A Power Stronger Than Itself
The AACM and American Experimental Music
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

Introduction: An AACM Book: Origins, Antecedents, Objectives, Methods
Chapter Summaries
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Foundations and Prehistory
Coming North: From Great Migration to Great Depression
Early Musical Experiences
Improvisation and Autodidacticism in 1950s Chicago
The End of an Era
Chapter 2: New Music, New York
Cultures of Spontaneity: Integrationism and the Two Avant-Gardes
Beyond a Bebop Boundary: The Challenge of New Music
Critical Responses: Anger, Noise, Failure
A Far Cry from New York: Segregation and Chicago Music
Chapter 3: The Development of the Experimental Band
Alternative Pedagogies of Experimental Music
Eyes on the Sparrow: The First New Chicagoans
Chapter 4: Founding the Collective
Urban Decline and the Turn to Communitarianism
Born on the Kitchen Table: Conceiving the Association
Naming Ceremony: Black Power and Black Institutions
Chapter 5: First Fruits
The First Year: Concerts, Critics, and Issues
New Arrivals and the University of Chicago
Travel, Recording, and Intermedia
Memories of the Sun: The AACM and Sun Ra
Chapter 6: The AACM Takes Off
The Black Arts Movement in Chicago
New Arrivals and New Ideas
The AACM School
Performing and Self-Determination
Cultural Nationalism in Postmodern Transition
Chapter 7: Americans in Paris
Conceiving the World Audience
Le Nouveau Paris Noir: Collectivity, Competition, and Excitement
The Politics of Culture: Black Power and May 1968
Die Emanzipation: The Rise of European Free Improvisation
Homecoming
Chapter 8: The AACM’s Next Wave
More from the Midwest: The Black Artists Group
New Elbows on the Table: The AACM’s Second Wave
Ten Years After: The Association Comes of Age
Chapter 9: The AACM in New York
Migration and Invasion
Europe and the Lofts
Beyond a Binary: The AACM and the Crisis in Criticism
Diversity and Its Discontents: New American Music after the Jazz Age
Chapter 10: The New Regime in Chicago
Generational Shifts in the Collective
The Two Cultures and a New Chapter
Form and Funding: Philanthropy and Black Music in the 1970s
Strains, Swirls, and Splits
Chapter 11: Into the Third Decade
The 1980s: Canons and Heterophony
Great Black Music: The Local and the Global
Leading the Third Wave: The New Women of the AACM
Chapter 12: Transition and Reflections
New York in Transition
Chicago in Reflection
J’ai deux amours . . .
Afterword
The Way of the Arranger
The Individual
The Book
Expansion and Sacrifice
Boxing with Tradition
Regrets
Survival
Contemplating the Post-jazz Continuum
Atmospheres
Futures
Appendix A: List of Interviews Conducted by the Author
Appendix B: Selected AACM Recordings
Bibliography
Notes
Index
“George Lewis has outdone himself with this extraordinary volume. His unrelenting intelligence and ear for detail have produced a challenging compendium of late twentieth-century African Americana. This is not only a study of the AACM, it is a hope-drenched encomium to modernist creativity and the oppositional imagination.”
“The AACM is one of our great cultural inventions. This extraordinary book embodies its principles, for George Lewis draws on multiple traditions: scholarship, reportage, testament, analysis, theory and criticism come together with virtuosity and scrupulous discipline. A Power Stronger Than Itself remaps the landscape of American experimental music. Academics, critics and musicians will have to reconfigure such terms as ‘jazz,’ ‘classical,’ ‘soulful,’ ‘avant-garde,’ ‘black’ and ‘white.’ Now the past yields unexpected wonders; the future unexpected possibilities.”
“In bringing intellectual breadth and what Lester Bowie calls ‘good old country ass-kicking’ to bear on past and present indignities, Lewis has produced a fitting companion to the music he celebrates.”
“An important book. . . . Mr. Lewis narrates its development with exacting context and incisive analysis, occasionally delving into academic cultural theory. But because the book includes biographical portraits of so many participating musicians, it’s a swift, engrossing read.”
American Musicological Society: AMS Music in American Culture Award
Won
Before Columbus Foundation: American Book Award
Won
Association for Recorded Sound Collections: Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence
Won
Association of American Publishers: PROSE Book Award
Honorable Mention
Music and Performing Arts category
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.