ABSTRACT
For sax players who improvise and come from a jazz background, the physical nature of producing a sound is based on a jazz technique. Classical sax players play with a steady preconceived vibrato – jazz players play without or are very flexible and selective in its use, which is reflected in the shaping of phrases. Highly skilled and experienced musicians are aware of these and other elements, which also lends some credence to the suggestion that mostly other free jazzers listen to free jazz. People under free jazz are people like Coltrane, Don Cherry. Free improvisation, in other words, is coded as white, and free jazz is coded as black. Standard racial binaries are sort of recapitulated to a tee. The term "free jazz" implies mutually influential and conflicting characteristics: that the music is free suggests that it isn't jazz as know it; that it is jazz suggests that it isn't entirely free.
