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Liberation Music Orchestra

Item
Date:
1973;
Subject Terms:
Spanish Civil War; Jazz
Identifier:
IA.ITM.002444
Description
The inspiration for the album came when Haden heard songs from the Spanish Civil War. He included three of those songs on the album (the trilogy "El Quinto Regimiento", "Los Cuatro Generales", and "Viva la Quince Brigada", which are old Spanish folk songs given new words during the war, in that order "El Vito", previously adapted by John Coltrane as “Olé", "Los Cuatro Muleros", for which Federico García Lorca also wrote lyrics, and "Ay Carmela").
Other tracks on the album include Ornette Coleman's "War Orphans", which Haden had played with Coleman in 1967, three pieces by Carla Bley, who also contributed much of the arranging, two of Haden's own compositions, one dedicated to Che Guevara and one inspired by the 1968 National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party:
"After the minority plank on Vietnam was defeated in a vote taken on the convention floor, the California and New York delegations spontaneously began to sing 'We Shall Overcome' [the last track on the album] in protest. Unable to gain control of the floor, the rostrum instructed the convention orchestra to drown out the singing. 'You're a Grand Old Flag' and 'Happy Days Are Here Again' could then be heard trying to stifle 'We Shall Overcome'. To me this told the story, in music, of what was happening in our country politically." (Charlie Haden, original liner notes)
In "Circus '68 '69" the musicians are thus divided into two bands in recreation of the events on the convention floor.
The Liberation Music Orchestra's next album, The Ballad of the Fallen, didn't appear until 1983.

Track listing
LP side A:[6]
  1. "The Introduction" (Bley) / "Song of the United Front" (Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler) – 3:07
  2. "El Quinto Regimiento" ("The Fifth Regiment") (Traditional; arranged by Bley)
  3. "Los Cuatro Generales" ("The Four Generals") (Traditional; arranged by Bley)
  4. "Viva la Quince Brigada" ("Long Live the Fifteenth Brigade") (Traditional melody; words by Bart Van Derschelling) – 20:58
  5. "The Ending to the First Side" (Bley) – 2:07
LP side B:
  1. "Song for Ché" (Haden) – 9:29
  2. "War Orphans" (Ornette Coleman) – 6:42
  3. "The Interlude (Drinking Music)" (Bley) – 1:24
  4. "Circus '68 '69" (Haden) – 6:10
  5. "We Shall Overcome" (Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan, Pete Seeger) 1:19
Related people
Liberation Music Orchestra (artist)
Carla Bley (author)
Charlie Hayden (creator)
Gato Barbieri (contributor)
Don Cherry (contributor)
Dewey Redman (contributor)
Roswell Rudd (contributor)
Sam Brown (contributor)
Hans Eisler (author)
Bertolt Brecht (author)
Ornette Coleman (author)
Charles Stewart (photographer)
Related places
New York (created)
Hollywood (created)
Format
vinyl records (format)