The enormous variety of borrowing (citation) in free jazz cannot be adequately described by our current rigid and limited terminology. The rhetoric and ideology present in outmoded descriptions of borrowing that use language and assumptions advanced by Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli obligate us to intervene and create a new system for writing about borrowing. We must do away with mythical and mystical language of inspiration and creation, as well as the inflexible idea that jazz emerged solely from the condition of Black Americans. Furthermore, distinctions between types of borrowing are useless if divorced from the texts--"text" in this case being a flexible term that refers not just to our traditional ideas of notated music, but to any heard performance. If we separate term and text, we slide back towards old unconstructive accusations of copying and plagiarism. The new terminology should incorporate the many types of borrowing that occur, including collage, mélange, collision, juxtaposition, reminiscence, and self-borrowing, as well as the performance conditions and the reason for the use of a particular source.

Index Classifications: General, 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Paul Killinger