Albert Ayler made two great contributions to improvised music. Both were connected, but one was more strictly musical, the other aesthetic. Musically, Ayler was the first to take the theoretical implications of Ornette Coleman’s work a practical step further. His music was at once more collective than Coleman’s and similarly more “open” in its non-specific rhythmic, harmonic, and tonal sense. Aesthetically, Ayler was the music’s only real existentialist. He best transcended the particular “point of view” and most understood and expressed the depth of ambiguity of existence. Further, while others had touched on such feelings as pain, hurt, and sorrow, in Ayler’s work there frequently crops up a sense of genuine human despair. It is not that this despair overwhelms Ayler, but he alone dares to recognize it and – more importantly – accept it as an (inherent) part of the human condition. His music, in many ways, might be said to be about how to live with it.
With two exceptions, all of Ayler’s great music was recorded in 1964. The exceptions are the out-of-print Sonny’s Time Now (Jihad) (the tracks“Virtue” and “Justice”), recorded November 1965, and the single track “Holy Ghost” on The New Wave In Jazz (Impulse), recorded March 20, 1965. Before and after, there was good Ayler, but the recordings from this period are most representative of his mature and fully formed genius. The 1964 records are Witches and Devils(Polydor), Spiritual Unity (ESP), New York Eye and Ear Control (ESP), and the record under review, previously available as Ghosts on the Dutch Fontana label.
Of these LPs, Witches and Devils is the first time that Ayler recorded with musicians entirely sympathetic to his musical and aesthetic concerns; as such, it is the first stunning indication of the actual shape of his music. New York Eye and Ear Control was, like Coleman’sFree Jazz and Coltrane’s Ascension, an attempt at free collective improvisation; but it is freer structurally than either Coleman’s earlier or Coltrane’s later work: the time is more fluid, the tonality(s) less certain, and there are fewer guidelines overall. Though, like Free Jazz andAscension, it is not a complete success, New York Eye and Ear Control virtually defines the language of free jazz of the Sixties. Ayler is the obvious principal force behind the music which could also be said to mark the furthest extension of the strictly musical implications of his work; but as an almost entirely spontaneous and collective creation of several distinct musical voices, it is not the highly concentrated expression of his art which emerges on Spiritual Unity or Vibrations.
Of these two, Spiritual Unity strikes me as the most definitive Ayler recording. Ayler’s statements are concise, unencumbered strokes of musical genius, behind which Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock exhibit a single-mindedness of purpose, both between themselves and with Ayler that is astonishing even today, eleven years removed from the recording date. The music here, like Parker’s music, is timeless. There will be newer music, but it will not be better, it will only be different.
The Vibrations LP is largely of the same definitive character as the ESP disc and is even somewhat more ambitious in its denser ensembles and sophisticated compositional approach. The two “Ghosts,” however, are perhaps slightly less momentous than those on the former date. One is but a short, playful statement of the theme; in the other, Ayler makes a typically good opening statement, but Cherry, though he begins strong, seems by the conclusion of his solo on the verge of running out of ideas. The piece also seems a bit long, by one bass solo; the interlude by Peacock, though it is interesting enough in itself and leads toward an evocative final ensemble (with its air of proud resignation), tends to have a “tacked on” feeling to it.
But simply the fact that Ayler felt the need to record four different studio versions of“Ghosts” in the relatively short period of three months indicates something significant about his art: namely, its rejection of absolutes, and its quite deliberate ambiguity. In this sense, each of the four “Ghosts” – especially in their alternately different shapes – is just as important as any of the others. Each feeds on the others (if only by implication) subtly but masterfully calling into question what you thought was the piece’s meaning. In any particular Ayler piece, this double meaning-ness is apparent in his consistent reformulations, redefinitions, or even total (if temporary) negations of what has been presented.
In “Children,” for example, the compositional structure of the piece is built upon an entirely shifting emotional foundation. It begins with a sad yearning, changes into a brief, almost joyful, up-tempo excursion; then erupts into long, turbulent and frenetic lines. After an unaccompanied bass solo by Peacock, the above process reverses itself, but then the short, up-tempo strains are restated, ending the piece on an optimistic note. By then, it scarcely matters where the piece ends. Everything has been turned into its opposite and, what is more, lies just below the surface, nagging at that with which it does not agree.
The underlying sensibility of the remaining pieces on Vibrations is similarly fragile, with Ayler utilizing constant shifts in tempo and dynamic emphases to advance their dramatic structure. The great aesthetic contributions are “Mothers” and “Holy Spirit,”both of which are highly personal, intensely agonized and anguished statements such as could not have been made by any other artist. The most fully realized performance is perhaps “Vibrations” which is a sharply focused reminder of the aesthetic sense of New York Eye and Ear Control but with a greater individual carácter (again due to the integral juxtaposition of its parts).
“Vibrations,” which is a sharply focused reminder of the aesthetic sense of New York Eye and Ear Control but with a greater individual character (again due to the integral juxtaposition of its parts).
The further we get from Albert Ayler’s work of this period, the larger it seems to loom before us. What is clear now, if it was not clear in 1964, is that the revolutionary sounds which Ayler produced on his instrument – the stutters, the growls, the high-pitched screams, the groans – were a completely organic outgrowth of his art, not a self-conscious attempt to be “avant-garde.” Ayler’s music was not built purely on emotion, as some people thought; Albert Ayler had mastered his instrument in a way in which it had not previously been thought possible to play.
In this, Ayler was the single most important voice of the Sixties. Yet his work remains largely neglected and misunderstood. Indicative of this is that it has taken as long as it has for a record such as Vibrations, one of his most distinctive and singular musical contributions, to finally be released in his own country. Maybe now that it’s here and widely available, it will help bring something of the respect and recognition which his art so richly deserves.
Henry Kuntz, 1975
Tracks
1. Ghosts (short version)
2. Children
3. Holy Spirit
4. Ghosts (long version)
5. Vibrations
6. Mothers
ALBERT AYLER – tenor saxophone, composer
DON CHERRY – Cornet
GARY PEACOCK – bass
SONNY MURRAY – drums
Recorded in Copenhagen 14th September 1964
Original Recording by Ole Vestegaard Jensen
Album produced by Alan Bates
FREEDOM FCD 41000
( 1 ) Albert Ayler – Vibrations (Debut DEB 144)
( 4 ) Albert Ayler – Ghosts (Fontana SFJL 925)