Albert Ayler Trio
Spiritual Unity

It was thanks to that strange half-white beard that they recognized him. He had disappeared for twenty days. They fished him out of the icy waters of the East River, in Brooklyn, in front of the Congress Street pier. It was November 25, 1970.

He was 34. Like Charlie Parker.

“Spiritual Unity” was recorded in a single day: July 10, 1964. It's an album infused with freedom and love, but when I listen to it, I think of children.

Because you have to watch children when they play: they are attentive, concentrated, nothing they do is random, but to me, watching them, their actions are incomprehensible; because they, unlike me, are free.

Their toy soldiers don't fight, cars fly, little animals are not little animals, and guns don't kill.

And if you ask them what they're doing, they look at you surprised – isn’t it clear? – they show you their hands, point at something, offer you a toy (instead of asking silly questions, play!) and, if they care about you – but they really have to care about you to do something as silly as explaining a game – and if they speak (but if they speak, they are already less free), they will tell you something incomprehensible, some strange newly invented word: bridlalà, frrrr, gnagnà. There you go: they are gnagnàing.

How do you explain an album where the sax doesn't sketch melodies, the drums don't provide rhythm, and the double bass – oh the double bass! – whatever it’s not doing, it’s doing brilliantly?

At first listen, you might think they're pulling your leg, but I can see them, Ayler, Murray, and Peacock, on July 10, 1964, at the Variety Arts Recording Studios in New York: they are attentive, concentrated, nothing they do is random, but to me, watching them, their actions are incomprehensible; because they, unlike me, are free.

They are gnagnàing.

So, you shouldn't listen to this album with your head but with your stomach. And with your heart.

Because you must love those who are free, people are unbearable when they are free.

It's like when I look at her: I know (and only I know) that when she hides something from me, she makes that strange smile and gets that small wrinkle near her nose, and I know (and only I know) that when she laughs, she squints her eyes tightly because she doesn't want to make too much noise, she thinks her joy might hurt someone who is sad.

So I know (and perhaps only I know) that just after the fifth minute, Sunny Murray misses the beat and hits the wrong bell or that midway through “Spirits”, Ayler hesitates – it’s like he’s thinking – he has to play that note – that one there – the one we all expect, but instead no, he plays another, unexpected, foreign one, but after he's played it, you realize that note, that one, was necessary.

Because freedom, like play, is a serious thing: it has its rules, its meanings, its structures, even if you don't understand them, because the bars of our prison are not the rules, the bars are logic.

You want to say, “wonky phrases”, “atonal constructs”, “tribal polyrhythms”, “muffled scream”, the more you try to explain it, the worse it gets. You say “it's free jazz”, but free jazz doesn't mean a damn thing.

It's like, do you remember that hedge that “from so much part of the last horizon the gaze excludes” which isn’t in Recanati, but in each of our heads? All the art of the '20th century is sitting there behind (including the so-called “free jazz” and Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and Eric Dolphy, etc.) imagining the superhuman silences and the profound peace, trying to describe what's beyond, when Albert Ayler arrives and throws himself over it, over that hedge, with all his shoes.

I know: the review is getting long. But you are free: if it's long, don't read it.

Because I still have a lot of things to tell you. I have to tell you that Ayler wasn't a jazz musician like the others. He started with his father in church, then played R&B and blues with a certain Little Walter, then entered the army and became passionate about military marches, that he had to move to Sweden to be able to start working seriously (too different and strange for the American music scene), that upon returning to America he recorded this “Spiritual Unity” and, since they didn't know how to define it, Ayler said: “call it Energy music”. And he recorded other incredible stuff: “The Hilversum Session” with Don Cherry, “Bells”, “Spirits Rejoice”, increasingly noisy and wild, with larger groups, even with his brother Donald, “Love Cry”, where you can even hear a bagpipe.

And he played at Coltrane's funeral, who was one of the few who believed in him.

Then he recorded very strange things like “New Grass”, which was R&B, or “Music is the Healing Force of the Universe” where there was also Henry Vestine from Canned Heat.

Then his brother went mad.

I should tell you still about Esp-Disk, “the craziest record label in the world”, founded by that out-of-his-mind Bernard Stolmann, a lawyer obsessed with free jazz and Esperanto (hence the label's name), whose slogan was: “the artist alone decides what you will hear on their Esp-Disk”. On which indefinable jazz musicians like Giuseppi Logan or Sun Ra recorded, more or less academic musicians like Alan Sondheim or Ran Blake, various freakeries like Pearls Before Swine or the Holy Modal Rounders, and many, many more. And two incredible albums like “Orgasm” by Cromagnon and, above all, “Sings” the album by Patty Waters (but about her, perhaps, I'll tell you another time).

I should also tell you about Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock, who weren't exactly newcomers, but I know I’ve already gone on too long.

So I'll just tell you that I've wondered many times what happened to Albert Ayler in those twenty days he disappeared. They’ll tell you he was a weakling harassed by women, that he considered himself responsible for his brother’s madness or they'll bring out strange conspiracy theories.

I don’t know. I think he was gnagnàing with his life.

Goodbye Albert, thanks for teaching me (or at least you tried) to be free.