Steve Coleman: Essays: Music Collectivism

STEVE COLEMAN, M-BASE, AND MUSIC COLLECTIVISM

Part 1. The AACM: Collectivist creativity
Part 2. Sun Ra: A music full of Africa
Part 3. M-Base: Texts & Contexts
Part 4. M-Base: Some musical elaborations
Part 5. M-Base: Global collectivism

Part 1. The AACM & Collective creativity

The musician and composer Wadada Leo Smith has distinguished two broad categories of American music:

In America there exist two distinct traditions of art music -- creative music and classical music. I use the term creative music to apply to improvised music brought alive by the creative improvisor, either through reference to a score provided for his or her exploitation or through absolute improvisation; the term classical music refers to composed music brought alive by the performer through interpretation of a score. (Smith 1974: 111)
This important distinction serves to clarify the boundaries within which this essay falls, and I shall use the term "creative music" in this sense. The African-American creative musics such as jazz and blues form a large part of this multifaceted tradition. Since the artists that I consider here have made music of controversial status within the industry-enforced genres of "jazz," "blues," "rap," "avant-garde," and so forth, I find that Smith's term serves better than any others to delineate, to some extent, these artists' activities.
I wish to discuss a subset of the African-American creative music tradition, namely, music collectives. Exemplified diversely by the Chicago Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Sun Ra and his Arkestras, the Black Artists' Group in St. Louis, and more recently by Steve Coleman and the M-Base Collective, these often revolutionary, self-sufficient, artist-run organizations have sought to develop collective musical aesthetics, practices, and discourses.

Goals or rationales behind all of these groups are varied, since they belong to different historical and cultural locations and enjoy long and ever-changing lives; hence I will resist overgeneralization. However, one common feature of these collectives is an emphasis on economic self-sufficiency, independence, and empowerment. This is typified in an essay/manifesto by pianist, composer, and AACM co-founder Muhal Richard Abrams:

The Black creative artists must survive and persevere in spite of the oppressive forces which present Black people from reaching the goals attained by other Americans. We must continue to add copiously to an already vast reservoir of artistic richness handed down through the ages. Black artists must control and be paid for what they produce, as well as own and control the means of distribution. (Abrams 1973:73)
This passage echoes what was a common sentiment among African-American artists in the '60s and '70s, namely, frustration with the white-dominated music business. (It may also be traced back to certain governing ideas of the Harlem Renaissance -- namely, the aims to raise the status of African-Americans through focus on the arts. Here, however, these ideas are significantly recontextualized, in part by forty more years of appropriation of black American culture by the mainstream.) This view is expressed, for example, by many of the interviews in Arthur Taylor's important book Notes and Tones . Here is a section from Taylor's interview with pianist Randy Weston (not an AACM member) from 1968:

Do you think musicians should produce their own concerts and records?
I believe the musician of today and of the future has to own everything. He should own his own nightclub, even if itÕs no bigger than a small room. He should either have his own record company or be able to record his own material and lease it to record companies.... Considering our experience and how artists are exploited, particularly black artists, we must forget about working for other people and start working for ourselves. (Taylor 1977/1993:20)
During its most active period from the mid-'60s to the early '70s, the AACM, whose history is discussed extensively in Radano (1993), produced its own concerts, did its own promotion and its own publishing, and generally circumvented the music industry. (Radano 1992:85)
Connected to and underlying these efforts was a strong sense of community among the AACM's members, all of whom were African-American, mostly from the nearly-all-black, economically depressed South Side of Chicago. In an atmosphere of grass-roots civil-rights activism, the sense of economic necessity and of urgency for justice was balanced with a desire to create art that gave a positive representation of the black community. (Radano 1992:81-82) The music created by many of the artists in this collective, such as Abrams, Smith, reeds player Anthony Braxton, the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and trombonist George Lewis, frequently involves "open" improvisation in which the focus is on collaboration and interaction. The music in this way recapitulates the collectivist ideals of the AACM, as suggested in the following excerpt from an essay by Lewis, which expresses his views on improvisation:

The experience and practice of improvisation in improvised music privileges the role of musical sound as a carrier for history and cultural identity. Improvised music deemphasizes Western notions of form and structure in favor of the exchange of cultural and social narratives ...The focus of musical discourse suddenly shifts from the individual creator to the collective, the individual as a part of global humanity. (Lewis 1995a, emphasis added)
Thus exchange of narrative is the point of entry for the musician's identity into the music. The activity of group improvisation, where musical identities interact in musical space, is seen as a metaphor for individuals coexisting and cooperating in society, while maintaining their individual identities. Lewis maintains that this metaphor indicates the coded presence of African sensibilities:

In improvised music, the development of the improvisor is regarded as encompassing not only the formation of individual musical personality, but the harmonization of one's musical personality with social environments, both actual and possible. This emphasis on personal narrative is a clear sign of the strong influence of the Afrological on improvised music. (Lewis 1995b)
The Ghanaian master drummer, dancer, and teacher C. K. Ladzekpo has corroborated this claim by employing essentially the same metaphor. In describing the different rhythmic strata in the Anlo-Ewe music of West Africa, he represents different rhythms that lie across each other as different individuals, with strong identities of their own, interacting in the community embodied in the musical totality itself. "In [the Anlo-Ewe] community, artistic [musical] elements are not abstract phenomena. They assume real-life characters... This attitude is also the premise for idiomatic discourse or verbal exchange of ideas." (Ladzekpo, "Cultural Understanding") Also, he describes Anlo-Ewe culture in a way that parallels this musical depiction:

Membership in the community system is controlled by a patrilineal heredity that promotes a strong sense of family within a social, political and economic system of communalism. In this communal pursuit, private initiative or profit is encouraged within the realms of strong social-minded values in which family is the heart of the community and neighbors care about each other. [It is a] civilization that promotes the wish for the integration of the complex fundamental disposition of mankind. (Ladzekpo, "Anlo-Ewe Intro")
This brings us to another important aspect of the AACM, namely the self-conscious emphasis on awareness of African cultures, concepts, and philosophies. As Lewis points out, it was and is a logical recourse for the AACM members, and in general for black musicians, to look back into their past:

When a tradition is missing or destroyed, ... (as in the case of the descendants of the African slaves in the Americas), part of the task of the descendants of that tradition is the redefinition of self entering the historical process through review, deconstruction and reconstruction. (Lewis 1995a)
In theorizing about the music they were making, some of the AACM musicians reasoned that since the music of their ancestors had been essentially robbed from them, the only access they had to it was through the channels of consciousness. The "open" improvisational practices were a way of accessing the recesses of mind, the possible domain of ancestral memories. (Radano 1992:88) Hence the musical activities not only served as a grounds for communication between the musical identities of the participants, but also as a chance for the musicians' true -- that is, ancestral -- identities to manifest themselves. The musical exchange of personal narratives is enhanced if one's personal narrative is fleshed out by a personalized, if abstract, understanding of one's ancestry.
This idea is illuminated through Gates' concept of Signifyin(g) (Gates 1988). The stylized term is given dozens of meanings that play off of each other; Signifiyin(g) can refer to "a way of encoding messages or meanings which involves, in most cases, an element of indirection... [i.e.] an alternative message form [which] may occur in a variety of discourse ... Signifyin(g) is troping." (Gates 1988:80-81) The governing idea behind Signifyin(g) is verticality -- that is, the free play of rhetorical associations to conjure up multiplicities of meaning. In theorizing about African-American discourses, Gates identifies the importance of Signifyin(g) -- i.e. of verticality, of intertextuality, of history, of multiplicity, of reference to shared knowledge -- in the production and communication of meaning. The term "ancestral memory" may refer to (or may be exactly equal to) the shared cultural memory of black Americans, i.e. the realm of Signification.

The framework of Signifyin(g) also helps clarify some of the activities of members like Malachi Favors Maghostut, the bassist in the Art Ensemble. Highly respected within the AACM as a scholar of ancient and modern African civilizations and cultures, Favors often wears African clothing and face paint in performance. This may be read as a practice of Signifyin(g) on African tropes in a coded gesture of solidarity with his ancestry, that of black Americans.

Part 2. Sun Ra: A music full of Africa

An alternative yet related paradigm to the AACM's communalist, heterarchical organization is the bandleader/orchestra model, of which a shining example is pianist-composer Sun Ra and his Arkestra. A radical thinker, Sun Ra led a big band from the early 50's to his demise in 1993; this group was known variously as his Solar Arkestra, the Myth Science Arkestra, the Intergalactic Arkestra, and other names in a similar vein. Although ostensibly the musical dictatorship of the bandleader format seems antithetical to the goals of collectivism, in fact Sun Ra's groups upheld similar ideals of self-sufficiency, Afrocentricity, and collective musical experience. Sun Ra had a great deal of nostalgia for the big-band era, and it was not ill-informed; he had served as Fletcher Henderson's arranger and collaborator for some time. In fact, the African-American big bands of the '20s, '30s and '40s may be seen as creative-music organizations that embodied the collective spirit. They were crucibles for group learning, demanding collective improvisation and spontaneous group arrangements that required sensitivity and deference to the ensemble sound. Furthermore, they were usually fairly independent units, doing much of their promotion and management themselves. Sun Ra was adamant about the crucial function of the big bands for black musicians, and about how music had deteriorated since then:
Unfortunately the Black musician over here [in the U.S.] has been diverted into playing that sentimental music instead of playing the natural things we're supposed to play as black men. Instead of holding their units together to play for their people in an organized way with the big bands, they moved down to trios and combos ... to duos and the ego ... (Wilmer 1977:87)
These comments on what are "natural things" for African-Americans stem from Sun Ra's strong views on the need to recover the African roots of black American culture. His solution was a form of group separatism in which he implemented his beliefs about the true destiny of African peoples.
These convictions manifested most obviously in his performance practices. A scholar of ancient Egyptian philosophy and sciences, Sun Ra costumed his musicians in regalia bearing imagery from antiquity, and gave titles to his compositions (and to himself) that referred to the culture of ancient Egypt. These practices could be given the same Gatesian reading as those of Favors above. In many ways they fulfilled a similar function, Signifyin(g) on African-derived notions of identity. The poet Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones) wrote, "Sun Ra wants a music that will reflect a life-sense lost in the West, a music full of Africa. The band produces an environment, with their music most of all, but also with their dress ... [A] totally different epoch is conjured." (Jones 1967:128-129)

The major distinction between this paradigm and that of, say, the more collectively-managed AACM, is the centrality of the bandleader figure, especially such a disciplinarian as Sun Ra. His band was aptly described by Baraka as " really a black family. The leader keeps fourteen or fifteen musicians playing with him who are convinced that music is a priestly concern and a vitally significant aspect of black culture." (Jones 1967:130-131) This meant additionally that the musicians were isolated from the outside world, living together in a small house or cramped apartment in whatever city the Arkestra had recently settled, eating communally and rehearsing incessantly, with no monetary reward in sight. (Wilmer 1977:75) From the outside (and, quite possibly, for many on the inside) Sun Ra may have appeared a tyrant who kept his musicians raw, hungry, and overworked. Yet his sidemen were dedicated and respectful; several of them (such as saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen) remained with Sun Ra for many years, as is documented in the recent Sun Ra discography, Omniverse Sun Ra (Geerken 1995). In Sun Ra's own words,

It's like anything else... When the army wants to build men they isolate them. It's just the case that these are musicians, but you might say they're marines. They have to know everything. In their case, knowing everything means touching on all places of music. Of course they won't get as much chance to play as other musicians, but on the other hand, they're getting more chance to play... [and] to throw their energy into a pool with [others] who could be the link to do something with it. (Wilmer 1977:77)
He aimed to regain the discipline and productivity of the greatest big bands, and to have the musicians' egos subordinate to the collective effort, as the last part of this quote underscores.
Whether or not his own ego was subject to similar demands is perhaps subject to debate -- the problematic crux of the bandleader paradigm. For it was never simply "The Solar Arkestra;" it was always "Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra." To his credit, Sun Ra truly functioned as a parental or guru-like figure for his musicians, predating many of them by a generation. In order to command the kind of respect that he did, Sun Ra had to be a phenomenal musician and a strong leader, and anecdotes from his former sidemen show both to be true. Perennial Arkestra member John Gilmore, widely regarded until his recent passing to be one of the greatest living tenor players, described his initial exposure to the pianist thus:

It took me six months to actually hear how deep the things Sun Ra was doing were... He was so much advanced harmonically that although I could play his tunes since I could read music, it took me that long to see how different and how beautifully constructed his music was. (Wilmer 1977:84)
Baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick described Sun Ra as "the type of musician that inspires you towards improvement and a better output on your horn. There is always something to be learned from him ... [He] can be a pretty strict teacher in that he has very high standards." (Wilmer 1977:85) So Sun Ra was certainly deserving of his status as leader; over the course of his life, he developed a worldwide reputation as a master of African-American music. The use of his name in the billing of the Arkestra may have been necessary for the group's survival; audiences would turn out to see Sun Ra and whoever his sidemen happened to be. Rather than abusing this status, Sun Ra exploited it to foster a collective atmosphere that was highly musically productive, not to mention tremendously influential. Baraka's impressions, referred to above ("really a Black family," "a totally different epoch is conjured"), capture the alternative, collective existence that the Arkestra was able to achieve. The band presented and maintained a revolutionary, separate totality that had its own powerful, unique voice. Sun Ra's pervasive use of the "outer space" metaphor reinforced the group's separateness, its otherness, in an active sense that resists interpretation or domination by mass culture. The Arkestra relished the marginalized position, the outer space, by actively defining its collective identity.
Radano discusses some ideas about the appeal of African-derived communalism that were common both to the AACM's and to Sun Ra's philosophies:

In the mythology of Africa -- and, for that matter, in the everyday lives of many black Americans -- one could identify expressions of the social ideals that America's youths were seeking. The importance of solidarity and the tradition of communalism among blacks contradicted the norm of the fiercely competitive, capitalist state; the role that religion played in traditional African and African-American life suggested an antidote to the atheism and extreme secularism of an alienated urban, white world. Africa ... provided an alternative to mainstream belief systems, while reaffirming the individual's basis in the African-American heritage. (Radano 1992:87)
I would add that it was not simply the "mythology" of Africa, but the documented reality of African cultures and value systems, that shaped these ideas, as the writings of Ladzekpo attest, as scholars like Sun Ra and Malachi Favors understood.

Part 3. M-Base: Texts and contexts

It is in this context that I would like to discuss the more recently founded musical collective known as M-Base, and particularly the work of alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, generally regarded as the "founder" of this movement. Rather than beginning with biographical information, I choose as a point of entry into the discourses of M-Base the liner notes to "the first album of the entire M-Base Collective," Anatomy of a Groove (1992). One could easily begin elsewhere; but this album could be the first that truly set in writing some of the overarching premises of the collective, in short texts designed for mass consumption. The average consumer might purchase this album because of its well-known personnel (saxophonists Coleman and Greg Osby, vocalist Cassandra Wilson, and others), knowing nothing of the underlying concepts until reading from the liner notes. Coleman writes in these notes,
... [T]he ability to perceive intuition and logic as one "science" [helps give] African and African-American musics their distinctive quality and character. Western perception generally separates the intuitive and the logical. I feel that this process frequently results in a "misunderstanding" of non-Western ideals; thus Western standards are used to judge idioms not based on these standards. This of course is difficult to understand logically.
The technical element of this music is most difficult to explain ... (Coleman, in M-Base Collective, Anatomy of a Groove liner notes)

In defying "logical" explanation, the M-Base Collective presents its music as fundamentally different from Euro-American forms, as stemming from the "Afrological," to borrow Lewis's term (Lewis 1995b). In this way, as with Sun Ra's language of "outer space," M-Base "others" itself from Western sensibilities, in the active sense suggested by Mackey (1995), resisting appropriation, explanation, or pejorative pigeonholing by the dominant culture. In M-Base discourses, the cloudy word "intuition" becomes a powerful rhetorical device with a twofold function. It is used, in a manner that may appear evasive, to encapsulate a range of musical practices that defy explanation in Western musical, or even verbal, terms. When asked by an outsider how they "think about" certain technical aspects of some music, musicians in Coleman's group might give the cryptic and abrupt answer, "Intuition." On the other hand, among the musicians themselves, the same term has a well-understood sense. It seems (to this author, a fledgling M-Base participant) to embody both the privileging of non-verbal communication via shared musical knowledge, and the emphasis on creative process in the music, rather than on realization of premeditated activities.
The neologistic name of the collective also fulfills this "othering" function, resisting simple interpretation by controlling the discourse about its identity. The acronym "M-Base," when expanded to "Macro-Basic Array of Structured Extemporizations," remains impenetrable, and demands (of those who ask) careful follow-up inquiry. As a newer member of the collective, I submit an initial interpretation of a certain set (array) of predispositions, shared by a large community (macro-base), about making creative music (structured extemporizations) -- in other words, a shared, common standpoint for creative improvisation. This should not be interpreted as a "style," but rather as a "stance" -- an approach to creativity.

Since its coinage, however, the term has acquired many different levels of meaning. In the same liner notes, which offer (characteristically) a multiplicity of perspectives, Cassandra Wilson writes:

... What's M-BASE? It's more than just what the acronym states... More and more I find it's a way of life. It's a way of living truth at the crossroads. A means by which we can develop our musical capabilities to their fullest, thereby expanding, redefining and propelling the music into the 21st century and beyond. It's a spiritual movement ... (Wilson, in M-Base Collective, Anatomy of a Groove liner notes)
The Signifyin(g) reference to the Afrological metaphor of the crossroads operates as yet another "othering" assertion of black identity -- referencing a shared, private vocabulary. Meanwhile her language of progress into the future and self-actualization find (apparent) complication in the words "spiritual movement." Her purposefully brief, cryptic comments conjure up multiplicities of meaning that play off of each other.
Saxophonist Greg Osby, writing in the same context, emphasizes the focus on innovation by the M-Base "new-seekers"; only at the end of his essay does he mention the "ever-present belief that there are new ways to present old ideologies." (Osby, ibid ) In its context, the reference to the "old" only makes "logical" sense if one refers back to Coleman's lengthier comments. In contrast to Osby, Coleman emphasizes the continuity of their music with that of their predecessors, both recent and distant.

M-BASE uses the same concepts of communication, balance and emotional structures as many African-American forms of music in the past ... [I]t is closely aligned with the music of musicians in the 40's an 50's (Parker, Roach, Monk, Coltrane, etc.) but is also influenced by the popular rhythm-based music of our youth... Just as important, M-BASE is spiritually (and technically) influenced thru ancient ancestral ties with Africa. (Coleman, ibid. )
These three short texts, which play off of one another, appear in the context of "the first album of the entire M-Base Collective," in which many of the members have contributed original compositions and taken part in the production and engineering of the recording. The package presents an independent, growing and changing, African-American microcommunity with complex, fluid, self-defined identities.
Adding to the meanings of M-Base is a document by Steve Coleman on his World Wide Web site, entitled "M-Base, an explanation":

For us [M-Base] means expressing our experiences through music that uses improvisation and structure as two of its main ingredients. There is no limitation on the kind of structures or the type of improvisation, or the style of the music. The main goal is to creatively express our experiences as they are today and to try and build common creative musical languages in order to do this on some kind of large collective level ...
... M-Base is a way of thinking about creative music... (Coleman, "M-Base")
Again drawing from Taylor's collection of interviews, we see that these intents conform readily to previous Afrological musical perspectives, such as one voiced here by percussionist Max Roach:
I think it was in the 1950's that you began putting a message in your music. Can you tell me about it?
Two theories exist. One is that art is for the sake of art, which is true; the other theory, which is also true, is that the artist is like a secretary, whether he is a writer, a musician, or a painter: He keeps records of his time, so to speak. ... My music tries to say how I really feel, and I hope it mirrors in some way how black people feel in the United States. (Taylor 1977:112)

Again we see the characteristically Afrological emphasis on personal narrative indicated by Lewis above. Coleman notes in the same WWW document that in this and other ways, "M-Base is no different than many other creative perspectives that have come before." (Coleman, "M-Base")
In a more recent interview with the author, Coleman describes the initial goals of the M-Base Collective, retrospectively, in somewhat broader terms:

My goal was, and is to express the relationship of mankind, myself in particular to everything else, through music (or some sort of organized sound). Since I do not live in this universe alone I feel that this is best done by more than one person at a time, or groups of people. I've always wanted to be around other creative individuals so that is why I hook up with others. If it is called a collective or not really is not the point for me, it's the work that gets done and trying to stay on this path of creative expression. (Coleman, "An Interview")
In defining the concept as broadly as he does -- avoiding specificity of style, sound, or structure, while emphasizing personal narrative, relational perspectives, and the language of "universals" -- Coleman builds into M-Base a kind of global communalism, in the sense described by Ladzekpo above. Again, to requote Lewis, "The focus of musical discourse suddenly shifts from the individual creator to the collective, the individual as a part of global humanity." (Lewis 1995a) Yet at the same time, Coleman in the above quote displays a step away from the goals of the building of a common musical language or "array." The collectivism has been abstracted, generalized. This move is discussed more towards the end of this paper, to which I also defer discussion of Coleman's career and activities.

Part 4. M-Base: Some musical elaborations

The spirit of M-Base provides a framework for analysis of much of the creative music associated with the movement. The general emphasis on open improvisational forms with structured rhythmic multiplicity suggest both the collective spirit of the AACM and the metaphorized rhythmic "society" described by Ladzekpo. I have attempted a transcription of the title track to the Steve Coleman and Five Elements album, Drop Kick. (A scanned image of the transcription will soon appear here.) Heavily influenced by West African concepts, the piece is a study in rhythmic variety. Its backbone is a fixed six-beat rhythmic group in the bass and drums. As is common in many African-derived musics, the majority of the accents are displaced from the main beats. (In fact, so strong is the effect of this displacement that the main pulse is typically perceived by casual listeners to be one half-beat off of its true location. However, this may be corrected by careful attention to the other interlocking parts and to Coleman's improvisation within the overall structure.) Actually the drum part is exactly three-fourths of a well-known beat to a song by James Brown, in which the main pulse is no mystery. On top of this appear three other fixed rhythmic groups: a nine-beat guitar line which accents the main pulse, a five-beat piano part, and a five-beat part for two (overdubbed) saxophones. All of these fixed parts enter gradually and are roughly constant (allowing for some improvised embellishment) throughout the piece. The entire form, which cycles in much the same way that a typical jazz song form would, is five six-beat measures, two of which are occasionally reserved for the main theme. The form could also be viewed as six five-beat measures, reinforcing the emphasis on multiplicity of perspectives. I have written these parts out in a way that indicates their phrasing, by circling each phrase in a way that shows its relationship to the "Regulative Time Points" (RTP) (i.e. the main beats). This analysis draws inspiration from Anku (1992), whom Coleman has said to have influenced his thinking greatly.
The form may seem either exceedingly simple or prodigiously complicated. One may regard the piece as a simple groove with static pitch organization, and ignore the rhythmic interplay among the various cycles (as I realize now that I have done, in guest performances with the ensemble); or one may instead hear the entire form embodied in the rhythmic progressions -- the unfolding relationships among the different-length rhythms. The following quote from Ladzekpo provides a useful interpretation that is in keeping with the M-Base concept:

As a child going through this normal routine of Anlo-Ewe upbringing, my lack of subtleties in performing new sophisticated rhythmic contrasts were frequently criticized as a lack of a strong sense of purpose capable of regulating the dynamics of contrasting obstacles in life. Blocking off a beat scheme to ease the hostility between opposing beat schemes of unfamiliar rhythmic contrast was often severely punished as my avoidance of the real challenges in life. (Ladzekpo, "Cultural Understanding")
Scrutiny of Coleman's saxophone improvisation shows a significant amount of interaction with the different parts, similar to the interaction of the lead drum in a West African ensemble with the fixed parts of the other drums. Isolated examples of this occur at measures A5-A6, where the improvised line rearticulates the rhythm in the bass, and at B8 and C2, where the phrasing is antiphonal with the saxophone background lines. Furthermore, if one applies a "minimum-syncopation principle" to his phrasing, one finds that the main pulse is accentuated more (e.g. see A2-A4), than the deceptive off-beat pulse. Occasionally, however, Coleman plays with the ambiguity of the main pulse; listen to measures A2 and A3, where the same accented G#'s are displaced by a half-beat.
The pitch content of his lines plays with the ambiguity of the static "tonality" established by the other instruments. The sound may be called F#minor, though the most heavily accented bass note is F (or E#), as is the most frequent guitar note. The simultaneous presence of these two "tonalities" provides much material for the improvisor, if, again, he or she chooses to accept the "challenges in life." Coleman's initial improvised phrases (A1) sound roughly like F#minor, but gradually (e.g., B4) the pitch organization is explored in less direct ways. Later (E6) he plays with the ambiguity with a brief Signifyin(g) reference to "bebop" styles -- a stock phrase in the key of F. As the rest of the improvisation shows, this kind of overt, humorous reference is quite rare in Coleman's playing, but it shows that his musical "roots" indeed lie where he says they do -- in the black creative musicians of this century.

A most intriguing sequence in the piece is the rhythmic bridge, which occurs twice in this recording (C6, E7). The "telescoping" sequence consists of a fixed rhythmic phrase (played percussively, a major second apart, by two saxophones) separated by a varying number of rests. Starting on the first off-beat of the beginning of the form (so that the first note coincides with the bass and bass-drum accent), the phrases are grouped thus as 4+1/2 beats, 5 beats, 5+1/2 beats, and 5 beats, for a total of 20 beats -- i.e., 4 times through a 5-beat phrase. The 4+1/2-beat phrase (3+1/2 beats plus 1 beat of rest) forms an "incomplete" 5-beat phrase, of which the later 5+1/2-beat phrase serves as a "complement." The total 20-beat phrase can be repeated any number of times, and may or may not break up the underlying 30-beat form. It serves as a release or contrast to the main material, similar to James Brown's practice of "takin(g) it to the bridge." It also reemphasizes the central notion of rhythmic contrast, and shows the way that this is internalized by the musicians. Attention to a live recording of this piece (Coleman, Curves of Life) shows the degree to which this music is performed and expanded upon quite naturally by some core M-Base participants.

In performance, the musicians must be able to communicate freely and expressively within these textures. Preparation for performance involves learning to hear these contrasting rhythms simultaneously. Though this requires much self-study, the participants tend to learn a great deal from each other. Just as each musician has a different rhythmic group upon which to focus, each member also contributes a different perspective to the formation of the musical totality. Coleman says of collective learning,

By learning with others you can get instant feedback from other creative minds (each bringing to the table different experiences and insights) DURING the learning process. This enables a kind of collective experience that can be drawn upon when internalizing information the first time. Individual learning does not have this advantage (although it does have its own advantages, but you can always learn on an individual level. You have to reach out and interact with others to learn collectively). I don't believe collective learning is stressed in the west. Performing music in a creative group is collective learning as is playing in a big band of some sort but I'm speaking now of collective learning in the more general and traditional concept of studying and conceptualizing together with others. (Coleman, "An Interview")
My own experience interacting with the musicians in the group Five Elements (and working on similar rhythmic ideas in other ensembles) has supported these claims. When all members of the group have internalized and mastered the rhythms performed by all musicians, the possibilities are heightened for improvised interactivity. Ladzekpo again corroborates this approach, phrasing it in more global terms:
[R]hythm is not only the whole feeling of movement in music, but also the dominant feature which, along with others, create the transcendent environment (music) necessary for the vital needs of communal communication and unification... Its medium provides the training and the logical means of subjecting contrasting forces or moments in human existence to human control. (Ladzekpo, "Rhythmic Principles")
Another valuable musical example that features the cross-cultural exchange of personal narrative occurs on a recent album by Steve Coleman and the Mystic Rhythm Society, entitled Myths, Modes and Means. This group features Japanese-American kotoist Miya Masaoka, Morrocan vocalist Yassir Chadly, American rapper/lyricist Kokayi (Carl Walker), percussionist Josh Jones, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and the keyboardist-author, in addition to the core Five Elements personnel of Coleman, pianist Andy Milne, bassist Reggie Washington, and drummer Gene Lake. Because many of the former musicians are either unfamiliar with the music of Five Elements or have not learned its technical specifics, the emphasis shifts to broader notions of interactivity. Lewis writes,

[T]he nomadic movement of populations has resulted in the opportunity for a kind of transcultural experimentalism, where the experimental is embodied, not in concepts of timbre, extended techniques, pitch organization or formal devices, but in the intercultural encounter itself, as a locus of communication between traditions. (Lewis 1995a)
In the entirely improvised introduction to "Finger of God" (Coleman, Myths) common elements among the respective musical vocabularies -- such as the use of a "drone" pitch -- provide points of departure for the various musicians. Each interacts with these elements in his or her own respective way. For example, vocalist Chadly appears to hear the drone pitch, G, as the fifth scale degree (the "dominant" pitch), as his improvisations seem to imply a modality rooted in C. One might say that the ensuing tonal multiplicity embodies the multiplicity of viewpoints that creates the music.

Part 5. M-Base: Global Collectivism

Now that I have gone to lengths to establish the collectivist spirit of the M-Base Collective, I would like to discuss the current status of this "collective". First I will give a bit more background. Born in 1956 in Chicago, Coleman moved to New York City in 1978 to escape what he saw as a "creative dead end in the Chicago scene." (Coleman, "Resume") Though he had grown up in the home of the AACM, by the time he was of an age to become involved in its activities, the organization had somewhat dissipated, its key members having moved to New York or Europe. Shortly after his arrival in New York, he had started working in large ensembles led by Thad Jones, Sam Rivers, and Cecil Taylor. About these early activities Coleman notes,
I think now that training was invaluable [for both] collective learning, ... and also more academic stuff like learning how to phrase, learning how to hear and treat a large group as one musical entity or instrument, and learning how to deal in a social musical context. Also, watching Thad Jones, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers and others deal with large groups of musicians in an effort to get them to collectively express an idea as a unit was ... of great value, since this is one of the very things I have to deal with. It was very good for developing patience and discipline. But at the time I started to do this I did not clearly know all of this. I was mainly trying to learn exactly the way Bird and others had learned, because I figured they must have done something right to be able to express their music like that. I figured (and I still do) that the way they learned had a lot to do with it. (Coleman, private commun.)
Here Coleman echoes the esteem for the big bands espoused by Sun Ra, Miles Davis and others; Coleman aimed to duplicate the early learning experiences of heroes such as Charles Parker and John Coltrane. He has made connections between what he learned from these experiences and his current group-improvisational activities (which he calls "collective meditations"). (Coleman, private commun.)
Playing on the city streets for a good part of the time to earn subsistence, Coleman and his ad-hoc cohorts began working on the foundations of some of the musical concepts that have become associated with M-Base -- "improvisations within nested looping structures." (Coleman, "Resume") Soon he had connected with trumpeter Graham Haynes, vocalist Cassandra Wilson, and keyboardist Geri Allen; together the four of them became the creative backbone of the group Five Elements. Coleman says of this group,

All of these people have one thing in common besides their great musical abilities, Very Strong Intuitive Powers. They automatically interpreted the music using a great deal of intuition. Now this can be dangerous (at least to me) if you are not prepared musically but they were and the four of us sort of carried the rest of the people from a creative standpoint. (Coleman, private commun.)
I have conducted a brief written interview with Coleman on the subject of the collective status of M-Base, as it has transformed over the years. Judging from his responses, it becomes clear that "collectivism" in the AACM's sense, or in the Arkestra's sense, has been supplanted by a more open, less rigid definition. Coleman gives his views of the decline of the collective atmosphere among the early M-Base participants:
You see when I was working with Cassandra Wilson, Greg Osby, Geri Allen etc.. we made it a point to try and have a group that did not have a musical leader (or a business leader also but it turned out that I was doing most of the business). I was also one of the pushier people in the group in terms of trying to advance our musical way of thinking... This led to problems as others wanted to be looked at by people outside of this process (critics, writers, record company people) as doing more of these things... Eventually egos came into play and this is one of the reasons why this group of people are not really working together today. Everybody wanted to be looked at as a leader and as a result all of these people (and some others too) have got their own groups today.
The nature of the music industry today is such that individual musicians are immediately looking to form their own groups and get their own recording contracts, even before they get any real experience out in the field. This is due in large part to the commercial pressures of the music industry (and the west in general). Many times musicians deviate from their original purpose of creating music because of commercial pressures...

So I decided to just start the groups myself and lead in a more obvious way (businesswise and musically) so there would be no argument and therefore no ego battles. I think this works out better in this culture although I wish it were different because I have to do a lot of things that really have nothing to do with creating music, just to make the music happen at all.

...If I start The Mystic Rhythm Society (instead of Steve Coleman and The Mystic Rhythm Society) then you have the kind of situation that existed with Weather Report or The Jackson Five, where any aggressive dissenting member of the group can break up the whole thing because of the way this society is.

... I don't think that the collectives that most people talk about last very long in this country today because of the western mentality and commercial pressures but that does not effect the kind of collective I mentioned above because creative energy always will find a way to manifest itself through individuals and groups of individuals. (ibid.)

Coleman makes sure, however, that the spirit of this musical microcommunity (as it is today) remains, independent of the music business. He himself frequently works through the established industry channels (major record companies, booking agents) to try to reach a wider audience; his own name and status are what make these efforts possible. Coleman maintains a balance between activities through these established channels on the one hand, and less economically viable, grass-roots channels on the other. The latter was exemplified by the six-week Five Elements 1994 residency in the Bay Area, which was largely financed by Coleman himself. Like Sun Ra, Coleman uses his success and status to assume the role of moderator, to facilitate the broader, more abstract goals of M-Base. "If it is called a collective or not really is not the point for me, it's the work that gets done and trying to stay on this path of creative expression." (ibid.)
Another comment from the interview broadens the notions of M-Base even further:

When I use the term "collective" I'm really not using it in the same sense as I think you are. For me the M-Base collective is the group of people who have contributed to a way of thinking about creating music. It is not a group of people who make a certain style of music. So for me Muhal [Richard Abrams, AACM co-founder and pianist] is part of the M-Base collective, even if he would not say so. (ibid.)
This may appear to be the last straw. Now that Coleman extends inclusion in this creative community even to people who are unaware of their membership (not that Abrams and Coleman are strangers to each other), where are the boundaries of the M-Base collective? Has "M-Base" lost its meaning entirely? Has it become reduced to a list of Coleman's favorite people?
I believe otherwise. At the end of the interview, Coleman mentions the abstract forces that define M-Base, and his role in relation to them:

I am only the catalyst and portal through which the energy that is holding this particular incarnation of creative relationships together is working. But other individuals respond to these vibrations by opening themselves to these creative energies and this is what makes it a collective on this plane of existence. (ibid.)
These comments locate the the collective's defining force in the interactive exchange itself. Ultimately, M-Base's scope encompasses those who are "open" to transmission of discourses or "energies." It thereby builds on the underlying Afrological emphasis on interaction of personal narrative. The focus on exchange, transmission, and flow of ideas necessitates communication across cultures.
I close with the following two related quotes:

My own belief is that musical improvisation in the West is inherently and necessarily transcultural at base. Musics from all over the world are studied and influences flow freely between traditions, while traditional Western practices are often subtly decentered. This transcultural nature is, I feel, at the heart of the dilemma facing the creative person working through improvisation in the West, most particularly in the Americas. (Lewis 1995a)
... There is no doubt in my mind that we will soon come into a world music, a different and wholly new music derived from the musics of the many different peoples of earth ... What is happening points back to the most natural and fundamental law of becoming. That is to say, all of music's laws, principles, and aesthetic concepts are contributing to the common birth which will eventually develop its own personality as a world music... Needless to say, with the technological advancements ... of contemporary times, we are indeed in a position to form a world community, and it is from this community that the new music will arise. (Smith 1974)
Whatever M-Base is, I feel that it addresses these global, transcultural issues, and it does so from a growing complex of Afrological viewpoints.

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