Film Review: FIRE MUSIC (directed by Tom Surgal)

Bebop revolutionized  jazz in the mid-1940s, shifting the role of the soloist from improvising off of the melody to developing new spontaneous ideas over a song’s chord changes. Just 15 years later, bebop was thought of old fashioned by the new revolutionaries of  free  (or avant-garde)  jazz. Instead of using chord changes as the basis of their solos, many of these players dispensed with chords altogether and simply played whatever came to mind, sometimes using a theme or a rhythm as a point of departure.

Free jazz musician Ornette Coleman performing in 1971.
Photo credit: JP Roche.

While free  jazz  failed to gain a wide audience during an era when bossa-nova, soul  jazz, rock, and ultimately fusion gained popularity, it has been an important part of  jazz  ever since, widening the potential for soloists in expressing emotions, technique, and breaking down barriers between styles.

Free jazz musician Carla Bley performing in San Francisco, CA in 1979.
Photo credit: Brian McMillen.

Fire Music: The Story Of Free  Jazz is a long overdue look at the still-revolutionary music. Tom Surgal (who wrote, produced and directed the film), co-writer John Northrup and producers Dan Braun and Joseph Wemple certainly put a lot of work into the production. Excerpts from interviews with nearly every major survivor of the 1960s/70s free  jazz  era are utilized to tell the story along with a continuous flow of brief snippets from recordings and live performances. One learns about Ornette Coleman, the New York avant-garde scene, the move of many Chicago  free  jazz  players to France in 1968, the gradual acceptance of their music when they returned to the U.S. a few years later, the loft  jazz  scene, and a little bit about the parallel movement in Europe. The movie ends pessimistically with a dismissal of much of  jazz’s more mainstream music of the past 40 years and the lack of a new messiah to lead the music ahead.

Jazz musician John Coltrane performing (year unknown).
Photo credit: Lee Tanner. 

The film holds one’s interest throughout but there are faults. There is no mention of the early free  jazz  experiments of Lennie Tristano and some West Coast  jazz groups, the significance of Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra’s pre-Ornette music is overlooked, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler are summed up much too quickly, Archie Shepp is barely mentioned (ironically Fire Music is the name of one of his albums), and Pharoah Sanders and Paul Bley are completely absent. There should have been musical examples included of bebop and  free  jazz  so one could hear how revolutionary the latter was, and the music should have been allowed to speak for itself much more. In addition, it should have concluded on a more optimistic note because  free  jazz  is very much alive today.

Free jazz musician Ornette Coleman performing (year unknown).
Photo credit Guy Le Querrec, Magnum Photos.

Of course summing up a major musical movement in 87 minutes is difficult, particularly when all of the main artists played very different from each other. There is certainly a lot of great raw material seen in Fire Music and obviously there is much more that did not make it into the film and will hopefully be used somewhere in the future. If this documentary had been geared a bit more towards the novice, introducing new listeners to this fascinating music, its value would be greater. But as it is, Fire Music is worth watching, giving one a rare chance to hear many of free  jazz’s important artists speaking briefly about their music.

images courtesy of Submarine Deluxe
poster photo: Sun Ra in Berkeley, CA in 1968. Photo credit: Baron Wolman.

Fire Music
Submarine Deluxe
88 min | USA | Not rated | limited release
September 10, 2021 in NYC (Fil Forum) and September 17 in L.A. (Laemmle Glendale)