Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago

Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago

This year marks the golden anniversary of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the flagship band of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Formed in 1966 and flourishing until 2010, the Art Ensemble distinguished itself by its unique performance practices—members played hundreds of instruments on stage, recited poetry, performed theatrical sketches, and wore face paint, masks, lab coats, and traditional African and Asian dress. The group, which built a global audience and toured across six continents, presented their work as experimental performance art, in opposition to the jazz industry’s traditionalist aesthetics. In Message to Our Folks , Paul Steinbeck combines musical analysis and historical inquiry to give us the definitive study of the Art Ensemble. In the book, he proposes a new theory of group improvisation that explains how the band members were able to improvise together in so many different styles while also drawing on an extensive repertoire of notated compositions. Steinbeck examines the multimedia dimensions of the Art Ensemble’s performances and the ways in which their distinctive model of social relations kept the group performing together for four decades. Message to Our Folks is a striking and valuable contribution to our understanding of one of the world’s premier musical groups. “I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Steinbeck for Message to Our Folks . This book is more than we could have hoped for, telling the complete history of the Art Ensemble of Chicago in careful, engaging detail.” ― Roscoe Mitchell, founder, Art Ensemble of Chicago “Steinbeck has produced a major contribution to both music theory and the burgeoning field of critical improvisation studies, showing academic and lay readers alike how these boundary-shattering African-American artists realized their ambitious dreams, not only in sound, but through alternative communities of affect and agency that transformed experimentalism itself.” ― George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music “This is a crucial work of scholarship, one that’s been a long time coming. The Art Ensemble of Chicago were a once in a lifetime phenomenon; a book this passionate and informed is the least they’ve earned.” ― The Wire “Illuminating. . . . Steinbeck’s Message to Our Folks demonstrates how well the band succeeded on their own terms. They made just the uncompromising music they wanted to, and they made it pay.” ― Kevin Whitehead, Fresh Air “The book contains a wealth of information and original interviews. It is a very easy read, well written and clear throughout. . . . The chapters dedicated to musical analyses are lush with detail. Through transcriptions, diagrams, and highly detailed writing, Steinbeck conveys the depth and creativity that goes into each Art Ensemble performance. The illustrations in these chapters are extensive. These three chapters alone are worth the price of the book. . . . An essential read for anyone interested in the Art Ensemble of Chicago or creative music.” ― Free Jazz Collective “ Message to Our Folks calls attention to just how staggering an achievement the Art Ensemble of Chicago accomplished.” ― PopMatters “A thorough, learned, yet consistently readable account of one of the most long-lived and successful bands in the music. Mixing a wealth of biographical detail and an entertaining history of the band’s rise to international fame with close musical analysis of three key recordings,  Message to Our Folks  perfectly captures the band’s unique ethos by examining its roots in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians; its experimentation with multi-media performance art; its travels around the world, most importantly to 1970s Paris but subsequently to places such as Nigeria, Jamaica and Japan; its theory of group improvisation; and its pioneering approach to social relations. In short, this is a model study of one of the most influential bands in creative music.” ― London Jazz News “A much-needed look at the genius of The Art Ensemble Of Chicago—one of the coolest, most compelling groups to emerge in the great wave of avant jazz in the late 60s—and one who continued to give the world a lifetime legacy of groundbreaking music! There's been plenty written on the group over the years, but author Paul Steinbeck really takes things further—by bringing his own musicological training to play with the performances of the group—expanding our understanding of their sounds with rich interpretation of key moments—balanced out nicely by a fuller history of the group and its individual members—and their importance both on the American and global jazz scenes during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.” ― Dusty Groove “A fine and minutely researched history. . . . It’s more than just a standard biography. Steinbeck—a bassist, composer, and professor of music—also devotes several chapters to microscopically detailed, mom