Samenvatting

The university systems around jazz arose in the 1970s - at least 20 to 30 years after the heyday of the music it teaches. Acknowledging this truth begs the question of how the music was taught, learned, and diffused prior to its induction into this system. Additionally, the major contributions of experimental musicians are profoundly influential to music at large, but oft relegated to the sidelines of colloquial jazz history. Through investigating the early-life context of particular individuals and groups of experimental musicians such as Sun Ra, the AACM and Alice Coltrane, frameworks of learning arose through both distinct and common contextual experiences. With an additional analytical framework of both historical and contemporary theorists observing the pitfalls of a cartesian educational framework, coupled with a case study of individual practice, the methods of the early 20th century experimentalists are not only understood and venerated, but put to practice. A system of dynamic interplay between Context, References, and Praxis revealed itself to be present through the research. Through this dynamic it is possible to further understand the importance of a grounded syncretism of tradition with experimentation in the 21st century as put forth by the influential musicians of the 20th century. The implications of this research provide a framework to investigate other musical developments as well as generating a method with which to define one’s music without the constraint of topical genre. As an ode to anti-essentialism, it also provides a framework on how to engage ideas and
ideologues with nuance which does not forgo criticism.