Success, Failure, and Improvisation: Tactics of the Los Angeles Experimental Jazz Community

• Main Author: Kaplan, Aaron
• Other Authors: Wong, Deborah A
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2013
• Subjects: Music; Avante-garde; Community; Experimental; Improvisation; Jazz; Los Angeles; Gauthier; Blue whale
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9xt1885r

This study of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation in the greater Los Angeles region investigates the musical and social role of experimentation. A major aim of this study is to reassess the criteria for the sustainability of an experimental music scene. Whereas economics are often invoked in the arts to assert the longevity of musical production, the LA experimental jazz scene offers alternative benchmarks for success. This study also contributes to the knowledge of communal and cultural arts organizations in LA. I show how LA has sustained small and specific spaces in which experimental jazz flourishes in this region. It is imperative to understand this music in a local context to assess the current economic, political, and ideological fit of experimental jazz within the larger arts culture in LA today. My ethnographic research is focused on two major organizations that promote experimental jazz in the region, Angel City Arts and the Blue Whale, and includes interviews with eight musicians and concert promoters, including Jeff Gauthier, Rocco Somazzi, Nicole Mitchell, and Matt Zebley. A goal of this study, largely stemming from these interviews, is to show how musical improvisations embody alternative worldviews that challenge the status quo and demand constant innovation and change. These improvisatory ideologies inform the strategies enacted by Angel City Arts and the Blue Whale. They offer two different alternative sustainability models that are largely community-based, and use experimental tactics not as a means to an end, but as concrete strategies to achieve practical goals. However, the community faces severe economic hardship and thus improvements are necessary to ensure the scene's prosperity. I argue the need for the scene to engender forums unique to a public discussion of their challenges, and to embrace an explicitly activist culture that boasts experimental values. I hope the overview of and insight into the nature of the development of experimental music scenes I provide will inspire future strategies to help the community overcome the inherent challenges to sustain and keep their music exploratory.