music, nor with the love of it. My gripe is with her writing style.

To say that she is a self-righteous suck-up is probably understating the situation. For example, she lambasts Tony Williams for "playing in time" - apparently a sin of all sins as it does not correspond to her definition of free jazz (which in this book is synonymous with "worthwhile music").

Her rants about more traditional styles, about fusion, about...well...every other style of music becomes very tedious. Her inability to objectively discuss free jazz becomes frustrating. I really wanted to like this book, having heard great things about it, but I just found myself hating fans of the avant-garde (which meant self-loathing, oddly enough).

The book presents what I view to be the biggest problem in music - the ferocious desire of the mainstream to quarantine avant-garde music from everything else, and the equally ferocious desire of avant-garde music to maintain the quarantine (lest they sell out) whilst whining about being separate. Give me a break.

Good music is good music - it can be found anywhere, in spite of what Wilmer might say.

Rating:
Summary: Arrogant and self-righteous
Review: Look, don't get me wrong. I love the music Wilmer talks about in this book as much as she does. My gripe is NOT with the music, nor with the love of it. My gripe is with her writing style.

To say that she is a self-righteous suck-up is probably understating the situation. For example, she lambasts Tony Williams for "playing in time" - apparently a sin of all sins as it does not correspond to her definition of free jazz (which in this book is synonymous with "worthwhile music").

Her rants about more traditional styles, about fusion, about...well...every other style of music becomes very tedious. Her inability to objectively discuss free jazz becomes frustrating. I really wanted to like this book, having heard great things about it, but I just found myself hating fans of the avant-garde (which meant self-loathing, oddly enough).

The book presents what I view to be the biggest problem in music - the ferocious desire of the mainstream to quarantine avant-garde music from everything else, and the equally ferocious desire of avant-garde music to maintain the quarantine (lest they sell out) whilst whining about being separate. Give me a break.

Good music is good music - it can be found anywhere, in spite of what Wilmer might say.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting relatively early book on this topic
Review: Val Wilmer presents a complete ignorant and biased review of the life of many key figures in the jazz movement. Her writing is more akin to a groupie trying to "suck-up" to her favorite group. With her "band chick" approach and total lack of knowledge about music, Wilmer manages to string along several stories about these musicians, in which each experience becomes granite evidence of the validity of their approach to music as welll as proof of Wilmer's superior knowledge of Jazz and music in general.
PLease!!!! Wilmer loves this music because it dispenses with such unnnecessary items as Harmony, Melody, Time, and general ability on the given instrument..making it a music analyzed only in superlatives.
Some of the information on Ed Blackwell is informative - but she manages to contradict herself on many occasions. For example...Tony Williams, in Wilmer's opinion is no longer important because he still plays time which in her opinion is useless. However, five stars for Ed Blackwell...come on Wilmer, he played more traditionally than Tony Williams ever did.
For fans of Jazz and so-called free jazz - spare yourselves the Wilmer - "I am in love with these sexy Black Musicians" approach. Poor.

Rating:
Summary: As Serious As Your Life
Review: Val Wilmer presents a complete ignorant and biased review of the life of many key figures in the jazz movement. Her writing is more akin to a groupie trying to "suck-up" to her favorite group. With her "band chick" approach and total lack of knowledge about music, Wilmer manages to string along several stories about these musicians, in which each experience becomes granite evidence of the validity of their approach to music as welll as proof of Wilmer's superior knowledge of Jazz and music in general.
PLease!!!! Wilmer loves this music because it dispenses with such unnnecessary items as Harmony, Melody, Time, and general ability on the given instrument..making it a music analyzed only in superlatives.
Some of the information on Ed Blackwell is informative - but she manages to contradict herself on many occasions. For example...Tony Williams, in Wilmer's opinion is no longer important because he still plays time which in her opinion is useless. However, five stars for Ed Blackwell...come on Wilmer, he played more traditionally than Tony Williams ever did.
For fans of Jazz and so-called free jazz - spare yourselves the Wilmer - "I am in love with these sexy Black Musicians" approach. Poor.

Rating:
Summary: The Jazz Avant-garde Gets Respect
Review: Wilmer's "As Serious as Your Life" stands, along with her own earlier Jazz People and books by Amiri Baraka ("Blues People") and Ben Sidran ("Black Talk") as one of the most important books on the controversial avant-garde jazz of the 1960's and early 1970's. Originally published in 1977, it is a fascinating and highly informed study that benefits from the race and gender politics in the air at the time without ever laboring to use this theoretical baggage in the service of the author's ideological purposes-the music and, more importantly, the musicians are always carefully kept in the spotlight. Starting with individual chapters on important and influential figures such as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and Albert Ayler, and including many other names both famous and unknown, the author draws on her first-hand knowledge of the musicians to construct insightful portraits of a people literally under siege by hostile critics and even by other less "political" musicians. She further develops her ideas in the thematic units which follow, including a section dedicated to percussionists like Sonny Murray and Ed Blackwell whose contributions to the music often went unacknowledged, and one dedicated to the women of the movement (most famously John Coltrane's wife Alice), both as sources of emotional support and, thankfully, as musicians in their own right. The result is a book which not only sheds light on the music but also illuminates its sociopolitical background. In the final unit, "The Conspiracy and Some Solutions," the author deals more directly with these problematic political issues, which are perhaps even more relevant today than when this book was first published: the place of jazz in the world of academia, the role of the media in the promotion of jazz, etc. Personal but professional, and humanized by a section of the author's photographs of the musicians, this book is an enjoyable "must" for the music of this period, and one of the rare books of jazz criticism that encourage the reader both to listen more and to read more. Although for this new edition a brief chapter bringing the book up to date would have been appreciated (or at least an updated bibliography), the list of musicians in the acknowledgements who have passed away since the last edition is a sad and sobering reminder of the of the lack of esteem afforded this generation of jazz even today.

Rating:
Summary: the avant garde strikes back
Review: Wilmer's As Serious as Your Life stands, along with her own earlier Jazz People and books by Amiri Baraka (Blues People) and Ben Sidran (Black Talk) as one of the most important books on the controversial avant-garde jazz of the 1960's and early 1970's. Originally published in 1977, it is a fascinating and highly informed study that benefits from the race and gender politics in the air at the time without ever laboring to use this theoretical baggage in the service of the author's ideological purposes-the music and, more importantly, the musicians are always carefully kept in the spotlight. Starting with individual chapters on important and influential figures such as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and Albert Ayler, and including many other names both famous and unknown, the author draws on her first-hand knowledge of the musicians to construct insightful portraits of a people literally under siege by hostile critics and even by other less "political" musicians. She further develops her ideas in the thematic units which follow, including a section dedicated to percussionists like Sonny Murray and Ed Blackwell whose contributions to the music often went unacknowledged, and one dedicated to the women of the movement (most famously John Coltrane's wife Alice), both as sources of emotional support and, thankfully, as musicians in their own right. The result is a book which not only sheds light on the music but also illuminates its sociopolitical background. In the final unit, "The Conspiracy and Some Solutions," the author deals more directly with these problematic political issues, which are perhaps even more relevant today than when this book was first published: the place of jazz in the world of academia, the role of the media in the promotion of jazz, etc. Personal but professional, and humanized by a section of the author's photographs of the musicians, this book is an enjoyable "must" for the music of this period, and one of the rare books of jazz criticism that encourage the reader both to listen more and to read more. Although for this new edition a brief chapter bringing the book up to date would have been appreciated (or at least an updated bibliography), the list of musicians in the acknowledgements who have passed away since the last edition is a sad and sobering reminder of the of the lack of esteem afforded this generation of jazz even today.