{"id":{"repo_id":"buffalo","oai_identifier":"oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/83849"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/buffalo/oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/83849","repository":{"repo_id":"buffalo","name":"Buffalo","base_url":"https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Jazz’s Gatefold Speaks of Freedom","abstract":"M.A.","abstract_html":"M.A.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Alonge, Kehinde"],"institution":"State University of New York at Buffalo","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Keane, Damien","English"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-06-17T19:54:45Z","date_published":"2022-06-17T19:54:45Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:28Z","subjects":["English literature"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10477/83849","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Keane, Damien","English"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Alonge, Kehinde"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2022-06-17T19:54:45Z","2020"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["State University of New York at Buffalo"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Text","Thesis"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["English literature"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/83849"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["M.A.","Diggin’ in the crates, one finds many voices. The undertakings which made this project possible did not find its origins in the confines of traditional academic settings, but rather in a space entirely separate. In 2018, I found myself at a record store in Atlanta, fumbling through crates until I stumbled across Cecil Taylor’s seminal album, Unit Structures. Prior to this moment, I, oddly enough, was only aware of Cecil Taylor the poet, not the pianist, as I was first introduced to his spoken word album, Chinampas, located on the internet archival website, Ubu-Web. A unique record in his discography, Chinampas scales down the frenetic jostles of Taylor’s piano playing in exchange for minimal drums accompanying Taylor’s esoteric and captivating language. In efforts to complete my circle of understanding as it relates to Cecil Taylor the artist, I seized the opportunity to procure his seminal album on vinyl to get a glimpse of what Val Wilmer coined as his “eighty-eight tuned drums.” However, to my surprise, the visceral qualities of Taylor’s language would make its appearance present once again, not sonically, but in print on the liner notes section of the record sleeve. On the back cover of the album, laid Taylor’s defining poetic statement entitled “Sound Structure of Subculture Becoming Major Breath/Naked Fire Gesture” where Taylor illustrates the methodological underpinnings of his improvisation and how it taps into the ethos of the burgeoning black subcultural movements present at that time. With such impactful statements present alongside my listening session, I was given a unique opportunity to ground much of the context of the music played on Taylor’s terms—as if Taylor himself were present guiding my practice in listening. Still new to jazz vinyl collecting at the time yet aware of the prejudices in Jazz music, I was unaware that record companies would ever relinquish what I often conceived as the advertisement space of a record for an artist to not only speak for themselves—but speak in a language devised of their own creative ingenuity. As he states in the liner notes of Unit Structures, the process of transliteration must always begin first through the mind and then “fed through the body”, leaving any space suitable to declare “unity and sanity” (Taylor 1966). Such a practice seemed so antithetical to capital and immediately drew me to locate more instances of this self-prescriptive epistemology at work. However, the trajectory of what started off as a quest informed by mere curiosity soon developed to one of urgent necessity as it was just few weeks later that the Jazz world was informed of the passing of Cecil Taylor on April 5th, 2018. In light of the passing of the late great avant-garde jazz pioneer, much of the conversation surrounding his legacy often concerned itself with the innovative sonic pursuits and feats set forth by the percussive pianist. Although a paramount quality in Taylor’s artistry, many of these scholarly accounts often neglected to consider the centrality of postmodern poetic practices to Taylor's musical practice. Throughout his entire career, Taylor has always taken upon himself the duty to outline his own improvisatory language in a manner that exceeds the reductive jazz criticism that commonly adorned the album sleeves of the era. The absence of critical academic consideration to his writings remind me greatly of the neglect of the poet Russell Atkins whose theories surrounding Psychovisualism bear equal merit to the likes of Charles Olson’s Projective Verse yet receive little to know attention in postmodern discourse or curricula. Taylor’s passing created an impulse within me to scour record stores and discogs.com for any instance of his poetic stamp on the sleeves of his records. To my surprise, in my quest I began to notice a deep trend among many of the free jazz records in the 60’s and 70’s also donning liner notes crafted by the musicians themselves. It became quite clear that the impulse for self-prescription was not only limited to Taylor, as several other free jazz practitioners of the loft era scene in New York, the Black Artist Group in St. Louis, and the ACCM in Chicago also dedicated space on their album sleeves to display their distinct poesies and notation (e.g. Sun Ra, Joseph Jarman, William Hooker, Jeane Lee, Anthony Braxton, and Oliver Lake). In an era noted for its migration toward Black artist-driven communes and self-determination, many musicians sought to consolidate various multi-disciplinary praxes onto an album cover as an extension of their ongoing resistance toward institutional entities (Jazz Clubs/festivals and Literary Press) noted for their discriminatory and exclusionary practices of payment and publication. With these topics all in mind, this thesis seeks to uncover the several impetuses which subtended Free Jazz musicians’ transfiguration of their album sleeves as a multimedia site capable of emboldening Black musicians’ sense of voice, representation, and agency. This thesis also seeks to not only bring awareness to the carefully constructed musical/poetic revolutions in language presented by the content of the liner notes, but also aims on theorizing new archival methodologies suitable to justly sustain the vitality of the voices which lay latent in these often forgotten records—which I am inclined to call black artifacts. For the task at hand in this thesis is not to simply develop a static definition of the exploits of these forgotten artist but rather encourage the transfiguration of academic spaces, just like the liner notes section, into conducive outlets for Jazz’s Subculture to become the “matter ignited” as Cecil Taylor envisioned in the first recording I heard from him on Chinampas (Moten 35)."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Jazz’s Gatefold Speaks of Freedom"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Keane, Damien","English"],"dc:creator":["Alonge, Kehinde"],"dc:date":["2022-06-17T19:54:45Z","2020"],"dc:description":["M.A.","Diggin’ in the crates, one finds many voices. The undertakings which made this project possible did not find its origins in the confines of traditional academic settings, but rather in a space entirely separate. In 2018, I found myself at a record store in Atlanta, fumbling through crates until I stumbled across Cecil Taylor’s seminal album, Unit Structures. Prior to this moment, I, oddly enough, was only aware of Cecil Taylor the poet, not the pianist, as I was first introduced to his spoken word album, Chinampas, located on the internet archival website, Ubu-Web. A unique record in his discography, Chinampas scales down the frenetic jostles of Taylor’s piano playing in exchange for minimal drums accompanying Taylor’s esoteric and captivating language. In efforts to complete my circle of understanding as it relates to Cecil Taylor the artist, I seized the opportunity to procure his seminal album on vinyl to get a glimpse of what Val Wilmer coined as his “eighty-eight tuned drums.” However, to my surprise, the visceral qualities of Taylor’s language would make its appearance present once again, not sonically, but in print on the liner notes section of the record sleeve. On the back cover of the album, laid Taylor’s defining poetic statement entitled “Sound Structure of Subculture Becoming Major Breath/Naked Fire Gesture” where Taylor illustrates the methodological underpinnings of his improvisation and how it taps into the ethos of the burgeoning black subcultural movements present at that time. With such impactful statements present alongside my listening session, I was given a unique opportunity to ground much of the context of the music played on Taylor’s terms—as if Taylor himself were present guiding my practice in listening. Still new to jazz vinyl collecting at the time yet aware of the prejudices in Jazz music, I was unaware that record companies would ever relinquish what I often conceived as the advertisement space of a record for an artist to not only speak for themselves—but speak in a language devised of their own creative ingenuity. As he states in the liner notes of Unit Structures, the process of transliteration must always begin first through the mind and then “fed through the body”, leaving any space suitable to declare “unity and sanity” (Taylor 1966). Such a practice seemed so antithetical to capital and immediately drew me to locate more instances of this self-prescriptive epistemology at work. However, the trajectory of what started off as a quest informed by mere curiosity soon developed to one of urgent necessity as it was just few weeks later that the Jazz world was informed of the passing of Cecil Taylor on April 5th, 2018. In light of the passing of the late great avant-garde jazz pioneer, much of the conversation surrounding his legacy often concerned itself with the innovative sonic pursuits and feats set forth by the percussive pianist. Although a paramount quality in Taylor’s artistry, many of these scholarly accounts often neglected to consider the centrality of postmodern poetic practices to Taylor's musical practice. Throughout his entire career, Taylor has always taken upon himself the duty to outline his own improvisatory language in a manner that exceeds the reductive jazz criticism that commonly adorned the album sleeves of the era. The absence of critical academic consideration to his writings remind me greatly of the neglect of the poet Russell Atkins whose theories surrounding Psychovisualism bear equal merit to the likes of Charles Olson’s Projective Verse yet receive little to know attention in postmodern discourse or curricula. Taylor’s passing created an impulse within me to scour record stores and discogs.com for any instance of his poetic stamp on the sleeves of his records. To my surprise, in my quest I began to notice a deep trend among many of the free jazz records in the 60’s and 70’s also donning liner notes crafted by the musicians themselves. It became quite clear that the impulse for self-prescription was not only limited to Taylor, as several other free jazz practitioners of the loft era scene in New York, the Black Artist Group in St. Louis, and the ACCM in Chicago also dedicated space on their album sleeves to display their distinct poesies and notation (e.g. Sun Ra, Joseph Jarman, William Hooker, Jeane Lee, Anthony Braxton, and Oliver Lake). In an era noted for its migration toward Black artist-driven communes and self-determination, many musicians sought to consolidate various multi-disciplinary praxes onto an album cover as an extension of their ongoing resistance toward institutional entities (Jazz Clubs/festivals and Literary Press) noted for their discriminatory and exclusionary practices of payment and publication. With these topics all in mind, this thesis seeks to uncover the several impetuses which subtended Free Jazz musicians’ transfiguration of their album sleeves as a multimedia site capable of emboldening Black musicians’ sense of voice, representation, and agency. This thesis also seeks to not only bring awareness to the carefully constructed musical/poetic revolutions in language presented by the content of the liner notes, but also aims on theorizing new archival methodologies suitable to justly sustain the vitality of the voices which lay latent in these often forgotten records—which I am inclined to call black artifacts. For the task at hand in this thesis is not to simply develop a static definition of the exploits of these forgotten artist but rather encourage the transfiguration of academic spaces, just like the liner notes section, into conducive outlets for Jazz’s Subculture to become the “matter ignited” as Cecil Taylor envisioned in the first recording I heard from him on Chinampas (Moten 35)."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/83849"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["State University of New York at Buffalo"],"dc:rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"dc:subject":["English literature"],"dc:title":["Jazz’s Gatefold Speaks of Freedom"],"dc:type":["Text","Thesis"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:28Z"}