ABSTRACT
To the annoyance of many musicians, there is an innate need for audience, critics and general public (and musicians!) to label and categorise styles of music. We propose that in a sonic environment there is a dominant musical ‘sensibility’ that impacts on the music that is created. More specifically we argue that a jazz sensibility remains in place as a foundation of free jazz in the context of this book. In teasing out a workable definition of a jazz sensibility, we briefly recap the history of jazz in order to consider whether an assumption of curatorial control is warranted in the twenty-first century. We conclude by casting a jazz sensibility as an imbuement: a performative quality that is the product of idiosyncratic experience, creativity, expertise and aesthetics that are influenced by variously acquired frames of references and perspectives.
