FREE MUSIC PRODUCTION (FMP) REVISITED

At the end of the 1960s, one of the most important artistic cooperatives of European free jazz emerged in West Berlin with the FMP. Based on the collective efforts of leading exponents of the West German jazz avant-garde (such as Peter Brötzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Manfred Schoof and Peter Kowald), FMP was not only a label, but also a cosmos of festivals, series of events, workshops, individual concerts and recordings - as well as a social experiment in artistic self-determination beyond established structures and a focal point for the presentation, realization and communication of free and improvised music. The FMP set worldwide standards (e.g. with the Berlin residency of the American pianist Cecil Taylor in 1988 and the production of the 11-CDs box set Cecil Taylor in Berlin '88) and established a continuously diversifying, worldwide social and musical network based on the Western European scene. The artistic-musical processes and productions of the FMP have established its reputation as one of the most important contributions to contemporary music.
In Free Music Production (FMP) revisited, Thomas Hartmann presents the first comprehensive reappraisal of this history. The meticulous reconstruction of the emergence, structure and genesis of FMP using a Bruno Latour-oriented concept of practice is based on critical reflexive-contextual oral history research with those responsible for FMP at the time and aims to provide an internal perspective of the cooperative. In contrast to the failure of other cooperatives, it shows how an independent model of aesthetic and social practice emerged from the artistic, economic and cultural-political dynamics, making the book a reference work for all those interested in questions of artistic self-organization, experimental music and the link between cultural policy and music.
A detailed factual section complements the precise historical analysis, whose innovative combination of various specialized discourses (social science practice theory, new jazz studies, jazz research on the history of jazz in Germany) opens up a perspective on the avant-garde in the second half of the 20th century that is new in this form. Furthermore, the book liberates the glorified cult object FMP from the repetition of dominant narratives and uncovers a model of artistic-cultural action that points far beyond jazz.

Published on November 25

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