<P> Many critics have drawn connections between the term "free jazz" and the American social setting during the late 1950s and 1960s, especially the emerging social tensions of racial integration and the civil rights movement . Many argue those recent phenomena such as the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the emergence of the "Freedom Riders" in 1961, the 1963 Freedom Summer of activist - supported black voter registration, and the free alternative black Freedom Schools demonstrate the political implications of the word "free" in context of free jazz . Thus many consider free jazz to be not only a rejection of certain musical credos and ideas, but a musical reaction to the oppression and experience of black Americans . </P> <P> While free jazz is widely considered to begin in the late 1950s, there are compositions that precede this era that have notable connections to the free jazz aesthetic . Some of the works of Lennie Tristano in the late 1940s, particularly "Intuition", "Digression", and "Descent into the Maelstrom" exhibit the use of techniques associated with free jazz, such as atonal collective improvisation and lack of discrete chord changes . Other notable examples proto - free jazz include City of Glass written in 1948 by Bob Graettinger for the Stan Kenton band and Jimmy Giuffre's 1953 "Fugue". It can be argued, however, that these works are more representative of third stream jazz with its references to contemporary classical music techniques such as serialism . </P> <P> The true beginning of free jazz as it is understood today, however, came with the recordings of Ornette Coleman . Coleman pioneered many techniques typical of free jazz, most notably his rejection of pre-written chord changes, believing instead that freely improvised melodic lines should serve as the basis for harmonic progression in his compositions . His first notable recordings for Contemporary Records included Tomorrow Is the Question! and Something Else in 1958, garnering Coleman national recognition . In terms of free jazz history, these albums revolutionized concepts of musical structure, as many of the compositions on these two early albums do not follow typical 32 - bar form and often employ abrupt changes in tempo and mood . </P> <P> The free jazz movement received its biggest impetus when Coleman moved from the West Coast to New York City and was signed to Atlantic Records: albums such as The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century marked a radical step beyond his more conventional early work . On these albums, Coleman strayed from the tonal basis that formed the lines of his earlier albums and began truly examining the possibilities of atonal improvisation . The most important recording to the free jazz movement from Coleman during this era, however, came with Free Jazz, recorded in A&R Studios in New York in 1960 . It marked an abrupt departure from the highly structured compositions of his past . Recorded with a double quartet separated into left and right channels, Free Jazz brought a more aggressive, cacophonous texture to Coleman's work, and the record's title would provide the name for the nascent free jazz movement . </P>

Who was regarded as the first free jazz musician