AACM Historical

I've just finished reading George Lewis's superb history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Lewis has really filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of an experimental musical culture that has alternated for decades between intersection and movement parallel to the experimental tradition with which I identify. His discussion of the relationship between these two experimental music communities is quite pointed at times, talking with welcome frankness about issues of race, class, and gender; I don't agree with him on many points here, particularly given the marginal economic and music-political status of all experimental musicians with regard to the larger musical world, but it is an excellent opening to a discussion that is just beginning. Lewis's balance between a scholar's objective engagement with the historical record and recollection of his own personal engagement is a model.

I would now really like to read a more detailed theoretical/analytical work on the repertoire and musical techniques developed in the AACM and the larger community to which it connects. Or, better yet, some pedagogical materials -- scores and parts, as well as aids in teaching composition and improvisation -- ought to be developed, to widen the appreciation for this tradition, as well as to better balance out the treatment of African-American music in schools, which has long emphasized a rather narrowly defined "jazz" repertoire and an even-more narrowly defined style for playing that music.