Geri Allen's Freedom Music: Notes on Openness and the Universal

Abstract

Geri Allen once told an interviewer that music is like water, meaning that it was as essential as a life-giving force. Thus, what can we make of the life-giving character of music? It is something that is not easily discernible from a chart, a transcription, or even a recording. Tammy Kernodle's question of “Where do you go?”—posed metaphorically to the pianist—made me curious about Allen's ideas of space and time. In this article, I pay attention to how her ideas challenge conventions of time in jazz and how they contribute to ongoing liberation struggles in the United States.