“Jazz: The Experimenters,” a 1965 television broadcast of performances by the bands of Cecil Taylor and Charles Mingus, with commentary by Ralph Ellison ... the broadcast, playing a sinuous ...

and that they could play jazz with dignity only by frowning and treating the audience with aggressive contempt; and that to be in control, artistically and personally, one must be so cool as to ...

The irresistibly quotable first sentence of Ralph Ellison’s 1955 essay ... surly and often too drugged out to play well, but their abstract and cultish style took jazz away from its communal ...