Let s try to play the music and not the background. Ornette Coleman, liner notes of the LP Free Jazz 20] WhenIbegantocreateacourseonfreejazz, theriskofsuchanenterprise was immediately apparent: I knew that Cecil Taylor had failed to teach such a matter, and that for other, more academic instructors, the topic was still a sort of outlandish adventure. To be clear, we are not talking about tea- ing improvisation here a di?erent, and also problematic, matter rather, we wish to create a scholarly discourse about free jazz as a cultural achievement, and follow its genealogy from the American jazz...