Tony Williams' drumset ideology to 1969: Synergistic emergence from an adaptive modeling of feel, technique and creativity as an archetype for cultivating originality in jazz drumset performance studies

Abstract

I identify Tony Williams’ formative drumset ideology as being emergent from his adaptive modeling of the feel, technique and creativity identified in the drumming of Art Blakey, Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones respectively and present the results of extensive textual and musicological research on Williams’ formative practices between 1945 and 1969 as an archetype for cultivating originality in jazz drumset performance studies. I examine patterns of creative thought in the New York jazz community as they developed from the relative heteronomy of modernist bebop improvisation to the postmodernist aesthetic of jazz-rock fusion resulting in the emergence of collective autonomy in musical interaction and improvisation. My research reveals Willams’ possession of autotelic personality and utilisation of learning techniques associated with heutagogy. Also identified is the prevalence of entrainment in the social and musical interactions of the New York jazz community and I interpret these qualities through the lens of the theory of complex adaptive systems as a model for learning in jazz drumset performance studies. I analyse Williams’ ensemble and solo drumming in comparison to that of Blakey, Roach and Jones in addition to Roy Haynes by using an analytic schema designed specifically for identification of contrasting qualities in the voicing of rhythm and expression as revealed in the grouping and ordering of limbs in drumset performance. I present a complete stylistic overview of Williams’ recorded output until 1969 including swing, avant garde, ballad, straight eighth-note and sixteenth-note oriented styles as well as complex temporal events such as polymetric superimposition, rubato, polytempo, superimposed metric modulation, metric modulation and tempo fluctuation.