As Serious As Your Life Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 19571977 [Paperback]

In this classic account of the new black music of the 1960s and 70s, celebrated photographer and jazz historian Val Wilmer tells the story of how a generation of revolutionary musicians established black music as the true vanguard of American culture.Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today.As vital now as when it was first published in 1977, As Serious As Your Life is the essential story of one of the most dynamic musical movements of the twentieth century.Val Wilmer is an internationally acclaimed photographer, journalist, author and black music historian who has been documenting African-American music since 1959. In that time she has interviewed and photographed almost every significant figure in post-war jazz, blues and R&B, from Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk to Sun Ra and Albert Ayler via Muddy Waters and Aretha Franklin. As a photographer, her work features in the permanent collections of the British Library, the V&A Museum and the National Portrait Gallery; as a writer and historian, she has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography and the New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz. She lives in London.As Serious as Your Life tells the essential story of how an intrepid group of black musicians tore up the rules of jazz - just as superstars like Beyonc? and Frank Ocean are tearing up the rules of pop today

Published to coincide with a major BBC Radio 3 feature on the life and work of Val Wilmer in the UK - she is Britain's most important chronicler of jazz and black music and and considered an expert in the US as well

Featuring a 16 page b&w plate section of classic photographs from Wilmer's own archive

Wilmer is extremely well connected in the jazz music world with a lot of contacts. She will be avló!