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Abstract
In the worlds of both "jazz" and "classical music," members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, or AACM, are often categorized as existing outside mainstream. In part, this stems from the collective's non-standard practices of instrumentation and instrument technique, which include "multi-instrumentalism," or the sequential and even simultaneous use of several instruments---often non-traditional or non-standard instruments---by a single performer. This work explores the phenomenon of multi-instrumentalism in the AACM, offering a matrix of contexts (as opposed to more direct cause-and-effect explanations) in which this practice may have developed. These contexts are based on ethnotheories proposed by the primarily African American members of the AACM themselves, in interviews and other printed texts and recorded sources, about the relationship of AACM practice and African tradition, about the role of place (including the nexus between the American South and the Midwest), and about their historical and cultural relationship to the western art music tradition. Though practices such as face-painting, the use of overlapping of expressive forms, and an openness toward any sound source and structural musical formula (including more abstract "classical" ideas) have often caused the AACM's members to be seen as outside the mainstream of African American music performance traditions, this work argues, using both the words and ideas of AACM members and those of African diaspora scholars, that they are in fact thoroughly grounded in those traditions.
