For some people, there is no two more terrifying phrasein the English language than ‘free jazz’. Fortunately, the cure for this particular brand of reverse cultural snobbery can currently be found in Anri Sala’s ‘3-2-1’ – in which the live performance by saxophonist Andre Vida, where he leads visitors through the Serpentine’s galleries like a sort of latter-day Pied Piper, is very far from being difficult, or overly cerebral, or pretentious, or any of the other accusations typically levelled at this sort of music.
Rather, for all its formal, atonal experimentation, it’s utterly compelling – a mesmerising diversity of sounds, textures, moods and structures, all improvised by Vida in response to different elements in each gallery: accompanying earlier, prerecorded performances in the first room; duetting with a huge film projection of jazz legend Jemeel Moondoc, here rather inexplicably suspended from atop a Berlin tower block; and finally culminating with a stark, solo performance. The effect is like watching a strangely degenerating conversation – from general hubbub, through witty, argumentative dialogue, to plaintive, bewildered monologue.
Ideas around conversation and communication also extend to the musically orientated films that follow: a woman’s voice getting drowned out by her lover’s continual drumming, set within a Buckminster Fuller-designed geodesic dome; and two simultaneous, rather elliptical works that incorporate versions of The Clash’s punk anthem, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ – played on a music box in Bordeaux, and a barrel organ in Mexico City.
The sense is of music as a kind of über-metaphor, around which various conceptions of history, identity and participation revolve – there’s even a little music box for gallery visitors to wind, as if posing The Clash’s question for themselves. Compared to the free-form spontaneity of the jazz performance, however, it all feels a bit too contrived and allegorical, too rigidly composed.