Free-funk is a combination of
avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz and experimental jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Orig ...
with
funk music
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...
that developed in the 1970s. Leaders of the genre include
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Colle ...
and his Prime Time group,
Ronald Shannon Jackson
Ronald Shannon Jackson (January 12, 1940 – October 19, 2013) was an American jazz drummer from Fort Worth, Texas. A pioneer of avant-garde jazz, free funk, and jazz fusion, he appeared on over 50 albums as a bandleader, sideman, arranger, and ...
and his group Decoding Society,
Jamaaladeen Tacuma
Jamaaladeen Tacuma (born Rudy McDaniel; June 11, 1956) is an American free jazz bassist born in Hempstead, New York. He was a bandleader on the Gramavision label and worked with Ornette Coleman during the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in Coleman's P ...
and his group Spectacle and
James "Blood" Ulmer
James "Blood" Ulmer (born February 8, 1940) is an American jazz, free funk and blues guitarist and singer. Ulmer plays a Gibson Byrdland guitar. His guitar sound has been described as "jagged" and "stinging". His singing has been called "ragg ...
. The music has also been quite influential on the
M-Base
The term "M-Base" is used in several ways. In the 1980s, a loose collective of young African American musicians including Steve Coleman, Graham Haynes, Cassandra Wilson, Geri Allen, Robin Eubanks, and Greg Osby emerged in Brooklyn with a new sou ...
genre.
See also
*
Harmolodic funk
*
List of free funk musicians
The following is a list of free funk musicians.
A
B
*Lester Bowie
C
*James Chance
*Steve Coleman
*Ornette Coleman
D
*Jack DeJohnette
H
*Doug Hammond
* Human Arts Ensemble
J
*Ronald Shannon Jackson
* Juju
O
*Greg Osby
P
* Ponga
R
*Ned ...
*
Avant-funk
Avant-funk (also called mutant disco in the early 1980s) is a music style in which artists combine funk and disco rhythms with an avant-garde or art rock mentality. Its most prominent era occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s among post-punk and n ...
References
Jazz genres
Funk genres
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