What is the purpose of freejazz.org, and what is free jazz?

freejazz.org started as an e-mail digest devoted to the discussion of free jazz and avant garde music in general. It was created by Matthew Radey around the beginning of 1997. (If someone remembers a more exact date, please contact us.) freejazz.org went through various incarnations, gradually growing into the blog style site you see here.

"Free Jazz," which is derived from an Ornette Coleman album of the same name, is a term many people use to refer to the kind of jazz that began to get lots of attention around 1960, played by Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and many others. This music has continued to develop since that time, and on freejazz.org we discuss the whole history of it, as well as its present and future, and many related topics.

How do I use the freejazz.org site?

You can find information on site usage here.

The freejazz.org site changed recently. What is different?

See here for a summary of things that have changed.

What are the current 'known issue' problems with the freejazz.org site?

• Calendar items that go past midnight will show up on the next day. Some people might not consider this to be a bug...

I noticed that there are no advertisements on freejazz.org. How is this financially feasible?

Because we have lots of technical knowledge and experience, we know how to put up and maintain a web site like this one for very little money, and so we have done this at our own expense for the love of music. We have never solicited or accepted donations, though they would certainly be helpful. If you are interested please contact us.

Is freejazz.org in danger of disappearing?

There appears to be very little danger at this time.

I submitted a story, or posted a link, comment, or calendar item, and it never appeared on the site, or was removed. What happened?

If we assume again that there was nothing wrong on your end and everything was received by freejazz.org, we may have decided that your post was off-topic, or that it was redundant (i.e. Another discussion already covers the same material.) We prefer not to remove posts whenever possible, but on the other hand we want this site to remain focused, and we won't tolerate junk. Sometimes we will e-mail you if we reject a post and tell you why, but not always.

Most often we reject story submissions that should have been posted as another kind of content. As explained in bold on the story submission page and the usage page, we're not going to post that story about a new album or upcoming gig. Submit it as a link or event instead.

Content is rejected occasionally for incoherence and brevity too. Please make sure your submissions have a measure of clarity and organization, and take the time to write more than just a sentence or two.

I would like to help freejazz.org. What can I do?

There are many ways to participate. If you would like to go beyond adding comments, links, stories, and events to freejazz.org, we could certainly use your help. You can expand the freejazz.org team by adding to our current staff of two. The following kinds of people are highly desirable for us:

• Person #1: (Web Programmer / Admin): knows or is willing to learn how to manage a web site that uses PHP and MySQL, and Drupal in particular
• Person #2: (Moderator / Stimulator): willing to put in time on a daily or near daily basis managing site content and promoting discussion
• Person #3: (Tester / Monitor): checks the latest site content for issues, identifies problems, experiments with site features
• Person #4: (Graphics Person): knows how to create nice images for web sites

Please contact us if you'd like to be one of these people or have another role in mind.

I recently tried to contact the site administrators and didn't get a response. Why not?

Various problems with the contact form may have prevented you from contacting us. Sorry about that. We think it is fixed now.

I submitted content and I don't think it was rejected, but it hasn't been posted yet. Why not?

Why isn't freejazz.org moderated more frequently and assertively?

We run this site as a hobby, not an occupation. In fact we are often engaged in more important matters, such as eating, sleeping, making a living, and listening to music. freejazz.org is important to us, but it is never a high priority.

If you'd like our urgent or more rapid attention to a certain matter, please do contact us and we'll try to accomodate you.