Out of Black Liberation, Asian American Jazz
Ashawnta Jackson
“The improvisational freedom offered in Free Jazz is key to understanding the cues Asian Americans took from African American musicians.”
-ethnomusicologist Susan M. Asai
Many Asian Americans, having been victims of discrimination for years, looked to black politics and forms of cultural expression for inspiration. Read on to learn about how Free Jazz, an avant-garde subgenre that breaks with convention, gave Asian musicians opportunities to infuse music with the political, the historical, and the cultural, and to “cultivate their own musical landscape.”