Freedom: Contemporary Music Inspired By Malcom X, Gandhi & Others – Alex Sebastianutto

Meaningful coincidences frequently happen in the history of human artistic expressions related to great social themes. Sometimes they do not appear as coincidences, but rather as a kind of “calls” whereby creativity becomes a more suggestive subject in comparison with, for example, a reasoned essay. Exactly sixty years have elapsed from the time when, with courage and determination, coloured percussionist and composer Max Roach published his “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite”. This was characterized by a cover of a decidedly provocative style: a picture portraying three African Americans sitting at a bar counter, looking towards the camera lens with rather non-submissive gazes, while a perplexed white barman was wiping an object and observing the three youths with some preoccupation. This rich series of pieces possesses a similar artistic courage, considering their compositional and interpretive choices. The pieces are connected by a common thematic thread, i.e. that of the celebration of freedom and of some of liberty’s protagonists, as well as of (one may well say) its martyrs.
Before giving some interpretive suggestions about the music of “Freedom”, signed by Alex and Morris Sebastianutto, it is worth mentioning that the composers (i.e. Miani, Messieri, Molteni, Ianne, Lugli and Schiavo) were inspired by people (i.e. Malcolm X, in two instances, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and the three Mirabal sisters) who all died a violent death. In one more case, that of Palach, such a death was self-procured precisely due to his fearless and uncompromising fight for freedom and freedoms.
Evidently the musicians who authored these works have been deeply stimulated by the subject, by the perception of these inspiring personalities, by the settling in time of the never-soothed racial problem, which only recently resurfaced on the media.
This aural work derives its overall raison d’être and expressive power (in spite of the vibrant diversity of the compositional styles) from the engagement of the two performers. They not only were able to overcome the connotative limits of their instruments (i.e. alto sax and trumpet), but also transformed them into two transfiguring aural realities. It is almost an alchemic process of music, with the undisputable contribution of the creative qualities of the composers who dedicated their pieces to these two musicians.
The two performers’ artistic maturation finds its dynamic accomplishment in this itinerary; it is almost a point of no return, where the path of so-called “classical music” becomes a workshop for a broad kind of listening and an intense expression. In fact, the Sebastianutto brothers are not jazz musicians, and this makes their capability of interacting with deeply different stylistic worlds even freer, wider and more cultivated.
Indeed, jazz music was born as a music destined for the entertainment and implicitly expressing freedom for the US Afro-American community. It was frequently imitated and “appropriated” by the Whites, and became art music, with an extraordinary explicit freedom, particularly with the avant-gardes of the Fifties and Sixties.
Later, however, as the giants passed away (presently, only the nonagenarian Sonny Rollis is still alive) and with the present global transformation, jazz frequently turned into academia, and lost its biting power and its cruelty, even on the ideal plane.
“Freedom”, the work recorded here, seems to overcome many boundaries, precisely as freedom does, giving identity and recognizability to each piece, also through wonderful citations. In the galvanizing Just X by Marco Molteni (track 3) it is impossible not to be reminded of Frank Zappa’s hyper-structured frenzy; this piece, dedicated to Malcolm X, also hides echoes from Stravinsky (whom Zappa worshipped, along with Varèse’s polymetries).