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In 1969 Charlie Haden assembled eleven musicians, including composer/arranger
Carla Bley, and other iconic musicians of the day Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Sam Brown and Roswell Rudd) et al under the banner of Liberation Music Orchestra to make a record that has become a milestone in recorded jazz.
He asked his good friend Carla Bley to write the arrangements and continued to work with her on all subsequent recordings because her vision matched Haden’s vision of how the music should sound.
The very first recording was a heartfelt and emotional statement about freedom from oppression and repression. With compositions by Charlie and Carla and arrangements by Carla, it won the Grand Prix Charles Cros (the French equivalent of the Grammy) as well as Japan’s Gold Disc Award from the magazine Swing Journal and worldwide acclaim. This was the first jazz album devoted to overarching themes of social justice that went beyond the theme of racism as this recording was Haden’s response to the U.S. involvement in VietNam.. “After the bombing of Cambodia, I thought, I had to do something and I had all these old songs from the Spanish civil war. I called Carla and said let’s do an album about the tragedy of what this administration is doing in the world.”
It was in 1969 while on tour with the Ornette Coleman Quartet that Haden caused an international furor when he was arrested for dedicating his “Song For Che” to the people’s liberation movements in Mozambique, Guinea Bisseau and Angola- three colonies of Portugal which were being severely oppressed. Haden was arrested and grilled by the Portuguese secret service until finally after intervention by Ornette and other musicians who had been forced to leave the country and the US cultural attache came to save Haden.
In 1982, Charlie reorganized the Liberation Music Orchestra with many of the original members – Carla Bley, Paul Motian, Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, , and Michael Mantler. The group was joined by some new faces – Mick Goodrick, and Jim Pepper among them. Says Charlie, “It was recorded in response to U.S. involvement in El Salvador…
The whole underlying theme was to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that, to try to improve the quality of life.” The Ballad of the Fallen (MCA/Impulse), was named “Record of the Year” in the 1984 Down Beat Critics’ Poll.
In 1991, Charlie Haden went on to record with his Liberation Music Orchestra the album Dream Keeper (Blue Note), which had the unique distinction of winning both the Down Beat Critics’ and Readers’ polls as “Album of the Year”, in addition to earning a Grammy Award nomination and appearing on more than 30 “Top 10 Jazz Albums of 1991” lists throughout the world.
This recording was inspired by a poem by Langston Hughes called “As I Grew Older”.
With the ANC National Congress Anthem it makes an impassioned statement about racism throughout the world.
Despite the difficulties of touring with this many musicians, the Liberation Music Orchestra, because of its popularity, has performed many times over the years in Europe, Japan, the United States and Canada.
In , in 2004, Haden and Carla Bley are reunited for the fourth time to perform the Liberation Music Orchestra tour and subsequent recording of all new music for the album Not In Our Name. It was the first time that Charlie and Carla will have performed together live on stage in twenty years. Both Haden and Bley again felt compelled to express their feelings about the oppression and injustice that prevails: “It’s time again to express in music how we feel about human rights and dignity and peaceful resolutions to conflict.”
The new band consisted of a brilliant cadre of players, some of whom have previously toured and recorded with The Orchestra, as well as some of the newer musicians who making their name on the jazz scene. Together with Charlie and Carla, , Miguel Zenon, Tony Malaby, Chris Cheek, Michael Rodriguez, Seneca Black, Curtis Fowlkes, “Ahnee” Sharon Freemen, Joe Daley, Steve Cardenas and Matt Wilson performed on that album.
Most of that personnel have remained together and become a close-knit musical family and this November the latest album encompassing Charlie Haden’s vision has been released with the focus on the environment.
The inspiration for Charlie to make this new album was his observation of the increasingly disastrous state of our environment, and how unconsciously we humans are treating each other, our planet, as well as all living beings on this earth. Loss of livable habitat for all forms of life, a result of sheer human greed and ignorance, is tearing away at the very essence of our existence. This had been concerning both Charlie I for many years. In fact, Charlie wrote “Song For the Whales” in 1979.
Throughout these past 40 years, Charlie Haden through his Liberation Music Orchestra continued to draw its inspiration and repertoire from liberation struggles throughout the world.
“I have always dreamed of a world without cruelty and greed; of a humanity with the same creative brilliance of our solar system; of an America worthy of the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the majesty of the Statue of Liberty.”
By translating that deeply felt sentiment into music, Charlie Haden pursued his dream to create a testament to beauty and resiliency of this planet and in some humble way help keep the hope alive that it’s possible for the people of the world to live in peace. This message remains alive and more true and relevant today thus Haden’s message is kept alive and the band plays on.